TOM CRUISE CAUGHT ON TAPE: Saving face after a Scientology disaster
In November 2006, Tom Cruise was at a major crossroads in his charmed life. Early that month, he and his producing partner Paula Wagner had become heads of a studio and were about to meet their new employees.
Someone recorded that meeting, and now, nearly 13 years later, you get to hear it for the first time.
To appreciate it, it’s important to understand why Cruise’s career was in utter turmoil.
Cruise became a breakout star with 1983’s Risky Business, and 1986’s Top Gun confirmed his status as a major Hollywood star. It was later that year that he began dating actress Mimi Rogers, who had grown up in Scientology. Mimi began taking Tom to Scientology courses at a satellite office she had partly owned at one time, and soon Cruise was a dedicated Scientologist — the couple was married on Dianetics Day, May 9, 1987.
But Scientology leader David Miscavige, as thrilled as he was to have a major star joining the flock right when the church was still reeling from the January 1986 death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, had concerns about Cruise’s relationship with Rogers. She was the daughter of a “squirrel,” Scientology slang for someone who had left the church but continued to practice its processes independently. In 1990, when it became clear that Cruise had become infatuated with Nicole Kidman, insisting that she be cast with him in the racing film Days of Thunder, Miscavige had Cruise’s Scientology auditor encourage him to have an affair, as we explained in our full story about how Cruise’s first marriage was broken up by the church.
Cruise then married Kidman, and at first she seemed genuinely interested in Scientology. Former church auditor Bruce Hines says he guided her all the way up to OT 2, a remarkable level of commitment, and in a very short time. But by 1992, Kidman had soured on Miscavige, and she pulled away from the church, pulling Cruise with her. It only came out later that from 1992 until their breakup in 2000, Cruise and Kidman were pretty much entirely out of Scientology. (In 1998, Cruise made an exception and spent some time at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre doing strange exercises with the Tone Scale in the parking lot of a grocery store, described so well by Lawrence Wright in his 2013 book Going Clear).
After Cruise and Kidman broke up, Miscavige made getting Cruise back into the fold his top priority. In the movie version of Going Clear, former church executive Marty Rathbun described how Cruise’s dedication was cranked up to a fever pitch. And to reward him for his newfound zealotry, Cruise was rewarded in October 2004 with a special “Freedom Medal of Valor” from Miscavige.
Cruise was then unleashed on the world as Scientology’s ambassador. After replacing his longtime publicist with his own sister, Cruise in 2005 went on a disastrous publicity tour for Scientology, including his infamous debate with Matt Lauer on the Today show, arguing about psychiatric drugs. With the additional spectacle of his couch jumping on Oprah’s show, the media began to seriously question Cruise’s sanity.
In fact, it cost Cruise his job. Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone was so turned off by Cruise’s antics, including his criticism of Brooke Shields taking medication for postpartum depression, Redstone announced in August 2006 that Viacom’s Paramount studio was ending its 14-year relationship with the actor.
“We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot,” Redstone said, claiming that Cruise’s promotion of Scientology with the press had cost between $100 million and $150 million in ticket sales for Mission: Impossible III.
At that point, the Wall Street Journal reported, Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner were making up to $10 million a year in their deal with the studio.
So the two of them scrambled, and by November 2, 2006, they announced that they were going from working for a studio to running one: They had become part owners of United Artists, the legendary studio founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. UA had been sold and resold so many times in the years since, it had become moribund. But now, Cruise and Wagner were taking their shot at resurrecting it and becoming moguls.
Cruise personally had a lot else on the line as well. In April 2006, he and Katie Holmes welcomed a daughter, Suri, after revealing a year earlier that they had started dating. And now, on November 16, they were going to have a lavish wedding in a castle outside of Rome. (And which became the scene of Leah Remini’s fateful question about the whereabouts of David Miscavige’s wife, Shelly.)
So, as Cruise and Wagner began their stewardship of UA, and a couple of weeks before his wedding, and after more than a year of disastrous press as the clown prince of Scientology, the Mission: Impossible star had a lot on his plate.
Now imagine that you were a United Artists employee at the time. You’d have a lot of questions about your new overlords as they took over on November 2. Was UA going to become some kind of outlet for L. Ron Hubbard adaptations? Would Cruise and Wagner sound bitter after the way they were treated by Redstone? Did these two, who clearly knew how to produce quality movies, actually know how to run a studio?
Well, now we get a peek at what the experience was like as Cruise and Wagner introduced themselves for the first time to their new employees in a conference call. A recording made during that call has found its way to the Underground Bunker, thanks to our old friend, remarkable Hollywood gadfly and private dick Paul Barresi.
Barresi wondered if some of what Cruise says in the recording reflected his Scientology training, particularly the moments where he seems to be humbling himself in a bid for sympathy. We told him we didn’t think so, but we reminded Barresi of the context we’ve presented here — this was a remarkable moment for the actor, and he had a lot on the line. We thought Cruise’s pitch was simply good salesmanship, and yeah, the guy is charming.
It’s just fascinating as hell to sit in on this moment, and imagine what it was like for UA’s employees to meet the new bosses.
Within two years, anyway, everything had gone to shit. Here’s how the inimitable Nikki Finke described it at the time as Wagner announced her UA exit in 2008…
Of course, Cruise has gone on to much success since then, and Wagner produced Jack Reacher with Cruise. They aren’t hurting. But their failure at UA is an interesting bit of Hollywood history, and we’re glad Barresi shared it with us.
The quality of the recording is how we received it. We’ve done our best to put captions on it, and we’ll be very interested on your takes on it. Hit us up in the comments as usual.
