You're Wrong About - Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch with Willa Paskin

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Willa Paskin (of Slate's Decoder Ring) brings Sarah back to 2005, when Tom Cruise jumping on a couch became the talk of the town. We will return to Amityville (part 3 of 3) next time!  Here's where to find Willa:Decoder RingSupport us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchTom Cruise on the couch notesOprah episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=930BhfJxFxUTom Cruise Kills Oprah meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRbhE3GRiUEAmy Nicholson's revelatory piece reframing Tom Cruise and the couch jump: https://www.laweekly.com/how-youtube-and-internet-journalism-destroyed-tom-cruise-our-last-real-movie-star/Rich Juzwiak piece on the meaning of the couch jump: https://www.gawker.com/5912665/gone-and-back-tom-cruises-couch-jumping-rememberedNew York Times hand wringing about the event: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/movies/how-personal-is-too-personal-for-a-star-like-tom-cruise.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/fashion/sundaystyles/i-love-you-with-all-my-hype.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/opinion/two-top-guns-shoot-blanks.htmlA few other interesting, what it all meant pieces:https://www.laineygossip.com/looking-back-on-tom-cruise-maniacal-couch-jumping-on-oprah-fifteen-years-later/66337https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/8/1/17631658/tom-cruise-oprah-couch-jumpWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good [YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ringhttp://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

To me, there's kind of a bittersweet lost worldness to it. I feel like it's the way people maybe used to feel when they were like in my day We got ice from the ice man and they cut it out of lakes Welcome to you're wrong about the show where we talk about great moments in daytime TV history With me today is will a Paskin from decoder ring. Hello. Hi. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for being here with us I love your show so much and it's become a Thing with my friends lately I've been listening to just a bunch of episodes and celebration of your coming here because you're not gonna quiz me on them

So it's become a joke or I'm like I listened to a decoder ring the other day about how music used to be made or something That's a good one. I like do you listen to any other shows and it's like not right now. I Have to say I'm sure that people tell you this joke a lot But I have this fantasy that one day you'll be like today on decoder ring North Dakota. What is it? Should I do that? I would do that. I feel like that would be a good April Fool's sometimes I like to think that you're also saying decoder ring. I do say decoder ring I have a problem with it actually like I I notice it especially when I do ads because it's when I Say the name the most and I think it's my New York accent. It's very hard to say decoder ring ring, right?

So I just say decoder ring. It's like in The Princess Bride where you have to be like you will not find her common now Decoder ring you have to just be a prince to do it. Yeah, I try I try to really enunciate. I feel like our Podcasts they want to be holding hands and I feel like anyone who's are you wrong about listener if you haven't listened to the decoder ring Catalog there's just like a whole new theme park for you to discover I'm really mixing metaphors either theme parks that hold hands But are there episodes that you would recommend people start with my favorite episodes are like all the Secretly like do you know the podcast heavyweight? Oh, yeah, I love heavyweight, right? So they're like all sort of like the secret like psychological therapy drama one

Like a major character and I get to like be like what's up with your feelings? So I think like on this theme the sad Jen episode which is which is about the question of why are Brad Pitt and Jennifer Allison still getting married on the cover of tabloids very apropos And I is as one that I really like we did this one about Chuck E cheese, which I had never been to in my life But is like pretty good like it's a pretty good story Chuck E cheese turns out to be pretty crazy That was the first one I listened to I love that one. Yeah, people really like that one We did this one called the mystery of the mullet, which is about the word for the mullet and where it comes from And that one's like start to finish like got a real art

Proper mystery we sort of pretend that they're all about mysteries, but they're not my two favorite are this one I did called the sign painter which is about this artist that I've known my whole life And that one's just like very emo, but I think it's really good And then also we did one about the Jane Fonda workout that ended up also being really emo because it's about Jane Fonda's Relationships to the woman who actually made the workout his name is Lenny Kasdan and so we did two about Jane Fonda But the first Jane Fonda one is good stuff. I think I would love to recommend the is it called getting down on Friday? Yes, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that one's amazing And that's you know, that's such a maligned teen story and I mean you do a bunch of different eras

But I love the way that you look at how has our recent media landscape change how far in a way in history is even 10 years ago Yeah, thank you. That's nice. I do think of our shows as being like thematically connected all the time totally What are you gonna tell me about today? What kind of ride are we gonna go on? We're talking about the time that Tom Cruise jumped on over Winfrey's couch. I'm so excited. I'm excited, too Can we start with me attempting to guess what year this happened? Yeah, please. Let's do that. Was it 2005 nailed it Damn, if only I could keep track of the present like that one of the really funny things about this For me is that I know it was huge. I saw people talking about it for weeks I feel like I was fairly engaged with it and I never saw a video of it at the time

I think because 2005 was the year YouTube started, right? So that was kind of the last moment when you could hear about something endlessly without actually witnessing it That's exactly right. It happens in May of 2005 Tom Cruise is going on the Oprah Winfrey show ostensibly to promote this large movie Making with Steven Spielberg adaptation of War of the Worlds, but he's like a month into having this brand new much younger girlfriend Katie Holmes who's known mostly for being on Dawson's Creek, but is also about to appear in Batman Begins And it happens on Oprah but right like unless you watched Oprah that day like you weren't gonna find the whole episode some people had

Teavos, but it's not like DVRs were everywhere and like Oprah Winfrey is like putting the episode online and There have been some viral videos But as you said YouTube just started like to the point that in February to the point that people don't even like know They can use it to house their videos. So we have this really clear memory I think of it You don't even have to like seen it to have a memory of it Like there's a very clear and distinct cultural memory of this moment and like what it signifies and what it signifies is like It's the moment Tom Cruise jumped up and down on a couch

Which he actually didn't do and we'll get into but like he jumped up and down on a couch Sort of like ripped his mask off like Mission Impossible style and just like revealed himself to be like a stone cold freak is on like think That's like what we sort of understand it as and if you actually go like watch the Oprah episode It's not that it's not that it's not like a fully a false memory But it's definitely like an incomplete memory of what happened and I think if you watch it now You're like it's not clear at me. That would be the takeaway It's about Tom Cruise, but it's also sort of just much more largely about like this really changey time about celebrity and

Technology and like media and culture and he almost gets like caught in the crossfire of all these changes and like We laid him out for it and we will talk about I hope like how it's sort of Tom Cruise is like it You know, no one has to feel bad for Tom Cruise. He's sort of like this vestigial Celebrity you don't have to feel bad for but like it is like slightly more complicated than just like him being a total weirdo Right regardless of whatever Tom Cruise needs from the world I feel like it's better for us if we can sort of examine why we thought we saw what we thought we saw but My interaction with it was that there were still images and probably like a couple of iconic frames that were going around and then it's like your brain Fills it in and you feel like you've seen the actual motion. I definitely haven't seen the episode

I'm not even sure I saw like the viral cut down until I was researching this but in my mind. I can see him I can see him jumping up and down on a couch and it didn't happen Yeah, like he jumps on to it and then he jumps off. He literally doesn't do the jumping motion, right? And it's just a different vibe. It's like this kid. I'm babysitting is really wired as opposed to guy gets animated on daytime talk show Totally, okay. This is like peak apex opera It is the acme of opera dumb and like the opera show so just in September of 2004 So less than a year before it was like you get a car you get a car you get a car like oh wow It's that opera. I do remember this the like Oprah can do no wrong phase totally the audience is all women

Mm-hmm I mean, there's literally one man Tom Cruise sees him at some point is like there's a man here But it's like all women and they have been pre-selected because they are obsessed with Tom Cruise. Oh boy The energy level at the show is like concert fainting level Wow Oprah too, I don't know if she's just matching the energy of the audience, but she's like it's Tom Cruise and they're so intimate. Yeah He comes on on stage and he's sort of overwhelmed by how loud the crowd is Wow and his hair gets messed up And they embrace for like a long time and then she like fixes his hair. There's like all show

There's just like a lot of touching collegial, you know like warm, but like he definitely thinks he's in a safe space Yeah, honestly, this is so cute. I'm like Tom Cruise is so dreamy Yeah, it's section intense sound It's like when you're like right by the ocean and it's like crashing and roaring everyone It's couldn't be more amped to be there and he's ostensibly there to promote war of the world But he's just sort of had this announcement of this new relationship. And so that's basically all they talk about at Oprah's Insistence, you know like Oprah's so good at wearing both hats Yeah, she can relate to the famous person as a famous person

But then she's like but I gotta put on my regular person hat and just I have to ask you what the people want to know Mm-hmm, and she just does that where she's like we're not getting off this subject Mm-hmm, and she's like we've never seen you like this and she just sort of elicits a lot of he's in love from him Mm-hmm and to this enthusiasm he adds a number of like very large physical gestures I think there's like four Very very grandiose physical gestures that he repeats throughout so like one is raising his hands in the air The most like cringy to me is like he gets down on one knee and like fist pumps wildly like almost like knocked on the floor And it's like and he does it like every time he's like can't believe his luck about how finding like this amazing woman

He also regularly like grabs Oprah's hands and like shakes them they shake them together like like some sort of like really awkward Like high-five that's gone up like you know like you give some a high five But then like you hold their hands and you don't let go He does that a lot and then the fourth thing which he does twice He sort of very acrobatically from sitting on a couch jumps to standing on the couch Just like in one move and then hops off like it actually would be hard for me to do that Right now I feel sad for Tom Cruise, you know not too sad not gonna get better You're gonna feel sad for the whole time

I for a long time like didn't watch the Mission Impossible movies as they were coming out and then I Made friends with someone who's like a Mission Impossible superfan and then we watched a bunch of them And I saw them through his eyes and I was like oh my god Tom Cruise is so delightful as a movie star partly because he's like I will Run full tilt through the streets of Paris trying to outrun a motorcycle or whatever that he's just obsessed With physical stunts and so I feel like what a bummer to do a great stunt and then have it passed off as it's like He's out of control and I imagine it being like I was totally in control. I'm like a gymnast you guys Don't like no like he knows he's performing

But he definitely feels safe to like be ridiculous right the expectation at the time would have been like you saw the show Or you didn't You were either watching over at like three o'clock on whatever weekday that was or you had soccer practice that day And so it goes up but the next day someone does like a cut down of only the parts where he's doing like these huge physical gestures and It starts to go everywhere and then it was really fast for the time But basically like that cut down comes up that day. There's like images of it I think on defamer and then a week later someone does this viral video where it's called Tom Cruise kills Oprah where like he

Has like electric bolts like coming out of his hands while he's doing that like over a long hand gesture Like where they're holding hands and holding her shoulders And that's like a week later and then it ends up on the news then and then like the New York Times and the LA Times like Frank Rich like they're writing serious articles about it like in the middle of June Wow It just has these weird long legs and ends up like totally destabilizing his career and Transforming it and changing it. Yeah, do you have like a first-time cruise movie? Oh boy I think it probably was the first mission impossible the one that came out and I think 96

I feel like he is to me mr. Mission Impossible and that kind of expresses Whatever I happen to believe about his core being which is that he's like a very smooth Very determined guy who just wants to like do everything as hard as possible totally Yes, so film critic and she has a podcast now Amy Nicholson wrote this really great piece for LA Weekly sort of about the couch Jump, but it was about Tom Cruise's career And I think like we have this sense of him as being like an action star who's like this sort of yeah Quintessentially like cocky cock shore clean cut American type. He's got like the like crooked grin

Maverick That's true, but her read on his early crew is really interesting because basically so like he gets really famous at 21 for risky business And what she's like in his skivvies and his button-down shirt and his song You know dancing in them. It's hard to remember. He was basically a teenager at the time So he's like this hot young thing and he's like part of this group of young actors that like includes Sean Penn and instead of Doing a lot of press and trying to be in LA He goes to London films that Ridley Scott movie legend, which is with Sloan from Ferris Bueller's Day off

And it doesn't work out, but he's just like not he's not about it And but then in 1986 outcomes top gun and it's like impossible for him to not be super famous anymore But Paramount immediately like asks him to do top gun to and he says no and he like goes to work with Martin Scorsese and Paul Newman And makes the color of money and he like he's like I want to work with people who are like really good Yeah, and he goes and like it's sort of second fiddle to Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man And I mean cocktail he makes at this point which doesn't fit in with the quality although I love it his romantic comedy with Elizabeth Shoe I turned out I only really love like terrible Tom Cruise movies and he does born on the 4th of July

You know we think of him as like action hero guy, but none of those are really action movies Right, he's pretty quiet about his personal life So like in 1987 he marries Mimi Rogers who's like six years older than him And she's the person who introduces him to Scientology in 1990 He gets divorced and he also renounces Catholicism and is like I'm gonna be a Scientologist And also sort of famously meets Nicole Kidman on Days of Thunder another bad movie that I have a soft spot for And they then make far and away the bad movie that I love the most. Have you seen far and away?

It lives in a part of my memory where the movies you saw when you were too young to really make sense of them live And I remember specifically the part where she's like she's rich. She's poor They both leave Ireland for America or something like that. Is that okay? And then she's like trying to wash something and he's like you're washing that too soft. You have to scrub it Like on a wash The 90s like apex functional Tom Cruise right like he does this movie these two movies don't work And then he's like, okay, I'm gonna do a few good men. He does the firm Right like he does Jerry Maguire. He starts doing mission impossible

Like he's just kind of cruising in between that he does interview the vampire Which people are like really mean about whether or not he can do it and if he can play like a sexy Whatever he was great in that movie. He's up to stuff He and Nicole Kidman are sort of very power coupling and then it kind of at the end of the 90s gets a little wobbly He's he does magnolia, which is like when he grows his hair out and that's also when I decided he was cute Like I really remember him showing up in some premiere or like us weekly before it was a tabloid as a teen and being like Who is that gent? That's Tom Cruise You finally feel the tangle. I think he's amazing and magnolia and I think

Well, I want to see him do more stuff like that. That's not really relevant here. I just want it Well, it is actually it's gonna be relevant. Oh, okay, great. We're gonna call it back So but the other thing that's happening is that he makes he and Nicole Kim and go to work with Stanley Cooper making eyes wide shut And Nicole Kim was just on fresh air like two weeks ago last a couple weeks ago I ended up talking to terry gross about eyes wide shut and basically like they're supposed to be the first six months They're there for 18 months. They're just like living in this. They're making this, you know, eyes wide shut is sort of this erotic Drama about this married couple playing sort of sex games when they're in the uk for this incredible amount of time The uk is like totally different libel laws than america where like you have to the person suing has the burden of proof

Not the person who printed the thing that may or may not be true So basically you can just get away with saying a lot more stuff But tom cruise goes ahead and sues a british tabloid As successfully in 1998 the express and he wins But what he's suing them for is this rumor that his marriage is a sham because he's Gay and Nicole Kim and is a beard and they have sex coaches They have to be taught how to have sex like When you think about who the male famous actors of the 80s and 90s who like there haven't been rumors that they were gay

Yeah, it's very few like that's such a good point Especially rickshaw gear and the gerbil rumor like i don't know how that got attached to him Yeah, it was just a pastime. We just had to do that as a country There's always been this berbil and this rumor is like at a sort of high pitch that tom cruise might be gay But he's closet essentially at the moment that he then sort of very abruptly gets divorced I mean, this is all so speculative, but I remember very distinctly at the time There was like, you know, california alimony laws change after 10 years and like the divorce happened like right then So there's all this theorizing that they had like a deal. She was a really young actress obviously like

Scientology tom cruise credits with really helping him with dyslexia is sort of also infamously Rumored and thought not even like sought to be sort of de-gazed people Like that's a thing that they do they have adopted to adopted children Like there's just this whole mess of like totally alleged suspicion and rumor about his sexual orientation So he gets divorced It's like pretty abrupt and messy and immediately starts dating his co-star from vanilla sky Penelope cruise like sort of quietly And they date for a couple years and so then by 2004 like they've broken up

And he doesn't have a girlfriend Seemingly then seems from the publics to go out and get another one He basically shows up in april of 2005 with katie holmes in rom and at the time The tabloids like people com runs this online survey that's like is the relationship a true romance or a publicity stunt and like 62 percent of responses say it's a publicity stunt and obviously like this is totally bogus But the point is just that this is how like everyone's kind of thinking about it star magazine tablet like runs a headline That's like could this be true like us weekly is also doing like surveys I used to intern at us weekly and I would make those surveys up because it was so excruciating to go up to people in timesquare

And ask them questions like this So i'm not saying it's true, but it's just like how many people were you supposed to talk to I was also 100 and I would totally do what you said I would ask 10 and just like extrapolate the numbers out I know that because I guess listen to you describe that And your sad Jennifer aniston episode which I love because that's such a mystery of our time This is really connected. I mean we're gonna get into this what's happening in the tabloids at this moment but basically like everyone is just like extremely extremely skeptical that

Whether they should be or not like there's just a lot of cynicism that this is like he needed to like check a box And he did throughout this. He's had this really powerful publicist named pat kingsley Who also represented sandra bullock and al Pacino and mag ryan They start working together in the 90s and she's like making people sign non-disclosure If you do a print interview with him you she makes you sign something saying you're not going to sell it to the tabloids She makes tv journalists delete or destroy the tape after They air and also the media ecosystem is like smaller and contained right? It's like there's less outlets Also in the early 2000s. He fires her

And hires his sister Oh tom no Also as it does seem like Scientology is becoming increasingly important to him like Scientology has long been Supposed to be a factor in his divorce with nicole kidman and he's sort of like Insisted there's a Scientology tent On the war of the world set and sort of after this opera thing He will go on to do some also sort of infamous interviews with matt lauer where he like goes after the history of Psychiatry and brook shields like it just seems like Scientology is like becoming more central to him

That's right. He had a dust up with brick shields. Yeah, that doesn't make you more sympathetic That's the worst part the mood about like celebrities in 2005 is like really not the mood about celebrities right now So the things that are happening that I think are germane to the mood The first is reality television We obviously had reality television for a long time like the real world the adiata But basically in 2000 survivor the first season starts and america falls in love with reality tv in a consistent way And it'll take a couple years for like the

Machine of minting Famous people from reality shows will really kick in But everyone is really like enamored with this new way of existing in public or in fiction. So Like just for example after this opera incident a columnist for the la times writes this piece about now celebrities are all like Existing in this reality tv zone where like they can make their own reality tv show like without being on tv Like literally just what we all live and inhabit every single minute of the day with all social media But it seems like an interesting insight into like a new way of being famous Where you're sort of letting people in on the back seat behind the scenes, but you're also not

It's just a new way of thinking about how famous people can inhabit space and time like around us They could be like kind of performing but also being real at the same time I feel like it's really hard to get back to a time when we didn't have direct access to celebrities and their thoughts through social media Like in 2005 you would be like, what's david caruso doing today? And you just wouldn't know David Caruso I think one of the things that is happening with tom cruise It seems like he's aware in this moment of the changes that are happening around him and that people want a different kind of Access to celebrities like a more authentic unfettered. And so he's like i've been so

Uptight. I've not talked about my personal life. I've been so like on the ball and hey, it's like a new age Maybe people want to see like My real feelings, you know, like there's some point in the Oprah interview He's like, I can't be cool. Like, you know when you feel like this, you just got to tell people He's sort of reaching for this new authenticity But he's just like very bad at it or just like it just comes across as like totally inauthentic But I think that that is the context. We have all these new ways of reaching audiences Maybe I should do something with that

As we all know like being unreality person is difficult Yeah, and he's such an old-fashioned movie star that to watch him try to transition to that It's like having the champion penny farthing writer try and ride a bike with two wheels at the same size It's like, oh, you're very good at the other thing. Just what if you did that? No, that's I think that's exactly right. But he's like, there's this new bicycle We should get out of shot this penny farthing's not gonna go anywhere And so then the other thing that's happening the explosion of the tabloids in 2001 body filler takes over us weekly and sort of inaugurates It's like a more pugnacious slightly dismissive relationship to celebrities where like her famous invention is like stars are just like us

Where you see people pumping their gas and wearing hugs and it doesn't mean that you're not like super obsessed and interested in celebrities But you're not super obsessed and interested in like a hagiographic way anymore, right? You don't want to read what the studios are putting out about Kerry Grant. You want the dirt You know, you want to see Kerry Grant coming out of someone's house in the middle Like in the morning leaving his lsd dealer's house. Yeah, totally So there's us weekly with metastasizes very quickly into a number of other tabloids including star and other stuff But then there's also this explosion In blogs like in 2005 the number of blogs go from 10 million to 25 million

And one of those is Perez Hilton You know becomes a hugely hugely successful celebrity blogger by literally drawing dicks on celebrity's faces It feels relevant that we needed maybe I mean we still behave absolutely shamefully with regards to everyone in the media So it's not like we're living in this age of enlightenment But I feel as if at that time it felt so exciting and in a way Necessary to be able to like try and bring celebrities down to the level of normal people I feel like we were gleeful at the fact that we could prod their humanity in a way that we really couldn't before

I think also just like tom cruise is like an a-lister Yeah, there are some of those people left, but that's like really not the celebrity ecology The celebrity ecology is full of who's and people that we know, you know, maybe really famous people But people who it's not that they got famous like on a movie screen being like gorgeous and 20 feet tall or whatever Especially with like that kind of famous person. There's like a lot of pleasure making them a little more life-size This is also I would say like really peak tabloid time because the other story that's happening in 2005 is brand gelina Which is like There is no bigger story and similarly Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston like

They're so elevated that there's just like I think people feel a little more comfortable. You just are punching up Oh, yeah, because I remember feeling like it was so Amazing that they hadn't collided with each other before like they're too They're like the two people who at the time you would use to signify like The most desirable person imaginable and then you were like, oh, I've never seen them next to each other before How was that? How are they not been drawn together like magnets? You're just like a famous person You're just like, yep. Now I will call that person's agent or like call their manager because we're all in the famous club It's like fun. Like you don't have to be introduced. You know, you're like, right. We already know each other

And I guess now they have an app or something I definitely had My share of judge mentalness at the time But I also remember being very enchanted by the fact that I think katie homes had like At least said that she had a poster of tom cruise on her wall As a teen or a tween. She had told 17 magazines. She wanted to marry Right and I was like, so you're telling me there is hope for me and whoever I had a crush on in 2005 It has to be too embarrassing to say

But that I find it so creepy. Is there nothing so creepy about that too? Yeah, now that I'm an adult It is also creepy. There's movies like win a date with tad hamilton or whatever I think there's like where there's a premise of like being with your high school misery In a different direction But there's something like weird about it, right? Like to have an experience of someone's like fame and then to actually know them Don't you think the experience of their fame is still distorting? Especially when it's someone like tom cruise. I don't know. I'm sure the levels of power are really interesting there Yeah, if you grow up watching someone

And then are in a relationship with them I feel like the version that existed in your head might sort of take precedence for a long time until you're able to look Up and be like wait this guy. I don't know about this guy Don't it it's like when you move into a new place and you have all these ideas about how you're going to decorate it And then or in what your life will be like and then a year later It's completely different and hopefully you really like what we did As opposed to now there's like a lot of Revelling and being mean to celebrities like being cynical about them and and tom cruise and brad pit and angelina joly are

One half, but then we also have like the paris britney. Yeah, lindsay low hand stuff That's slow motion disaster stuff like burbling underneath. We're sort of not feeling that generous. I would say yeah There's like a bumper crop of cruelty and yeah, and I feel like we're kind of fending off At the time I feel like people were very stressed about the idea that you could be famous for being famous Yes, oh my god, and maybe now we agree that that's fine Yeah, you know like that was all people were like they didn't do any parasilton, right? There's like a real anxiety like what is what are they famous for? I mean, I think it's very clear like for example kim Kardashian is very good at the thing that she's doing

It's very difficult to be a reality star. She's working all the time It's very funny in retrospect that at the time we were like Obviously the correct model is that you act or sing or something and then have your life destroyed by celebrity And I feel like from where we are now and in the ecosystem we have I feel like it makes total sense to be like No, wouldn't it be nice if there were people who were just like I want to be a celebrity I don't care what kind and then they got that and then they were like cool I'm going to Focus all my energy on being a celebrity because that is my job as opposed to like

I just want to act and I have to sign babies now I do wonder though if this is not also the time when fame really started to ruin people's lives I mean, obviously fame is always complicated and it like lots of people have had drug and alcohol and mental health problems That seem totally exacerbated by fame, but this is when you can't turn it off Yeah, you know like did you watch get back the Beatles documentary? I didn't watch that one of the things that's interesting about is they have this record label in the heart of london that they like Just show up to or they walk up or they take a taxi and you know, there's like one or two people standing out like fans

But they just exist in the city and they come to work and there's like just not a good jillion people around Just trying to take pictures of them and you're just like, oh, they're the Beatles They're so famous, but it's not like fame wasn't crazy for them, but just like at a totally different temperature It's just not all the time and this is what it's changing This is when being famous means you're famous every minute of the day So like maybe you should have a different perspective on what fame is and just decide to be famous every minute of the day Or if you want to be an actor and actress You are also signing up for being famous every minute of the day like there's no you have to have both

You can't have one or the other and I sort of think Actually before it was a little more less intense. Yeah, so then the other thing that just also makes it more intense It's just youtube. So it's not that there have been no viral videos I think a really analogous thing to this actually is nothing to do with celebrities at all But is the howard dean scream? Yes. Oh my gosh. That was a bummer. Can you tell that like story lit? So howard dean was like the frontrunner for the democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and he in january of that year Like does an event where he again is like in a room full of really excited people who are on his side and he Let's out a yowl

A scream an intense long scream that basically gets plucked out of that interaction And spread all over the internet as just like a sign of him being like totally crazy and like Uncool and it does actually appear to totally tank him And that makes me think of the thing where like musky people thought that he had cried Even when that was the 50s or the 60s and that destroyed his campaign I think the the dean scream was also made possible by I guess what the media was in the moment that that happened But that maybe we're used to having that level of scrutiny for presidential candidates who are working in any kind of a media age Or you know like nixing got sweaty in 1960

But now that you are being so surveilled as a celebrity maybe is like I'm sure we've always had these desires But maybe that technology is allowing us to surveil more people more closely Totally and also I think there's something about literally media literacy Yeah So something like the dean scream or the tom cruise moment you are seeing it you're seeing the video of it It's not like written to you But at that moment in time I think like there weren't a hundred journalists that were then like excuse me

What's the context like Serve like what is actually you know Like you don't see people doing like a close reading of the whole opera episode like two days later And you would now you know Because we like know not to trust our eyes like even though we also totally trust our eyes Like we're just constantly living in this like duality where we like Absolutely believe everything that we see and also know we can't believe everything we see that's part of why we're all going crazy But like so you'd see the thing and have an opinion about it

But you might be like oh, there's maybe more here and I think sort of at the dawn of the viral video age You're like, oh my god. I can see it. Right. This is so unhinged. I mean The dean scream and tom cruise are really similar in the sense of like telling us This man is too intense. This is Undecorice. Yeah, and if it's not quite effeminate it is not Masculine instant and calm. It's not. Yeah, what we're expecting from our action heroes or our presidents, right? So we went with john carrey who I don't remember feeling strongly about anything Exactly. No, exactly

Okay, so right the thing is that youtube is started but like the first cut down of This which is just like all the crazy parts is not on youtube a future one the sort of viral video of the like electric is on youtube And tom cruise and his team and oprah and her team would never have known that this could possibly happen Now every famous person and their handlers consider like everything they do might go viral In fact, they're like hoping that could happen. But this was definitely not in the realm of possibility. They're like dodo's The thing that destroys you is the thing you never consider and like the deal with oprah is that like maybe it'll be really big That day, but then tomorrow she'll make another show and then everyone will talk about that and we'll all move on Right and moreover like we can have the reasonable expectation that everybody who saw it

Chose to watch tom cruise on oprah, which probably indicates that they like like him Yes, oprah is like a safe space for famous people to come talk to oprah and her Adoring audience even as like pres Hilton is drawing literally like giz on celebrity spaces at the same time And like the tabloids are like coining pet names, you know, they're gonna be tom cat You know when you think about fan bases like tom cruise doesn't have stands because his stands are like The middle-aged women that were in the oprah audience Right all the things that a celebrity would have now like going into some situation like this are just in co eight And like forming

It's like with twitter now It's like there's a bunch of people that are really skeptical of tom cruise and like suspicious of him as there are also these people Who love him, right? And they don't have a much occasion to bump into each other, but they're like about to so he goes on oprah as we've said It's like very cozy and she fixes his hair and like they hold hands a lot But this is I want to play you this thing because this is how it starts Basically oprah had recently just hosted the legends ball which would air on tv a year later Was this event where she sort of celebrated 25 black women including like tony morrison and maya angelo and diane carol and

rosa parks and um And tina turner who like has a crush on tom cruise and tried to talk to him And so that's just happened and tom and katie were at this event and he sent flowers Which is what they start talking about and he's so sincerely like it was magical like they're just like he's like really Complimenting her okay, and then she says this hold on let me find it for you when oprah Dead by acknowledging those women You sent me the most beautiful flowers, thank you You know what I don't feel like it was enough

No, no tom it was it wasn't it wasn't yeah, i'm telling you it was magic. No tom. This is over. I turned i turned and looked at one point You were standing in the chair going. Yes Yes It was a black tie ball. He was standing in his black tie Duda and it was you were going. Yes. I go. I love that enthusiasm Oh, he did send some big flowers. He really did and it says flowers from tom. I love that Right like so in this clip you're hearing oprah say she loved how enthusiastic he was Yeah, and in his enthusiasm which he expressed by getting on a piece of furniture

Yeah, the whole couch jumping thing is a callback to this. Oh my god So on the one hand like he is unhinged on the other like he's doing this thing He oprah has just told him she loved So every time that he she asked him about katie holmes and he jumps on the couches twice He's saying like i'm so excited about this. It's manifest. It's not like subtext. That's what he's trying to say And throughout there's all this funny like bits of self-awareness It's just she starts saying over and over again like you're gone and you're gone like and then he says I'm standing on your couch. That's how gone I am

I mean that really changes it because then it's like an in-joke between them Totally it never occurred to me how like pally They could be but of course they are they're both the same degree of famous basically It ended up like harming their relationship Understandably and also she was not that nice about it with him later God it's hard to be oprah That's not going my take away from this. I mean it is hard being oprah. Well, yeah, I guess it's like game of thrones It's like if you're gonna be oprah you have to destroy a lot of what you love

To sit in the throne Yes, but I am really like impressed with this sort of ease and confidence with which she toggles between So blatantly being like I inhabit exactly the same exalted world as you But I know what people want to hear and it is my obligation to get it for them Right. The whole thing is like he's being much more open than he's ever ever been Yeah She refers to this time that that katie holmes had said she wanted to marry him when she was 17 years old And then she goes i'm in the business of making dreams happen. Are you in the business of making dreams happen?

Are you gonna ask her to marry you you know and tom's like I hate to disappoint her And everyone's like And then oprah's like no really so are you gonna ask her to marry you? And then he's at some point He's like are we here to promote war of the world and that's actually when he like reaches over and grabs her by the shoulders And arms the thing that is a scene of like the viral video of him electrifying her This is like tom cruise kills oprah, but that's like literally at the moment where he's like Can we talk about the thing i'm here to talk about and then you know what oprah's like?

She's like we cannot talk about it. We're gonna keep talking about katie holmes Later he says you know he just like he likes to make people happy like his mom and his sister That's what he's a performer and he was like in this mode and you can see it. They're loving it. Oh, yeah I think people thought it was so weird and fake, but it doesn't really seem fake to me I see that it's too much, but it doesn't read as fake. Does it read as fake to you? No, and i'm a very craggulous person I think but I feel like the read of it that I had second hand at the time was like this fake movie star is Fakley jumping on a couch

To sell his fake relationship with this fake lady And I think that there's also an uncharitable read a lot of us have for somebody being like truly in the grip of a strong emotion because It's a cynicism that maybe develops if you feel like Who could ever actually be that happy but like regardless of what he's feeling that about or like what's creating this moment for him He just reminds me of like you gotta start powering down Totally. Yes. He's like just powering down is exactly right like he's just so high strong But it is make sense to me as someone just being like this is part of our strategy You're gonna stop playing everything so close to the chest

Right People want more access to the famous people and they want to feel more intimately with the famous people they Know this is an opportunity to be really like this is super on brand. It's romantic. It's big like go big Just do you and then he's Tom Cruise. He's like I always do my own stunts. And so he's like I am gonna go big And just like a misunderstanding about how to appear Sincere and authentic on camera, which like he he obviously sort of understands It just reminds me you know like and when people go from being in theater to being in movies You know in theater you really have to play to the back row and then in movies

Everyone's like you have to do so much less the camera will get it. There's some like similar like dissonance, right? He doesn't understand how to play yeah to a viral video crowd. It's a new art form It's also so sad where it's like oh Tom just be yourself people will love it and then It just became this national shit storm and I imagine him being like never again The intensity right the thing that we're seeing is like you are such an intense person And that's probably always been true and probably continues to be true and you're being super intense about that And intense is not effortless right intense is not really like cock sure and cocky intense is like it can be This is how you are famous in Hollywood for 40 years. Like you're just very controlling and intense

You know he's not the guy who you cast in Mission Impossible because he's gonna like jog at a safe pace around Prague or whatever And then he's like approaching love that way I mean the public doubting A story that they're being told about a celebrity romance makes total sense because we've been lied to so many times It makes sense that we're all Suspicious of the whole thing But this came up in the Tammy Faye Baker re-release and I've kind of been kind of thinking about it since that like

Real emotion makes us very suspicious as viewers and I'm thinking of like Also, you know very famous meme before there was a meme moment in terms of you know It would like show up paraded on Seinfeld months later Tonya Harding stopped her long program at the Olympics in 1984 because she had a broken skate lace and like Wetten, you know wasted her skate up on the judges table And it was just clearly distraught and I think a lot of people saw that as her Causing more trouble on purpose and engineering this disaster and it's just like why is it not more believable to us that like She's just in the grip of a stronger emotion than she could handle and this is just a real disaster

What if Tom Cruise like did go down a list to find an appropriate girlfriend? That's just called like matchmaking. I'm not even saying it's fake But this idea that he was like I in fact am looking for a new partner and I will like correlate all his appropriate Like that's not so different than like online dating. It just like feels robotic and weird and especially did then right What if he did just like pick a list of 20 young and up-and-coming actresses and like send an email to them like That's really weird on the one hand and then it's also like very mercenary and logical on another It's like the same all I have a job to do I'll do it kind of personality I feel very sympathetic to that read because I feel like I'm

Two years into a pandemic whatever we are now I feel like I'm now whenever I hear about anyone who I feel like I could possibly be interested in romantically I'm like, are they single? Are they single? Yes, like maybe that's just the tom cruise is doing that version of it, you know I mean or he's doing whatever he's doing, you know, like who knows There's lots of stuff about tom cruise. We never know But I would just say that it was like certainly out of this moment came the most uncharitable read of it I guess to me the most uncharitable thing about it is that like he wasn't reading the room when

Absolutely, he was reading the room 100% is that he wasn't reading all the other rooms His viral video would play in yeah in the context. He's actually giving everybody there Exactly what they wanted and they're thrilled about it It also occurs to me that this is kind of a uniquely bad moment to go viral Because it's the moment when we have the technology for video to travel around the world The way that we're now used to but also it's like a pain in the ass to wait for a two minute long video to load I spent a lot of time watching youtube videos that are like two hours long that are like tana con

In seven chapters and it just being exhaustively broken down by some college student in their bedroom And you're like, yes, tell me tell me the context like I feel like technologically We didn't have the capacity for context yet Totally and not just technologically like I said more like almost mentally Yeah, I mean and to be fair like some of those gestures are very broad and very weird How many times you need to kneel in fist pump? You know, he's doing it over and over. It's not like there isn't anything cringey happening Did he eat an entire bag of chocolate covered coffee beans in the green room?

He said candy homes is in the green room and then they bring her out at the end and everyone's like, ah Yeah, totally. Oh my god. I know it's very at the whole thing. I would just say like the after effects of this are like Incredible given what it is. So You know, I think people at the time are like this ruined his career and at the afterwards has been like No, of course it didn't ruin his career. Like he still is a very famous and big movie star But it absolutely did alter his career and change. I think like how we think about him And rich juziak who I mentioned before wrote this piece about and he sort of mentioned like one of the things it did do

was like totally squash the gay rumors because Like the decision to like present yourself as not gay by instead presenting yourself as like super duper weird Just seemed like so odd to people or just like worked so well that everyone just went from being like Maybe you're gay to being like, oh, you're just a strange strange person Like that just became the operating thing about tom cruse Kind of a puric victory Yes, exactly and sort of in the weeks after as he was promoting more of the world He did this today show interview with matt lauer where he sort of really snaps at him about not knowing the history of

psychiatry and like taking brook shields to task and in those he seems like Just like an asshole, you know, and it's all for Scientology. So it's just like very gross and scary kind of And paramount cuts the war of the world's press tour short And then war of the world which costs a lot of money does go on to make money But perhaps not quite as much money as people thought it was going to make initially Although it really did make quite a bit of money and sort of in august paramount like ends their relationship with tom cruse It's been going on for 15 years sort of saying like, you know, he's become a pop culture punchline Wow

God stick it out stand by your man paramount. He actually totally like doesn't really make romances anymore He stopped doing the jerry maguire stuff, which It just like becomes not a part of his thing and he really really starts to do action movies almost exclusively I mean, Amy Nicholson's worth this piece really weekly that I mentioned and she's just sort of like We got like a gif and like a viral video and like we lost a movie star Who actually was like really interested in doing interesting stuff for the first 20 years of his career and like just stopped And now like only does exactly the things that are safe because people kind of think he's a weirdo And he's not going to risk doing interview with a vampire or eyes wide shut or magnolia

That's why we didn't get more magnolias. Yeah, it's funny too because I feel like That we maybe conflated the matt lauer interview with the opera moment and kind of we're like I get to hate the opera moment because The matt lauer moment was actually hateable and it's like yes, okay But I feel like Scientology is real weird and they seem Pretty scary to me. And I think the idea of someone becoming really enmeshed in Scientology and then slamming

There I believe former endless love co-star for writing a memoir about postpartum depression is like really terrible But I also don't think paramount was like tom cruise. We're dropping you because You hindered the fight to destigmatize postpartum depression Probably like the most the next most viral thing he did was that very intense sort of speech he gave at the Scientology It was an inner Scientology via like video He basically like reprivatized his life after this, you know, like there's he does this sort of opening up And then he sort of shuts down. He's making a different kind of movie, but he sort of starts talking about I mean he and k-homes do get married and they do have a baby. I mean another oh, I remember that baby

Very big news, you know, like, I mean an extremely Germane topic running alongside of this is like the fixation on the baby bump of like this moment Octomom and like this weird obsession with fertility also like totally Driven by the tabloids, but like they do get married. They are together for a long time They do get divorced We don't like really know about his dating life anymore at all And you can see how he got there and like then all we do know about is like freaky Scientology stuff And that's sort of one of the reasons where you're like it feels like tom cruise is a whole personal life is like

All about Scientology now and it's like Like alarm alarm bells bad. No good like very bad And you know when you look back at the Oprah thing, you're like we did him a little dirty But also like it's too complicated what he became to like really want to apologize He's a weird guy, but that was like maybe the least weird thing he did that yeah The least harmful like it's harmless. Yeah, maybe that's Important you can do something Weird and tabloid II where you're calling into question the reality of

postpartum depression Or you can just be a very active physical guy who's being very exuberant and open and kind of Feeling disarmed by the amount of love in the room for you and like those aren't the same thing That and then the Scientology thing where where he's sort of like with his peers The fact that he made the same mistake both times I connect that to the fact that people growing up today and Myself honestly to some extent the expectation you have to have now if you're putting yourself Into the public sphere in any way is like the entire world could feel the need to comment on this for some reason

They probably won't but they could Especially if you're tom cruise It's almost like couldn't have happened before like we just didn't have like the technological capabilities to do it And then I just don't know that it would have happened after only because even though tom cruise is very very famous There is a par for the coarseness about the terms in which we understood what was happening would have been different Which is like we would have understood it as a play for virality Or we would have understood it like the Scientology stuff is like kind of like him trolling He wouldn't have put himself out there in that way and I think we would have responded to it with more

Jadedness a little bit maybe still been interested and made fun of it But also just like this is another celebrity like kind of pathetically trying to get attention and it really didn't feel that way I mean it wasn't that right. He wasn't trying to get attention in that way and It was just like uncharted territory and now it's very charted to me There's kind of a bittersweet lost world to it. I feel like it's the way people maybe used to feel when they were like in my day We got ice from the ice man and they cut it out of lakes My equivalent of this is like have you read celebrity profiles from like the 90s? Oh, yeah It was before everything could go around on the internet. So like there's this like famous premier interviewer Jennifer Lopez

It's just like Slagging on everybody like you can find like I there's a maryl street profile like or in like the 90s when she didn't get avita Or she just literally like shit talks Madonna like just stuff that like just know what ever do now because you would just they would know Like it will just be all over the world and the internet for days and they'll be asked about it forever And so you read these old profiles and you're like glory days or like people just like it was only going to be here So they were like willing to like Do it just like say something real. Yeah, but just like a moment where people felt comfortable with a certain Range of performative behaviors

Honesty even or maybe you know, whatever now you just everyone knows better unless they really want the attention Yeah, there's like these layers of lesser levels of surveillance after the vcr But before the internet and then there's like before the vcr When you go on tv and do something weird and then people would be like I think I remember that happening Did it happen? Who knows? And they couldn't play it for anybody and it would become like oral folklore the way that you could Remain an obscurity that feels like a thing that we're now missing the lack of expectation of privacy That anybody seems to have but then the fact that we have

The ability to offer context feels like some kind of countervailing weight to that but it doesn't I don't know I don't think it evens out It's still so new Yeah, I know it's been like 20 years or 15 years since this happened or something like that And so we're like it's not new and people who are like thoughtful and cool don't want to be like School marmy about how bad technology is because like the history of people being really worked up about how bad technology is Like it doesn't like the novel's gonna ruin everything. You're like, is it maybe it did But the things that we're doing like are still really new and have are uncharted and have like all these long-term

Consequences that are unfolding. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe like we should be worried about the novel Whatever the equivalent is now, you know, and we'll we'll obviously like come to terms with it and learn how to deal with it Hopefully or not, you know, but but it is happening. We are still living in a world where people are continuously Assessing how to behave in public private spaces that they think are more private than they actually are Mmm Also in times of uncertainty, it makes us feel or it even just feels unnecessary It doesn't even probably feel that great to be trying to suss out the actual motivations of everyone you see Because God knows, you know, a lot of other people have lied to us recently

But maybe now it's just that we're all Tom Cruise We know now like there's been so much research about like Doubting the veracity of eyewitness accounts, right? Like we don't remember things correctly We like do not read things graphically. We're and like we just we cannot believe that We think that like it's like if we study the text close enough the truth will be revealed And no, I don't know who knows what's going on with Tom Cruise and there's no amount of studying the Tom Cruise footage That's gonna like really make us know, you know, yeah Having access to all of this information. We all think we can solve every puzzle every single time

Yeah, literally Tom Cruise would have to tell you and that's never gonna happen. We're never gonna know That's so emotional I mean, I guess that's why I love Magnolia so much because it's Tom Cruise playing a character who's like Living in a world of self-deceit about his life and also his relationship with his father And then at the end we get to see him broken down enough to be honest You know, he's at his dad's death bed and I think he says don't you die you fucking asshole. It's so good I love that movie Honesty is one of the things that we banish if we make the world this way and I guess, you know

Maybe we can live without that from Tom Cruise But like we need to be able to be unguarded to some extent in our lives I feel like or we're just gonna all make a bunch of Mission Impossible movies This was really good. Thank you so much. I love this. I love getting to to do this Okay Told told 17 magazine that her dream was to marry Tom Cruise So, you know, I I've been in the dream making business this year. Are you in the dream making business? I don't want to disappoint her

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