Dear Gossips,
Yesterday in What Else? I linked to Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson talking about their work kisses and which actors were the best or worst kissers. It sounds more exciting than it actually was. G only mentioned kissing Robert Downey Jr when, obviously, for gossips, there are other names that we’d be looking for. Which is when I pop-quizzed on G’s onscreen kiss with Tom Cruise and asked you to name the movie without googling. Many of you cheated. Anyway, it was Austin Powers in Goldmember; they cameoed to kick off the film – Tom was Austin, obviously, and G was Dixie Normous. The kiss happens at the 2 min 35 sec mark but after watching the whole clip, even though I’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times (this is the one with Beyoncé as Foxy Cleopatra), I only just realised that Tom’s Austin pulls the same “hit the brakes, he’ll fly right by” move that’s now cinematic history from Top Gun.
G has actually said in the past that Tom is an “amazing kisser”. I believe it – and not just because he’s Tom Cruise and he would approach kissing with the same technical intensity as he would an action scene but because, well, we’ve seen it. There’s so much evidence of it on film. When’s the last time you watched the love scene from Top Gun? It’s been at least a few years for me so let’s do this, let’s make this a horny Friday, why not.
Horny as f-ck, right?!
THE TONGUE.
Gwyneth isn’t wrong. Tom Cruise knows what he’s doing (when he’s acting) – and it’s not just the tongue kissing, it’s also when he’s slow-thrusting and the moment where he lifts his chin and turns his head to the side and then comes back, his mouth still open, he is showing us that he is FEELING it.
By the way, some of us had to be in the theatre with our parents when this was happening. And yet.
This is what I miss about movies in the 80s. We don’t get kisses and love scenes like this in movies now, and certainly not blockbuster movies. A love scene in an independent film? Sure. A love scene that takes up over two minutes in an action movie and some of the action comes from the bedroom? Please. The heat is gone. Tom’s heat is gone too.
When’s the last time Tom’s had an onscreen kiss with that much heat? He and Emily Blunt kissed in Edge of Tomorrow but that was not a kiss with any fire and now I’m wondering, if they had made that movie in the 80s, would they have found time for Rita and Cage to f-ck at some point?
Now I just remembered, he had a great love scene with Penelope Cruz in Vanilla Sky which I can’t find online but here’s a fan-made compilation. I think I liked that movie more than I was willing to admit at the time. You know what else? He is so f-cking hot in that movie, I think we forget how gorgeous he was. I also think we forget that Tom and Penelope dated for like almost three years.
But let’s get back to getting horny at the movies – the Tom Cruises of today, that is the male blockbuster movie stars, they don’t f-ck enough onscreen. A few weeks ago, Carrie Wittmer put together a great well-researched piece for The Ringer asking “Which Hollywood Sex Symbols Actually Have Sex on Screen” because a lot of actors who are currently considered sex symbols don’t actually f-ck much in their movies. There’s a lot of data here to go with the sex and while Carrie and I disagree on the horniness of the Top Gun love scene, the bigger point, as we’ve seen this year since the start of this goddamn bullsh-t, is that horny is one of the enduring themes of 2020. And I wonder what will emerge from it. Like two years from now, if we’re still around and we haven’t imploded ourselves, can the summer blockbuster season please include more sex?!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
