I’m With Tom Cruise On This One

Few things are more satisfying in life than hearing of yet another celebrity caught on tape going off on an unhinged, profanity-laced tirade. So you can imagine my excitement when I got wind that a secret recording of Tom Cruise going all Christian Bale on his crew was making the rounds on the internet. I couldn’t search ‘Tom Cruise audio’ fast enough.

Like most Americans eager to pile it on when a public figure is humiliated or struggling, I was already imagining the nasty, cutting lines I could write in this blog that would expose TC for the creepy, Scientology-spreading, couch-stomping crackpot he really is.

But I can’t. Because he’s not. Not as far as I can tell anyway.

Here’s what I keep hearing about the whole Tom Cruise audio leak: right message, wrong delivery. Even the Hollywood homies (George Clooney, for one) coming to his defense are hedging their comments. Though his concern about public health was valid, everyone seems to agree, TC’s approach was too…how to put this–fucken crazy?

A little more Emily Post and a little less Alec Baldwin seems to be the general consensus on talk shows. But I’m not buying it. Perhaps because I hadn’t listened to the tape beforehand, but a deranged tyrant is not what I pictured while reading the audio’s transcript.

Here it is. Give it a quick read before we continue:

“We are the gold standard. They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every [studio] at night…insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us, and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousand of jobs, [you]. I don’t ever want to see it again–ever! And if you don’t do it, you’re fired. If I see you do it again, [you’re] gone. And anyone on this crew does it, that’s it. And you, too. And you, too. And you. If you ever do it again, that’s it. No apologies. You can tell it to the people who are losing their [homes] because our industry is shut down. It’s not gonna put food on their table, or pay for their college education. THAT’S what I sleep with every night. The future of this [industry] So, I’m sorry, but I am beyond your apologies. I have told you and now I want it and if you don’t do it, you’re out. They are not shutting the movie down. We are not shutting this [movie] down. Is it understood? If I see it again, you’re [gone]. And so are you. So you’re gonna cost him his job. If I see it on the set, you’re gone, and you’re gone. That’s it. Am I clear? Do you understand what I want? Do you understand the responsibility that you have? Because I will deal with your reason. And if you can’t be reasonable, and if I can’t deal with your logic, you’re fired. That’s it. That is it. I trust you guys to be here. That’s it. That’s it, guys. That’s what I’m thinking about. That’s what I’m doing today. I’m talking to Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Movies are going because of us. We shut down, it’s going to cost people their [jobs], their homes, their family—that’s what’s happening. All the way down the line. And I care about you guys. But if you’re not going to help me, you’re gone. OK? Do you see that stick? How many meters is that? When people are standing around a [computer] and hanging out around here, what are you doing?”

Seems pretty reasonable to me. You? I mean yeah, sure, the guy doesn’t sound happy, but who can blame him? Here’s a man fuming at the reckless protocol violation–which apparently has been ongoing–that he believes threatens to upend people’s livelihood. Judging from the transcript, he seems to care less about his own and more about that of those who “can’t put food on the table or pay for their kid’s college.”

That it’s TC–gazillionaire Hollywood untouchable–makes it easier for us to brand him as a petulant tyrant on a power trip rather than what, in this case, he really was: a man with immense responsibility and pressure to perform, reaching his breaking point, pleading with/screaming at/cursing at others to grow the fuck up and do the same.

It’s worth remembering here that all of this is going on in as a surge in Covid cases threatens another national shutdown, with TC’s hometown of LA already on curfew.

So, for those keeping score at home here’s where the math stands: A crowded job site + countless workers repeatedly violating Covid protocol + ten of millions of dollars on the line + likely spread of infection + hundreds of avoidable job losses + one angry foreman = Overreaction.

Really? Umm…ok. Imagine for a moment that rather than an overpaid Hollywood crybaby best known for being a Scientologist creep, the audio in question originated on a construction site. Picture it: Having finally secured a construction permit–provided, of course, that on-site COVID protocol is strictly enforced–a contractor begins rounding up a crew, the members of which are all desperate for work. Weeks later, after the scaffolding is up and framing underway, audio is leaked of the foreman going ape shit on the reckless, unvigilant crew, threatening them with…well, you already heard the tape.

Would that change things? Would you have a different opinion had the tape been stamped with the blue collar frustration and pent-up suburban fury of so many months in jobless quarantine? What if it was Joe The Plumber instead of Tom Crui$e? How about someone known to be less fiery than TC, more even-keeled like, say, President Obama? Would that make a difference? Let’s say Obama was secretly recorded dressing down the high-fiving, maskless security team at a luncheon to support dwindling Social Security benefits for the elderly? Would your opinion change then?

What if it was you?

Yeah, you–losing it on your kids at Walmart for doffing their masks and licking their fingers after hand-walking the escalator for fun; or cursing at your pandemic-minimizing boyfriend for bringing home health risks you didn’t co-sign on; or screaming at your backwards-thinking parents for texting you shit about hoaxes and pandemic conspiracies that they will likely share with your ten-year old on their next sleepover at grandma’s.

For whatever reason, because it’s TC the contempt and ridicule just wells up reflexively and gleefully inside us. I, for one, was primed to laugh my ass off when I heard about the recording. When I got around to listening to it, however, the audio seemed almost…brave. TC came across not as deranged but, I don’t know…unafraid. Remove the self-caricature he’s become and re-read the transcript, this time replacing Hollywood Tom with Joe The Foreman barking at recalcitrant construction workers. I think you’ll find you react differently. (Go ahead, try it now.)

But why is that? Is TC that widely despised? Are we as a society so envious and hateful of the wealthy and successful that we’ll take any opportunity–however off the mark–to condemn and mock them? Does it make us feel better about our own lives to think of TC as an unhinged lunatic?

All of those things may be true, but I think there’s something else going on here–we’ve become afraid of raw human emotion. Anger, however justified and understandable, scares us; rage terrifies us. Sadness, disgust, annoyance, inflamed passion, irritation, raw lust and melancholy–all of these, according to the keep-calm-and-carry-on, self-help worshipping, optimism-obsessed Positivity Posse–are unacceptable.

Everywhere you go, you’re bombarded with well-meaning directives to “be grateful”, “live abundantly”, and “smile” (through gritted teeth, if you must) so the world smiles with you. On and on. Any outward display of “negative” emotion–sadness, anger, or in TC’s case impassioned disappointment, is viewed by the Positivity Posse as somehow malignant, necessitating excision like an emotional mutation that threatens our collective goal of perpetual optimism.

News flash: Human emotions are not reductive. You can’t cherry-pick the socially flattering ones–joy, gratitude, generosity, compassion, satisfaction, optimism and happiness, while maligning the other natural human emotions such as anger, envy and sadness wholesale.

Regardless of your opinion on whether COVID is our modern day Bubonic Plague or a thinly-veiled hoax by PETA to halt production at evil leather factories, we can all agree that the pandemic has produced heightened emotions in all of us. Money is tight, panic is at an all-time high and the looming future of the new year is all but unknown.

Gee, I wonder why TC is a little agitated. I mean, it’s not like the people he employs–you know, the ones who can now “put food on the table” despite a jobless pandemic–are behaving like towel-snapping sophomores in a pre-Covid locker room or anything.

Look, did TC use profanity? Yes. Was he he angry? No, he was furious. Did he scream and yell? You bet.

BUT…

Did he demean anybody? No (read the transcript again). Did he ridicule or call anyone out for reasons other than social distancing? No (go ahead, check). Was he unhinged? Didn’t sound that way to me; his tone was angry, but the content was clear and deliberative. Did he belittle anyone? Nope. Did he shout and curse? Yep. At anyone in particular? Nope. He was on message, if a bit animated, the entire time. Finally, was this simply a self-righteous ego trip by an overly-coddled Hollywood shot-caller? Hardly. Last I checked, concern for others and a call for unity (“I trust you…I care about you guys…”) does not constitute an ego trip.

In the end, TC’s tirade, however crass, wasn’t that of an unhinged lunatic. It was an impassioned plea for social cooperation and compliance with the law by someone who, like most of us this year, is fucken pissed is all.

And that’s cool with me.

 

 

REDACTED TRANSCRIPT: I have redacted the audio transcript in this blog to remove TC’s F-bombs. (In place of the F-bombs, I put brackets around the word that preceded it like [this]). Why? I did so in order to help absorb the content of his message, removed from his status as TC. It’s only after we layer in all the baggage of celebrity bashing and exaggerated horror at recorded profanity that the tape becomes appalling and distasteful. I tried to show that reading/listening more objectively, you may feel differently about the tape. If you want to read the unredacted transcript, do so here.