We’ve All Had One–A Tom Cruise Moment
29.05.2022 - 18:59
/ deadline.com
Every journalist who covered Hollywood in the Golden Era that stretched roughly from Risky Business (1983) through Top Gun: Maverick (now) has had a Tom Cruise moment. I had mine in 2002.
My father had just died. It was a rough death, not quick, and as I was driving back for the last time from attending him in Sacramento, I made myself a promise: I would be at peace with everyone for a while. No fighting. No arguments. What anyone asked, insofar as I could, I would just do.
As luck would have it, the first test occurred somewhere around Bakersfield. On the road, I got a call from Maer Roshan, now editor of Los Angeles Magazine, then editorial director of Tina Brown’s Talk.
We have a problem, explained Maer. Talk had scheduled some sort of theme issue–something about business and/or professional life in America. But Tina had managed to promise the cover to Tom Cruise. Maer couldn’t see a connection. But maybe I could figure it out. The interview was already set. Just be at the Hotel Bel-Air in about three days, interview Cruise, and write something, if not brilliant, at least sensible.
Right. No fighting. No arguments. Just interview Tom Cruise.
When I got home, the first words from my 14-year-old son were: “I’m so sorry, Dad. I heard about Tom Cruise.” We’d long since dealt with my father’s decline; and he knew how I felt about celebrity interviews. I didn’t like them.
But there it was. So I went to the Santa Monica Library, which was more a repository of information than homeless camp in those days, and studied up. Mostly, I read some old, largely empathetic books about Scientology, including what seemed to be a outsized encyclopedia of Scientological terms, beliefs and “technology.” I figured it couldn’t hurt. Just in case