Now I don’t often write about current affairs here, preferring to stick with original ideas and goofball documentation over bloggy links and comments. But I have to post about Tom Cruise and Alessandra Staley‘s take on his lecture of Matt Lauer yesterday. I really think she’s on to something.
And he went way off on a tangent with Mr. Lauer, veering away from
his movie and new fiancée to defend his attack on Brooke Shields. (He
reproached her for relying on antidepressants to treat her postpartum
blues.) "She doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry in the same
way you don’t understand it, Matt," the actor said. Mr. Lauer sputtered
a response, but Mr. Cruise was adamant. "And to talk about it in a way
of saying, ‘Well, isn’t it O.K.?’ and being reasonable about it when
you don’t know and I do, I think that you should be a little bit more
responsible in knowing what it is."It was not the agreeable,
affable Tom Cruise that viewers are accustomed to, and that alone made
it worth a glance: an actor who has kicked the publicist habit.
I suddenly appreciate Tom Cruise. I think he is a complete numbskull. I think he is a cult leader. And I think that he is a cynical little movie profiteer. I don’t appreciate the content of his candor, but I am glad that we have had it. It feels akin to watching someone’s whose speech you despise winning a landmark free speech case.
More, more, more.