re: the master. i liked it. except for p.s.hoff singing at the end, which was hands down the most difficult moment of a difficult film. the key change = DEEPLY uncomfortable, ohmygod.but you should see it. and you should maybe engage in some brief studies of scientology before you do.

re: the vf article (which is excerpted HERE)… interesting. because it must be true, right? we’re in a historical moment where we are willing to accept that this level of crazy would exist in tom cruise’s world, yes? we must believe they dated and that all of this was arranged.

except…

whycome there are no paparazzi pictures of tommy cruise and nazanin? aside from the fact that a photograph of tommy davis on ice skates would be worth solid gold, why would there not be a photograph of tommy cruise and his girlfriend, even if she were an unknown?

you would expect more from the man who, mere months later, brought us these great moments in PDA history, am i right?

i point that out not to discredit the article so much as to suggest that the lack of photographical evidence is maybe a part of the scientological weirdness.

which brings us to oprah. you know what i’m talking about.

but have you seen it? no, i mean, have you ever really watched it from beginning to end?

yeah, we all know what happened. he jumped on a couch and screamed “I’M IN LOVE.”

kinda not unlike that awful diamond commercial from the early aughts where that dude stood in st. mark’s square and screamed “I LOVE THIS WOMAN!” which was, and remains, my nominee for Absolute Worst Way To Get Engaged Of All Time.

(dear internet, you can preserve that and not the 1992 winter olympics coca-cola commercial that changed my life? fail.)

but i digress…

my point here is that you should watch it. because this was 2005, the dawning of the age of the internet. when, for the first time, it was really easy to access clips of full-length programs online. meaning, you could totally judge tom cruise’s oprah appearance without having rushed home to watch the tape of it on your VCR. you could access it at your leisure and, if you wanted, view only the highlights (ie. the couch jumping).

but what you would have missed was the crowd’s insane frenzy when he walked out. like, vair vair cray insane frenzy featuring minutes of nonstop applause.

that’s not to say he wasn’t vair vair cray because, well, yeah. it was his year for that. he was PDAing all up on everyone. we were all alarmed.

2005 was strange. but looking back, the dynamic in that room, on oprah’s set, it’s weird. and it’s not all him. the audience is with him. they’re egging him on. they know he’s in love and they want to see it and he gives it to them.

he is an actor playing to his audience. which is what he is paid to do. the difference is that, in this instance, it went viral.

tom cruise is actually amazingly zen about this whole thing: “That time was interesting. It was that moment when the internet had really spun out. It was a learning experience for all of us, how these things go. All you can do is learn and say, ‘This is the way it’s going to go from now on. Here is the line.'”

which is why i love him in spite of himself. because he is too intense, too much of a loon, and yet he gets it. he tries his damnedest to give us what we want (be it couches or ill-advised bangs or sweeping proclamations of love) because he wants us to love him. he needs us.

oh, and he’s beautiful, which doesn’t hurt.

(photographs by: the weinstein company; vanity fair,  wenn;  unknown; wenn; wenn; unknown)