From a newsletter - and copied here for DRS:
The best original television series of the summer so far is not a series in the usual sense. Rather, it's the series of recent television appearances by Tom Cruise that can be referred to collectively as The Tom Cruise Show.
Something very interesting is happening to one of the world's top box office stars of the last twenty years and it's playing out on TV. The man seems to be increasingly animated and agitated, and after his testy turn with Matt Lauer on the Friday, June 24 edition of NBC's Today show, one can only wonder what's coming next. Is he having a meltdown? Is he overworked? Is he kidding?
Cruise has been everywhere in recent days busily promoting his movie War of the Worlds (which opens June 29), fielding questions about his whirlwind courtship of and engagement to Katie Holmes and, at times, talking about Scientology, the controversial church to which he has belonged since the mid-'80s. But the appearances that propelled his promotional tour into the stuff of unforgettable television were his hour-long interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May, which was repeated last week, and his two-part chat with Matt Lauer on Today on Friday, June 24 and Monday, June 27.
Tension on the Today Show
During the first Today segment Cruise became extremely terse when Lauer brought up his much-publicized comments about actress Brooke Shields a few weeks back. (Cruise openly criticized Shields for writing in her recent autobiography that antidepressants helped her recover from a debilitating bout of postpartum depression.) Cruise the movie star suddenly saw fit to condemn psychiatry and slam the use of mind-altering drugs of any kind. He also took a shot or two at Lauer's credibility as a journalist, though it is unclear if this was his intent. During a discussion of the drug Ritalin a suddenly arrogant Cruise said Lauer was "glib" and that he "should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what [Ritalin] is." He was not at all the friendly fellow viewers usually see during his televised interviews.
DRS, that's what is with all the Tom Cruise threads. The guy is an ass.
I am even willing to go to prison.
"Two drifters off to see the world. There's such a lot of world to see. . ."
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