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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Paramount Dumps Cruise
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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 08-22-2006 08:15 PM
MSNBC Home » Entertainment » Movies
Paramount cuts ties with Tom Cruise Chairman says the star’s behavior was unacceptable to the company
Junko Kimura / Getty Images file Paramount Pictures ends its 14-year relationship with Tom Cruise.
Updated: 1 hour, 6 minutes ago NEW YORK - Paramount Pictures has severed its 14-year-old ties to Tom Cruise’s production company because of his off-screen behavior, the chairman of the studio’s parent company said Wednesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
The report signaled the end of one of the most lucrative production deals commanded by any A-list Hollywood star and followed other signs that Cruise’s public stature had been damaged by his conduct during the past year.
Cruise’s representatives and officials from Viacom and Paramount did not have any immediate comment on the report.
Days after his latest film, “Mission: Impossible III,” opened to lower-than-expected domestic ticket sales in May, an opinion poll showed his star power in the eyes of the public had dimmed considerably.
And last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Paramount Chairman Brad Grey had informed representatives for Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, that the studio planned to slash the amount it spends on their company, Cruise/Wagner Productions.
Months ago, Grey was one of several movie industry executives who publicly rallied to Cruise’s defense to insist that his status and popularity were undiminished.They were reacting to a USA Today/Gallup poll in which half of those surveyed registered an “unfavorable” opinion of the actor. Many cited his off-screen behavior during the past year, including his outspoken defense of his religion, Scientology, and his blunt criticism of psychiatry and actress Brooke Shield’s treatment for postpartum depression.
Cruise also became the butt of jokes for his manic, couch-hopping appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last May to declare his love for actress Katie Holmes, who recently gave birth to Cruise’s first biological child, a daughter they named Suri.
“As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal,” Redstone was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal report e-mailed to reporters. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14472455/ [ 08-22-2006, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: Will Kutler ]
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-23-2006 07:52 PM
The one thing in Mel Gibson's defense is he's a zealot for a form of religion at least a couple thousand years old. There's a lot of cathedrals, classic art and various institutions which support the legitimacy of Christianity. Still, that anti-semiticism thing can really bite old Mel in the honches something fierce. Nevertheless, he's still a "nutjob" for a well established religion.
That brings me to the scientology thing.
Scientology strikes me as a sort of "pay as you go bible" -just to find out what happens as part of a freakin' made up bad science fiction story put together by someone whose ego was not in check at all.
The equivalent would be getting the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament for "free." That's just to get you into the club so to speak, at least after you've spent a week's worth of pay on some "auditing" crap. Let's go with that analogy a little further.
Want the next book, the book of Exodus? Hmm. We'll take 6 months pay for that. We'll take a year's salary for the Book of Leviticus.
Oh. I'm sorry? You want some of those New Testament chapters? Matthew? Mark? Luke? John? Well, you'll need to hook up with a good Hollywood studio for a $20 million per picture deal to find out that information. Or at least pull off a good Enron-style swindle to bilk some other people out of their cash. Revelation of Christ to John you say? Oof. You're gonna need some Halliburton money to find out about that one!
Please note, any militant scientologists who might be reading my post that I make of my own free will unaffiliated with any other organization and do so freely based on my United States Constitution supported right of free speech please know this: your lawyers can feel free to fuck off and screw with someone elsewhere. I'll say what I want and you really have no legal recourse to do anything about it. Don't like it? Tough shit. Find another battle elsewhere.
That last flippant remark by yours truly can be some indicator why Paramount has chosen to distance itself from Cruise and start airing that wonderfully funny South Park episode again. Most Americans know Scientology is a "religion" based on a made up science fiction story only a few decades old. They know about the Gistapo-like tactics aimed against families of disconnected Scientologist cult victims -as well as the numerous death threats leveled against psychologists. The group is way the hell out there and way out of touch.
In the end, I really feel bad for Tom Cruise. He is a good actor. I thought he even deserved an Oscar statue of Born on the Fourth of July; he was at least worthy of the nomination. But shit! He's got to wake up and realize he's gone off the deep end with this militant Scientology thing and get back a little closer to a more grounded approach.
Y'know, I have friends that are into all sorts of arguably crazy stuff. One of my best friends is deeply involved in Asatru, an old Viking religion that predates Christianity by thousands of years. Although she believes Christianity derives many of its themes from Asatru (and that Christians are deceiving themselves in what she feels is a later, made up religion) she doesn't go so far as to get in other people's faces saying they need to believe as she does.
That latter disconnect, not allowing others to have their own beliefs, is why we have so many damned wars.
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