For my 26th birthday, while I was working at Chinquapin School in Baytown, Dave and Sandy Bartholome (and maybe some other faculty) took me out to see the Mission Impossible movie. By the last week of May, we must have been done, or close to, with the school year. I can’t remember if we went because it was a big, generic summer blockbuster, or specifically because I am a huge Tom Cruise fan. Because I am a huge Tom Cruise fan. I just looked at IMDB, and I’ve more than 75% of the 45 movies to his credit. I own more than I can comfortably confess at this time. 

This is not a persuasion piece. I’m not advocating that you should like Tom Cruise. In fact this is more of a Scared Straight kind of thing. I’m telling you it’s too late for me, and you should probably never start. You don’t want to feel incomplete with Tom. You don’t want to feel the need.

Hello everyone, my name is Kevin, and I’m addicted to Tom Cruise.  Feel free to stop reading now, but if you don’t, if you keep reading “remember…you wanted this.” 

“Tom Cruise, really?”,  you might ask. This week’s theme answer is “I don’t exactly know.” My best guess at my fascination with the man is that he’s trying so hard to be (portray) the exact opposite of who I aim to be. Tom apparently comes from the “paralyzed mannequin with internal screams” school of acting. I’ve never seen anyone else act effectively with all of their emotional blast shields cranked up to maximum, and except for the eye holes. It’s possible he’s a robot, and just on this side of the uncanny valley. I am for all intents and purposes, an open book. I have almost no inexpressible thoughts or emotions. I may attempt to delay demonstrating what I think or feel if I think there is a better time to share them, but I have very little skill in covering my feelings, nor do I wish to. My ability to modulate the volume of my voice is virtually non-existent. I am blunt almost to the point of insult, but not in a “let me tell you what’s wrong with you and/or America” kind of way.

I know almost nothing about Tom Cruise’s personal life. Although I’ve never heard of anyone commenting: “Boy that Tom Cruise seems like a healthy, adjusted, normal man.” His characters all seem so brittle, and just barely hanging on. Even the ones that think they have their shit together. My empathy with the rest of humanity is based upon the belief that everyone is as flawed and broken as I am. I appreciate people who acknowledge that, who attempt to grow and improve, and who extend that recognition to others. I don’t demand it of other people, or even expect it. I have found that many people aren’t safe enough to acknowledge their fragility, let alone demonstrate it. I think they’ve been damaged too much already to expose themselves. 

Tom Cruise’s acting fascinates me because he is so bad at hiding that. Not that he’s a bad actor (I’m not objective), but that his characters are almost always men who are so desperate to hide themselves within a facade that they wind up doing just the opposite. Decades ago, I read an article in Discover Magazine about the designers of the underground cave-vault that was intended to store nuclear fuel rods. Those rods will be deadly to life for tens of thousands of years, and no “Do not enter” sign will last long enough. The problem is that anything big enough, bold enough, scary enough to say “Don’t come near me” is also exactly the kind of thing that gets the attention of anything curious enough to be warned away. The very warning light draws the eye too closely. Almost every “great” character Tom has portrayed was a broken person, who desperately needed the therapy Tom himself is famous for denigrating: Maverick lost his dad, Mitch McDeere (The Firm ‘93) had a neglectful parent and secret shameful brother. Chief Anderton (Minority Report ‘02) had a murdered child. He’s been a bad father, a coward and a drunk fighting aliens, indians, samurai and more aliens. In each of those he plays a man to whom the end of the world is often the only thing big enough to face the past he’s hiding from. He twice failed to portray the humanity of literal monsters: in Interview with a Vampire (‘94) and The Mummy (‘17). I don’t know if all of these characters had huge emotional holes written into them to explain Tom’s own wounded acting style, or Tom was perfect for these men as written. 

My Tom memories go back well before Top Gun (‘86). I’m sure I saw Risky Business (‘83) on HBO, probably while I was babysitting Sarah and Nathan. I hope they were already asleep. Tom had a supporting part in The Outsiders (also ‘83) which was based upon the book of the same name, which every kid in Colonie read as a pre-teen. My youngest memory of Tom, though it’s possible, but not likely that I saw the movie later and recognized him, is from Taps (‘81). In Taps, in which the students at a military academy high-school, Tom plays a loose cannon with his own code, who can’t work with leaders, but who’s value outweighs his obvious flaws. He found his stride early, didn’t he? The film’s better actors carry the story and emotion of the movie.  He’s the Colonel Kurtz of this particular high-school apocalypse, and his mental breakdown literally triggers the movie’s last act. It’s beautiful man, beautiful.