I met Tom Cruise once. Well, I say I met him, but really I was just standing in the press line at the premiere of one of his movies, where “Tom’s people” put journalists in a little cage in London’s Leicester Square, and walk Tom past, while fans throw their babies at him. Feeding Time. Munch. Munch. Munch.
Anyway, suddenly I was nose to nose with Tom Cruise. I am taller than he is.
A one-to-one press-line chat with Tom Cruise goes like this. Me: “How are you?” I know it is a sub-Hello question. But I couldn’t care less how Tom Cruise is, and he knows it. If he were to drop dead right in front of me, or explode, I would have the scoop of my life, even as his small body was scooped up and carried into a celebrity mortuary to have the make-up wiped off.
Cruise — and I paraphrase, because I wasn’t really listening, because I couldn’t get over how short he was: “I’m amazing! I’m fantastic! I’m so happy!” And he was. He was vibrating and grinning and bouncing up and down with happiness. He was like a little Tom Cruise doll with a little wind-up mood mechanism in his back that could be switched on and off at will. I was sure I could operate him with a remote control. Happy. Sad. Pensive. Angry. Gone.
Me: “Do you like London?” I wanted to ask: “How much do the ghosts of the dead thetans that live in your stomach weigh?” but I am a coward. I didn’t want to anger Tom Cruise, like the man who squirted a water pistol at him at a press line in 2005 did. He was arrested for assault, which is a bit odd considering the man he squirted makes a living jumping out of tall buildings and on to helicopters. He can handle the helicopter, but he cannot handle the water pistol. Cruise: “I love London! London is wonderful! London is fantastic!” Bounce. Munch. Bounce. Munch. Bounce.
His PR (a fearsome creature in black): “We’ve got to go!” Cruise: “No! I love London! I’m so happy!” PR guy: “We’ve got to go!”‘ Cruise, with a lingering, loving look that bespoke: “I cannot bear to leave your side, reporter from tabloid column so wretched the subeditors often forget to put it in the paper”: “I’m so happy!” Me: “Thanks.”
I tell this story not merely to demonstrate that I am taller than Tom Cruise, but because Cruise, and all those like him, are dropping off the screen like cooked flies, and this is my tiny homage to their passing. The role of the star in the movie is changing and may even wilt to nothing. I may never interview a bouncing narcissist from inside a cage again.
In 2009, the biggest grossing films in the United States were, in this order, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (robots), Harry Potter and the Magically Dull Franchise (wizards), Up, a computer-animated film about a computer-animated depressive, The Hangover (starring who?) and Star Trek (aliens). Then came The Twilight Saga: New Moon (vampires), Monsters vs Aliens (self-explanatory), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (read the title, fool), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (superheroes) and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (computer-generated midgets and a real midget in Ben Stiller.)
What do these films have in common? Credits? Cameras? Marketing budgets? Well, yes.
But the interesting factor they share is — they either have no recognisable stars, or the stars who do appear are not the major selling point. These films are either cartoons, ready-packaged-and-sold sequels, or are peopled with relative unknowns. No one goes to Harry Potter to admire Michael Gambon’s wig. Name the heroine of New Moon? No. You can’t. And “Bella” doesn’t count.
The film concept has outshone the film star, who has become an incidental, a detail, an extra stuck on to an improbability. They may be big in Vanity Fair and on the chatshow sofa, but their importance to their own industry is ebbing.
No one saw 2012 to watch John Cusack get hit by a wave. They went to see the wave hit John Cusack. No one saw Wolverine (don’t make me type the full title again) to watch Hugh Jackman grow claws. They went to see claws grow Hugh Jackman.
Oh, how they have floundered, just 100 years after they rose. This year, Johnny Depp’s Public Enemies failed to whip the cartoon people. John Travolta’s The Taking of Pelham 123 sank. Even Julia Roberts, the princess of teeth, bombed with Duplicity.
Did she see that coming? Did she know, when she stared into her Los Angeles looking glass, that she would be outperformed at the box office by a mutant Nazi baby in The Unborn?
And I, a woman who spent most of the 1980s punching a Harrison Ford action figure in the face, am glad I want to see the movie star decrease in self-importance, even as it is replaced by a talking, angst-ridden, computer-generated mammoth (See Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs for details.)
It was always a cruelty, to them and to us. Goodbye, Tom Cruise — I leave you and your stomach full of thetans in peace. — © Guardian News & Media 2009