Tom Cruise: All the World's a Stage

by Iain Johnstone

  It is not chronicled who was holding the stop watch but what was in evidence was that the script followed the established template for a Tom Cruise film: he masters something and becomes the best at it – flying planes, driving cars, playing pool, mixing cocktails – comes out a hero and gets the girl.

  In this instance he was a poor Irish boy who finds Shannon, emigrates to the States, loses her but then secures both her and 150 acres of Oklahoma.

  The Cruises hired three bodyguards to protect them in Ireland although that summer IRA violence turned abroad with successful killings of Conservatives with bombs in the House of Commons and the Carlton Club. It was improbable that they would want to take out a prominent American catholic since most of their funds came from his country via NORAID. Nicole possibly had more to fear; just before they began their European location, the IRA shot what they thought were two off-duty British soldiers in Holland. The couple turned out to be Australian tourists.

  Large black screens were erected in front of the Dublin locations less to protect them from the IRA than the public. Tom and Nicole had become very camera shy; on occasion, films were removed from the cameras of civilian spectators.

  In the Dingle Peninsula away from prying eyes Tom and Nicole canoodled on the set with such ardour that some of the crew debated as to whether they should thow a bucket of water over them.

  For the part Tom had to learn an Irish accent. He listened to recordings of Sean O’Casey reading from his play ‘Juno and the Paycock’. He also had two dialect coaches: one to give him an Irish accent and the other to make sure that accent would be comprehensible to American audiences. Some critics would say that his accent was wrong but they must have been experts in the Kerry brogue of the late nineteenth century.

  His voice benefitted from ClearSound, a recording system developed by the Church of Scientology which cost the production $100,000 to hire. It was prudent of Ron Howard to agree to this; when David Miscavige, leader of the Church and Tom’s close friend, brought it along to the set of ‘Days of Thunder’, Jon Peters told him to clear off. Peters-Guber did not work with Cruise again.

  Howard shot the film on Panavision 65 mm the better to capture the Irish vistas and the Land Rush. An extra 5mm was added for the sound track and John Williams’s score so that it could be shown as 70mm in cinemas. It was the last time 65mm was used on a film.

  ‘Far and Away’ was not well received. Those of us who watched it in the presence of the Cruises at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival witnessed a degree of audible derision from some of the host audience as the film entered its third hour. This was especially ungrateful as Nicole had ascended the red carpeted steps of Le Palais du Festival radiant in a strapless aquamarine gown looking every inch the reincarnation of the late Grace Kelly.

  For the record ‘Far and Away’ was estimated to have cost $30m of which almost a third went to the Cruises and grossed $60m in the States and the same again worldwide.

  It had no detrimental effect on the careers of Tom and Nicole and seemed further to cement their marriage. She confessed: “I was never going to get married until I met Tom” and he stated: “I say to myself ‘Thank God I made the right choice in marrying her and was fortunate enough that she said yes’. I knew she was for me. I absolutely knew. I just knew it. I just knew I couldn’t live without her.”

  However, unlike the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor who made half a dozen films together, they were not to work on the same picture again until they underwent the bizarre and possibly destructive experience of falling under the spell of Stanley Kubrick.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  What does a leading actor do when he finds his performance as a nineteenth century Irish working man does not appeal to his wide international fan base? The sensible thing is to play himself again. Cary Grant created Cary Grant and rarely strayed very far from that character. What is one of the safest roles in which to play yourself? Play a litigation lawyer. The two professions are very similar. Lord Gardiner, a former Lord Chancellor of England, always he said he became a barrister after Oxford because he didn’t think he could hack it as an actor.

  There is fierce competition from members of the Bar Theatrical Society – even from judges – to get a part in the annual production in the Old Hall in Lincoln’s Inn and members wear their ties with pride – as if to say they could have become professional actors.

  Thus Tom reverted to type and played a lawyer not only in his next film, but his next two films – ‘A Few Good Men’ (1992) and ‘The Firm’ (1993). Further insurance came in the fact that were both already hits: the former on Broadway and the latter as John Grisham’s best seller. His judgement reverted to type as well. The two movies would make more than $300m domestic gross between them and re-establish Cruise as the one of the world’s most popular film stars.

  Besides, his performance as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in ‘A Few Good Men’, is one of the most outstanding in his career, ripping through a range of emotions that propelled the movie.

  At the time Nicole had her doubts about ‘Far and Away’. “In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have done a movie with him so quickly. I should probably have done more by myself to be seen independently. To work with Tom Cruise is a great thing, but I don’t want to be in every film with my husband because it becomes a little myopic. So she tried out for all the main female roles going – ‘Ghost’, ‘Silence of the Lambs’, ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and ‘Thelma and Louise’ – but didn’t get them.

  She was not, as yet, hot and was out of work for nearly a year. “Rejection used to be very difficult to take but, as an actor, you learn to deal with that. My mum calls me tenacious. People can say things and it will hurt me but I think my determination is there.”

  Tom, on the other hand, could walk into pretty well any part he wanted. What he did was to walk into the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street in New York and watch the hit production of Aaron Sorkin’s play, ‘A Few Good Men’. Tom Hulce was playing Lieutenant Kaffee but such is the law of the Hollywood jungle that although he had been nominated for an Oscar for playing Mozart in ‘Amadeus’ six years previously, his film career in the interim had not shone. And from the moment immediately after seeing the play Cruise lifted the phone to the man who had sent him to it, director Rob Reiner, and said: “Yeah, let’s make it”, Hulce’s chances of transferring to the silver screen were less than zero.

  “It was a wonderful character piece,” says Cruise, “with this young man escaping the shadow of a famous father (a legendary prosecutor who became Attorney General). I thought the character was tremendous and the writing was tremendous. It would be a challenging movie to make and I wanted to go on the ride with Rob.”

  The third security blanket for a quality commercial movie was the fact that it would be made by the clever production boutique, Castle Rock. Rob Reiner, son of Carl who was up there with Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, was not only a director but a writer and actor – for eight years he played Michael ‘Meathead’ Stivic in ‘All in the Family’ - and therefore very much an actor’s director. William ‘Nobody knows anything’ Goldman had decades of writing experience behind him and passed his advice on to Sorkin who took the screenplay credit. Despite affecting to be averse to Hollywood, Goldman has an understanding of the system that is both analytical and philosophical. Andy Scheinman, credited as a producer, is short, wiry and sharp as a tack with ideas spilling out of him like shrapnel. These were the men to bring home the bacon.

  The genesis of the play came from Sorkin’s older sister, Deborah. She had just graduated law school and wanted to get some trial experience so she joined the Navy Judge Advocate’s department. To her amazement she was assigned to Guantanamo Bay – the 45 square miles of Cuba owned by the Americans that where terrorist suspects were later imprisoned – to deal with a ‘Code Red’ violation. A platoon leader had ordered ten marines to tie up and gag a platoon mate as a punishment. Sorkin saw the reason the government sent an inexperienced counsel as defence lawy
er was so that there would be a plea bargain and it would be kept out of the public eye.

  He also saw a potentially compelling court room drama, rich with conflict and moral decisions, in which a rookie lawyer Kaffee/Cruise would be sent on a similar defence assignment. A man has been assaulted by two of his fellow marines under a ‘Code Red’ but he has died. Kaffee has to find the guts to buck the plea bargain and follow a paper trail of evidence that leads right to the door of the commander of the base, Colonel Nathan Jessep.

  Reiner’s masterstroke was to get Jack Nicholson for this. No other actor could radiate such volcanic danger. It is a small part – he is on screen for less than fifteen of the one hundred and thirty-eight minutes - but a vital one. In the read-through Nicholson delivered his role at full throttle, especially his final explosion in the witness box where he addresses Cruises as “you snotty little bastard.”

  Kevin Bacon, who played the prosecuting counsel, recalls: “Jack just blew the roof off in rehearsal. Movie actors usually save it for their close-up, not the first reading. Nobody had more fun. He is the party.”

  As Reiner hoped: “He set the tone for the rest of the cast. He’s the greatest slugger of all time.”

  Tom knew he was back in the top league. “Jack is a legend. He’s exciting to work with and perfect for this role.”

  It was a wordy piece by anybody’s standards and Reiner remains, if anything, more impressed by Cruise. “He worked so hard. He wanted to be perfect. He never shirked for a second. He’d hang around after we’d finish rehearsals like a schoolboy. He’d say: ‘Let’s work on this, let’s orchestrate it. I want each one of these monologues to be perfect so I can give you exactly the right tone for each moment.’ He was absolutely brilliant. I think it is some of the best work he has ever done.”

  Tom, in turn, appreciated Reiner’s technique. “Rob allows the actor to create the character, for it to be his character.”

  Kiefer Sutherland, playing a distinctly dodgy and adversarial platoon commander, concedes: “He was so prepared and did such beautiful work that I could not have given the performance I did without Tom pushing it like that.”

  Cruise also had the disconcerting habit of running from his large and luxurious trailer to the stage when called by the first assistant director. Kevin Pollak, who played his deputy, would watch him go past and think there was nothing for it but to run, too, to make the scene on time. Reiner had cast this former stand up comedy performer with a purpose. “Kevin’s natural comedic rhythm and timing lifted Tom.”

  Also lifted and sitting alluringly behind her starched white shirt were the breasts of Demi Moore, born Demetria Guynes in Roswell, New Mexico, where aliens may or may not have landed. Although Demi had been considered an A-list star since ‘Ghost’ a couple of years earlier, her interim films had not been much of a success. It was undoubtedly a help having Paula Wagner as her agent and she auditioned for the part of the Lieutenant Commander who wanted to conduct the defence winning out over Linda Hamilton, Elizabeth Perkins, and Helen Hunt.

  She and Pollak were fine foils to Cruise in the most significant scene of the movie. It happens on a rainy night in D.C. They are waiting for Tom in his apartment. Things have gone badly wrong in court that day. One of the accused changes his testimony and admits that his co-defendant, a lance corporal, ordered the ‘Code Red’; he did not get it from not the lieutenant they had hoped to nail. Tom arrives drunk. The art of acting drunk on film is not to use the ‘clinging to the lamppost’ stagger of the stage but to try to act as sober as you can – as a man arriving home drunk might do to his wife. But here a soaking and soaked Cruise wants to let his colleagues know he has been on a bender, even to the extent of pulling a half-finished bottle of Jack Daniels from his coat pocket. He appears to want to throw in the towel, acknowledging his inadequacy. When Demi suggest they put Colonel Jessep on the stand’ he responds with heavy sarcasm: “I forgot, you were sick the day they taught law at law school. What do we have for the losers? Yes, it’s a court martial for Lieutenant Kaffee. After falsely accusing a highly decorated marine officer of conspiracy and perjury, Lieutenant Kaffee will have a long and prosperous career teaching typewriter maintenance at the Mumbo Jumbo Club for women.”

  He sweeps the piles of legal papers off the table where they were going to work on them and Moore sweeps out of the apartment. The irony has turned to anger and now to reflective remorse. When he asks his assistant lawyer whether his father was proud of him, he is of course asking himself the same theoretical question since his own father is dead.

  Tom Cruise sees this father fixation as absolutely crucial to his character: “His father is held in such high regard and is so imposing on his own life that he feels almost frozen that he cannot accomplish what his father did. He’s also striving to find his own life. Where does he belong in the puzzle? He has to confront who his father was and who he is and really make his own decisions.”

  The actor had, of course, no tenable relationship with his own father which he could relate to. “Kaffee's relationship with his father was probably a lot saner than the relationship that I had with my father. Because with my father there wasn't a lot of communication. My father, actually, unlike Kaffee's, was not very successful at living life. I loved him, you know, but there's people that lack an ability to live life. I mean, life just pummels them, and they die. A lot of people, they just get hit. So much that their perspective on life is so altered and they can't even come up for air.”

  Kaffee boldly ignores what his father might have done in the circumstances. He decides to put the colonel on the stand reckoning that the man is so in love with the perfect chain of command he cannot bear it to be thought that orders did not emanate from him. “I think he wants to say it,” says Kaffee, knowing it will be his job to provoke him into doing so.

  This is despite the fact that on the way into court Demi Moore’s JoAnne Galloway does a complete vault face and warns him; “ If you don’t get him, I’m Special Counsel for Internal Affairs and you could get in serious trouble.” Somebody who was not politically correct might think ‘typical woman.’

  But he does get him. The movie ain’t over until big Jack sings and his final aria is delivered with such thunder and fury that you expect him to explode like Mr. Creosote in ‘Monty Python’s Meaning of Life’. When, under arrest, he bids farewell to the rookie lieutenant with the words “I’m going to pull the eyes out of your head and piss into your dead skull” one is left in no doubt that this is precisely what will happen the next time they encounter one another.

  As ensemble playing goes ‘A Few Good Men’ is, in the words of another Jack Nicholson movie, as good as it gets. Reiner has set the bar as high as he dares and nobody dares fall beneath it.

  The Academy ignored Tom and dutifully nominated Jack Nicholson as Best Supporting Actor but the younger generation could spot the flourishing talent of one of their own and, at the MTV Awards, Cruise was nominated not only for Best Male Performance but also as Most Desirable Male – an unusual category.

  Of course with Nicholson you have the greatest eye-rolling, eye-balling, eye-popping movie star of all time. When he wasn’t on set – he only was called for ten days – people would do impressions of him, Reiner included. Cruise even included one on the screen. “He eats breakfast three hundred yards away from four thousand Cubans that are trained to kill me.” Whilst demonstrating the star’s versatility as an impressionist, it does point up an underlying flaw in the film that moderated the reviews. There is no real threat from Cuba at Guantanamo Bay. If there were, 100 US Phantoms would be there within minutes. As it is the gates are opened every day to let Cuban civilian workers come into the base which, at the time, the United States used for training. That the commander of this place should be destined to become Director of Operations at the National Security Council – as Cruise is warned – strains credulity more than a little, even if he were not palpably insane.

  The point and the pleasure in this film is that it is a
n old fashioned court room drama which douses the audience in its charm offensive.

  In his business life he and Paula Wagner had formed a company – The Cruise-Wagner Co. – to find and develop projects for him so that he would have more control over his own movies – and make more money from them.

  At the time every studio liked to have ‘bed-and-breakfast’ companies on the lot who would usually have a first-look deal with the studio boss. Thus a constant flow of material would be coming into the studio thanks, in part, to the young people employed by these companies to scour Hollywood and beyond for script and books and even just ideas. They were known as ‘golden retrievers.’