On The Whole Tom Cruise Thing

Sometimes you read an article that perfectly articulates what you were thinking. This one, written by Caryn James for The New York Times is of those:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/24/features/celeb.php

The parts that really stand out to me are:



"The essence of Cruise's appeal going all the way back to "Risky Business" and on through crowd-pleasers like "Jerry Maguire" was a fresh-faced, unpretentious exuberance, a glee that practically leapt off the screen and that even worked in unlikely roles like the outraged, paraplegic Vietnam veteran in "Born on the Fourth of July."

and:


"But in the past year his life has become a public relations debacle as he has gone into full Scientology mode, and he has come to seem self-righteous and intolerant (most conspicuously in his confrontation with host Matt Lauer on the NBC television news show "Today" about prescription drugs).
He now seems too strange and remote for the average moviegoer to relate to.
This summer a Forbes magazine list named Cruise as its most powerful celebrity, but that calculation was based on income and media presence, obviously not on common sense.
While Cruise's last two movies have done well around the world, he wasn't the only - and maybe not the main - reason for their success. This year's Cruise film, "Mission: Impossible III," is part of a self-propelled franchise; last year's, "War of the Worlds," was a Steven Spielberg movie. The roles did not demand much, and Cruise seemed to coast through them, assuming the audience would coast with him.
Today's Tom Cruise is the opposite of a Teflon celebrity; he can't seem to get anything right, not even baby pictures. While Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie expertly and quickly stage-managed the sale (for charity no less) of the baby snaps of their daughter, Shiloh, Cruise and Katie Holmes have been secretive and elusive about their 4-month-old daughter, Suri. There are reports that Annie Leibovitz has photographed Suri for Vanity Fair magazine, but no pictures have arrived yet.
And into the void comes more tantalizing gossip, including a widely circulated report from a British tabloid that David and Victoria Beckham were invited to see Suri but were forbidden to use baby talk because Scientologists think goo-gooing is bad for babies. True or not, a report like that alienates fans.
Such distance isn't necessary. John Travolta may fly his own jet, but he creates the impression of remembering where he came from. More instructive, when he is asked about his devotion to Scientology, he explains patiently and good-naturedly, without antagonizing anyone.
But Cruise has done so much damage to his image that his camp's best efforts at spin now seem hollow. When word filtered out that the entity known as TomKat had stopped on the road to aid at the scene of an accident recently (OK, they just stopped and waited until the police arrived), the incident invited speculation about how carefully orchestrated that little news item might have been. The same could be said of reminders that Cruise had, conveniently enough, helped stop a mugging in 1998 and had rescued a family at sea in '96, as if he were a volunteer action-hero.
Before "Collateral," he hadn't challenged himself as an actor since 1999, when he played a ponytailed self-help guru who does television infomercials in the daring Paul Thomas Anderson ensemble film "Magnolia." It was a role that may have cut too close, revealing how illusory a celebrity's public image is.
These days, he is like a charlatan who can't manage to dupe anybody. He seems desperate to maintain his stature as one of the world's biggest movie stars, even as he morphs into something no movie star can afford to be: a guy you wouldn't want to know."