The Friars Club annual foundation gala is happening tonight in New York. They will honour Tom Cruise with the Entertainment Icon Award. There have only been 3 previous recipients of the award in the 108 year history of the club: Douglas Fairbanks, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra. That’s pretty distinguished company.
Rumour has it they wanted it to be a roast but Tom adamantly refused. He also insisted on approving every speaker. Wouldn’t a Tom Cruise roast have been the best? It’s not hard to understand why he would be against it. For the better part of a decade now Tom Cruise has been a joke. It’s only in the last oh 6 months or so, with the success of Ghost Protocol that he’s starting to finally move away from the couch jumping and the weirdness, to be the focus of a conversation not fixated on how f-cking weird he is. Still...there is a prevailing perception that Tom is humourless, too rigid, not spontaneous, not at ease, not the way George Clooney seems to be so at ease, and I wonder if a roast wouldn’t have allowed us to see a different side of him, one not so controlled, controlling, and suspiciously engineered.
Here he is today shooting Oblivion outside the Empire State Building. Little Sci is in NYC with him while Katie Holmes has been in Asia the last few days. She was photographed yesterday in Beijing at a press conference for Artistry On Ice in her role as ambassador for the event this year. You’ll recall, last year Sarah Jessica Parker held (presumably) the same position. Click here for a refresher. In other words, Katie must have received a mega Chinese paycheque which...
It’s not like the Cruises don’t have money...
It’s not like representing Artistry On Ice in China is going to help secure more acting jobs...
Or will it?
Hollywood and Red China are getting into bed. China is investing a lot into production. There’s a billion plus audience that wants movies!movies!movies! What will movies look like when they’re deliberately designed for that market? Is that the future for Joey Potter?
