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
employeeat 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.
