Damn right Tom Cruise is angry, but he’s not alone
But was he right to let rip at his crew on Mission: Impossible for not social distancing?
I know ’tis the season of goodwill to all men, but goodwill is in short supply and anger is everywhere. (Happy Christmas!) Most days now, I feel angry after five minutes of reading the news.
I was furious when I read that Unicef was helping to feed British children for the first time in its history and remembered the Spanish businessman who was given £21m by the government for acting as a go-between to procure PPE for the NHS. No wonder the mood is tense, on the roads and in the shops, in town centres, in parks. People are tetchy and on edge. Anger is a close friend of anxiety, of course. We are worried.
When the Sun published a three-and-a-half-minute recording of Tom Cruise shouting at crew members on the set of Mission: Impossible 7 last week, the reaction was largely supportive of Cruise. The actor was furious about crew members who had flouted Covid rules by standing less than a metre away from each other.
He sounds like a man under pressure. He shouts about conversations with studios, insurance companies, producers, about creating thousands of jobs and the responsibility of ensuring that thousands of people don’t lose theirs. “We are not shutting this fucking movie down!” he roars.
He is compelling. Movie stars are all poise and propriety, especially these days, when most are too scared to whisper anything that might provoke even a difference of opinion. Hearing an actor without their actorly charms is, to paraphrase Mean Girls, like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. Many seem to have found Cruise’s anger cathartic. Anger is cathartic, after all, in the moment that you let it free. Cruise is talking about doing things safely and correctly.
I have felt the urge to go a bit Tom Cruise almost every time I see someone in the supermarket having a leisurely chat over the tinned tomatoes. Stock up and move on. We are not shutting this fucking aisle down! But I don’t lose my rag with strangers. I huff so quietly under my mask that nobody can hear me.
Cruise is under a lot of pressure. He believes he is carrying the weight of the movie industry on his shoulders. I have had bosses who shout like that, mostly in kitchens, and while it makes them feel better, you can’t say it does much to boost staff morale. But these days, we are mad and we are worried, and anger is in the air, and nobody is immune.
Christopher Nolan: using his mind, not his phone
As a person who has spent a considerable part of the week watching strangers do impressions of Keira Knightley, I was filled with envy when I read that Christopher Nolan does not have a smartphone. In an interview with People magazine, the Tenet director said that he does not use email, but he does have a flip phone and he likes to call people when he has to talk about work.
“I’m easily distractible so I don’t really want to have access to the internet every time when I’m bored,” he said, clearly not aware of the delights of Knightley impressions. “I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity, so it benefits me.”
Nolan has made some of the most mindbendingly creative films of recent years, all predicated on concepts that, admittedly, probably would have been harder to come up with if he had also been doom-scrolling past school friends’ baby news and mask-based memes.
Focusing has been a challenge this year and my online activity has rocketed. I don’t feel better for it. Perhaps 2021 might be a time to embrace the boredom of the in-between.
Keira Knightley: inspiration for unforgettable impressions
Early in the pandemic, a meme appeared that quickly went viral. You probably saw it. It showed a cartoon man wearing a face mask, with his nostrils poking out over the top. “Wearing your mask like this,” it read, “is like wearing your underwear like this.”
In a second picture, you can imagine what flops over the top of the underwear. That neural pathway has been burned into my brain; every time I see someone out in the wild with their mask like that, the second picture instantly pops into my mind.
Now, I can’t see Keira Knightley without thinking of her as one of the weird number of Keira Knightley impressions that keep appearing on Instagram and TikTok. I saw one, and then they were everywhere, like when you mention a brand in passing conversation and it’s all you’re advertised to for the next three months. There is a whole cottage industry of people pretending to be Knightley for comic effect. In some clips, she is mute. In others, she speaks coyly. She tastes snow. She considers suitors. Gender is irrelevant – it is about the pout.
Impressions had not been in vogue for a while, but 2020’s lockdowns and stay-at-home orders have really revived the art. Take a bored comedian, give them a phone, a social media platform and a sideways take on what an impression should look like and this year, that has been enough to create bona-fide stars. I am not sure why Knightley is suddenly such a popular turn, but I might have spent more time than I should have trying to perfect it.
