Three words: Eyes Wide Shut . Or rather two words: Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick s record-breaking shoot

ICYMI: Tom Cruise - Total Film’s Icon Of Our Lifetime | TotalFilm.com A Future Site Total Film: The Modern Guide to The Movies Follow Total Film Follow @totalfilm insurance multi policy travel trip Home New Films News Reviews Features TV Video Magazine iPad Subscribe ICYMI: Tom Cruise - Total Film’s Icon Of Our Lifetime World’s Biggest Movie Star, award-winning character actor, chatterbox…
In our sophomore year, the stars adorning the cover included Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez (the less said about Posh Spice and Maria Pitillo the better). No Cruise. Why? There was no Cruise movie to promote.
What the hell was going on? Then, as now, he was the biggest star on the planet and had been since 1986 s Top Gun strafed his career skywards so why no film releases between March 97 and September 99?
Three words: Eyes Wide Shut . Or rather two words: Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick s record-breaking shoot took Tom (and then-wife Nicole Kidman) insurance multi policy travel trip out the game for 400 days, holing him up at Pinewood Studios for looong, dark nights of the soul.
Only now is Kubrick s discombobulating swansong finally attracting the appreciation it deserves, and the same goes for Cruise s passive, uptight, insurance multi policy travel trip consciously mannered performance as Dr. Bill a voyeur who ricochets through New York on a sexual odyssey.
In March 2000 came the explosion of Magnolia , with Cruise s oil-slicked, rapacious sex guru Frank T.J. Mackey dominating a devastating ensemble in a devastating film. Somehow he lost the Best Supporting Actor Oscar to a strangely accented Michael Caine in the polished-but-dull The Cider House Rules ; he lost the TF cover, meanwhile, to David O. Russell s Three Kings .
Incredibly, Cruise s first Total Film cover didn t arrive until Issue 42 in July 2000, for Mission: Impossible II . By the time Mission: Impossible insurance multi policy travel trip Ghost Protocol came out in 2011, however, he d occupied no fewer than 10 covers, and the fourth Mission s haul of $694,713,380 at the worldwide box office (Cruise s biggest ever hit) amply reinforced his status as the world s number one movie star.
In those days there weren t schools necessarily, you couldn t go on the internet and find out about angles and shots... I was working with Owen Roizman [cinematographer], Harold Becker [director] and Stanley insurance multi policy travel trip Jaffe [producer], who had just won the Oscar for Kramer Vs Kramer . I remember thinking, If I don t get to make another movie, I just want to learn as much as I can... On every film, I learn something. It s an excitement for what I do, a challenge insurance multi policy travel trip to constantly push myself.
Cruise has just finished shooting his first day on sci-fi war movie Edge Of Tomorrow . Directed by Doug Liman, it s a two-hander (with Emily Blunt) about a soldier battling a seemingly indestructible alien foe. The catch? He s caught in a time loop, fighting the same day over and over and over. It s Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers , but with the grit of Black Hawk Down .
So, Tom Cruise, Icon of Total Film s Lifetime ( Wow, I m honoured, thank you. That s so cool )... what is the secret to selecting all those iconic roles? Is there a system to shuffling the curveball likes of Magnolia , Collateral and Tropic Thunder insurance multi policy travel trip with the Mission movies, Minority Report and War Of The Worlds ?
I touch one genre and then I feel like I want to do something else, he shrugs. I ve always tried to push myself and have a diverse taste. I m someone who wants to entertain people, and you have different types of audiences for different kinds of films.
It s something Cruise has done from the get-go, his CV littered with challenging, contentious choices that many A-listers would shirk. Cruise laughs, heartily, and readily admits that there have been times, and many of them, when his advisors insurance multi policy travel trip have asked him to wind his neck in.
Yeah, there have been moments! he says. I remember when I did Born On The Fourth Of July , there were people who said it was going to ruin my career. insurance multi policy travel trip But I ve always felt that it s my choice, and here are the things that I m interested insurance multi policy travel trip in, the stories and the people that I want to do... I listen to, and appreciate, the advice, but when you read the script and meet with a filmmaker, there s a gut thing where you go, I want to go on this journey. It s a very personal journey, making a movie. You just have to go for it, if it s something you believe in.
In the groove, Cruise continues. I remember doing Rain Man and there were articles criticising we were even making that movie: What is it, just two schmucks in a car? I remember saying to Dustin, Man, this is intense. Paul Newman [who Cruise paired with in 1986 s The Hustler sequel, The Color Of Money ] always said, You gotta ignore the white noise. insurance multi policy travel trip Just live your life, make your choices. As time has gone on, I ve realised just how true that is. If it works, it works, and if it doesn t work, you still have to know why you did it. I ve never walked insurance multi policy travel trip through anything in my life.
But these days the noise has amplified exponentially. insurance multi policy travel trip Cruise, more than most, has been subjected and tormented, the ether polluted with tawdry speculation on his marital break-ups and beliefs. The only way to survive it is to take a deep breath and become insurance multi policy travel trip the eye of the cyclone.
It is what it is, he states. You have to ignore it, keep focused and move on. It doesn t reflect in the work... When you look at the history of movies, and the history of the noise... Vertigo really wasn t that well received, and now you look at it and go, Jeez, look at this movie. That s why I say about working hard. Keep telling stories. When I look at David Lean, who made Ryan s Daughter then didn t make another movie for 10 years.... There s always a chance of failure, and you can t worry about failure, you have to think of the story. Do not be frozen. insurance multi policy travel trip Even in success. Cruise s drive and focus are the stuff of legend. Just to walk in a room with him and shake his hand (firm grip, big shake) is to feel his positivity; his aura blinds as surely as his teeth. insurance multi policy travel trip Talk to anyone who s ever worked with him, from Nicholson, Hackman and Hoffman down to the technicians and craft services, and they all say the same: he s the first on set, the last to leave, a whirlwind of energy who s on hand even when his presence isn t dictated insurance multi policy travel trip by the call-sheet. His love of movies and storytelling is infectious. During the course of Total Film s 50-minute insurance multi policy travel trip interview, he discusses Hitchcock, Ford, Wilder (his kids love Some Like It Hot), Leone, Spielberg; Citizen Kane , Shane , Duck Soup (another favourite with the kids), North By Northwest ... Three times Total Film apologises for running over our allotted 25 minutes, and each time he replies, No, it s my pleasure. It s fine, buddy. We re talking movies. His movies have made more than $7.5bn. But still he refers to himself as a student , learning, honing, then passing his knowledge down. Well, I tell you, he says, when I went to CAA right after Taps , I didn t have an agent. I went in there and met this wonderful woman, Paula Wagner, who eventually became my producing partner, and all these guys at CAA. I said, Look, I don t care about money, I don t care about anything else, I just love movies, and I want to learn. So I looked at their list of filmmakers who they represented and I said, I want to go meet with these people. He laughs. They were like who is this pup, he s 19 years old! The apprenticeship continued well into the 80s and 90s, Cruise doing a series of films ( The Color Of Money , Rain Man , A Few Good Men , The Firm ) that pitted him opposite the acting greats. I was working with Hackman on The Firm and just going, My god, it s Popeye Doyle! He s a great, great American actor, a legend. And here I am sat across from him, just trying to figure the scene out together. And what did he learn? insurance multi policy travel trip Nicholson, Duvall... when you get down to it, there s a worker mentality to all of them.
Cruise is currently working harder than ever. Out in cinemas in December is Jack Reacher , a tiptop insurance multi policy travel trip adaptation insurance multi policy travel trip of Lee Child s bestseller One Shot, while intergalactic actioners insurance multi policy travel trip Oblivion and Edge Of Tomorrow are, respectively, in the can and shooting. Then there s horror-comedy Van Helsing , the fifth Mission: Impossible announced, and the belated but much- anticipated Top Gun sequel also in the mix. Cruise is happy to talk about them. Oblivion and Edge Of Tomorrow are totally different, he says, pointing out that playing an ET-fighting soldier in both is a superficial detail. Oblivion is an action-thriller, in which I fly this... bubble- ship, and the world is already post-apocalyptic; Edge Of Tomorrow is a war movie, in which I wear a 100lb exo-suit that has grenade launchers and machineguns. insurance multi policy travel trip But it s not just a war movie. Doug Liman takes a genre and turns it inside out... Van Helsing , he continues, insurance multi policy travel trip we re figuring out. Do we make a horror comedy, character comedy? What time period? Suddenly he grows excited, his voice climbing another decibel. insurance multi policy travel trip When I think of American Werewolf In London ... Do you remember the first time you saw that movie? Wasn t it just amazing? And we haven t had one of those for... Look, I m not saying that Van Helsing will be that, tonally, but... I ll never forget seeing American Werewolf on a Friday night. It was a seven o clock showing in Westwood, and it was like, C mon, this movie s incredible! And how about Mission: Impossible insurance multi policy travel trip V ? He must be confident after Ghost Protocol smashed it... Can you believe that? he cuts in. I mean, c mon! It was wild. Seeing an audience respond... to have that experience is really wonderful. I started Mission: Impossible hoping insurance multi policy travel trip I could make many of them. It s a character that I can grow with. At that time it was the most expensive film in the history of Paramount Pictures, and the first film I was producing. It s been pretty exciting. I ll make a bunch of those. I ll make as many as people want to see... because they re very challenging, and so much fun to make. Any ideas for the plot and set-pieces? We re already working on different images.