LA Weekly: How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise..

[Smurf]

"You've seen it, too. You can probably picture it in your head: Tom Cruise, dressed in head-to-toe black, looming over a cowering Oprah as he jumps up and down on the buttermilk-colored couch like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Cruise bouncing on that couch is one of the touchstones of the last decade, the punchline every time someone writes about his career.

There's just one catch: It never happened."

http://www.laweekly.com/2014-05-22/news/the-last-movie-star

 

[Teanntás]

"You've seen it, too. You can probably picture it in your head: Tom Cruise, dressed in head-to-toe black, looming over a cowering Oprah as he jumps up and down on the buttermilk-colored couch like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Cruise bouncing on that couch is one of the touchstones of the last decade, the punchline every time someone writes about his career.

There's just one catch: It never happened."

http://www.laweekly.com/2014-05-22/news/the-last-movie-star

It is hardly accurate, as the author says, that he was 'standing' on the couch. He jumped on to and off the couch.

 

[Jump]

It is hardly accurate as the author says, that he was 'standing' on the couch. He jumped on to and off the couch.

With his arms in the air.

Sporting a weird maniacal grin.

Trying to invoke some ARC=U* for him and his newly contracted slave-wife.








* Acting Really Crazy = Understatement

 

[oneonewasaracecar]

The article talks about there not being any dip in his career.

Cruise hadn't hurt his career. But Hollywood was convinced he was poison, a religious fanatic, and possibly unhinged. Three months later, Paramount boss Sumner Redstone, who had partnered with Cruise's production company for 14 years, succumbed to the bad publicity and ended their professional relationship. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount," Redstone told the press. "It's nothing to do with his acting ability — he's a terrific actor. But we don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and then later says...

It then later refers to his comeback.

When Cruise's cameo as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder was a hit, instead of daring to think we might embrace him in another comedy, he cautiously considered only a Les Grossman sequel. And when Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol was deemed his comeback (not that he'd ever made a flop — even Knight & Day earned its money back), he decided that audiences wanted only one version of Tom Cruise: the action hero he'd never wanted to become. He's even said yes to Top Gun 2.

How can you have a comeback if your career never faltered?

It also says nothing about the other issue - the Feb 2008 protests and the other video that started it.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Amy Nicholson is a member of a new profession - celebrity religious apologist. I'm sure it pays well.

 

[FlunkYou]

The LA Weekly has become a joke of a rag. It would appear it has become nothing more than a sounding board for a bunch of no-talent asshats.

Check the link below for confirmation.

http://tinyurl.com/q6m4gpv

 

[CommunicatorIC]

Tony Ortega's take down of the LA Weekly story:

No, LA Weekly, Tom Cruise’s career was not ruined by a GIF
http://tonyortega.org/2014/05/21/no-la-weekly-tom-cruises-career-was-not-ruined-by-a-gif/

Tony's entire article is great. The following excerpt is particularly devastating:

There are so many examples to cite, but first and foremost we’ll point out that Nicholson wrote a 5,000-word story about Tom Cruise and the Internet without, somehow, pointing out the single most important element in that saga — the nine-minute internal church video of Cruise talking about Scientology that surfaced in 2008. Actually recorded in 2004, a year before Tom jumped on Oprah’s couch, that remarkable video has done far more damage to Cruise’s credibility, and was directly responsible for mobilizing the Anonymous movement, changing the Internet itself and how we think of it forever.


In case you need a refresher…

[video=youtube;UFBZ_uAbxS0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0[/video]

 

[tetloj]

Great comment by Douglas D. Douglas at the Bunker

Douglas D. Douglas
I posted this comment late, late last night when this story was first brought to our attention:
I did not, and do not, have time to go through all the comments. But author Amy Nicholson’s contention– that Tom Cruise did not actually “jump” on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, he merely “stood” on it for a few seconds, is dead wrong. She artfully writes the piece as though to imply that it was the nefarious internet that created a false impression through skillful editing.
Here’s the interview segments, without additional tweaking and editing. Cruise jumps on the couch. Twice. But that is NOT all he does. He also grabs Oprah several times (and at least twice, she looks visibly uncomfortable), and plays to an already hysterical crowd with some decidedly odd behavior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORCRjIl_4uk
Nicholson also cherry-picks her narrative, conveniently leaving out any mention of Cruise’s far more disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show (since the evil ol’ internet confined itself to simply quoting his nuttiness, I assume) or the Freedom Medal speech that did spawn a host of internet replies. She further picks and chooses among Cruises films, citing his hits and failing to mention the recent string of misses.
But the real lead in this story has been missed in all the comments I have read. It’s hidden in the boilerplate at the end of the article. It’s this:
Chief Film Critic Amy Nicholson’s book Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor will be published in July by Cahiers du Cinema/Phaidon Press.
So yeah, Amy Nicholson would have a vested interest in portraying Tom Cruise as our “last” movie star, destroyed by the superficiality of the internet. She’s got a book to flog.
To which I add this morning:
It is particularly galling that this drek is coming from the chief film critic for Village Voice Press. Tony spent years building up a credible body of investigative articles about Scientology, its history, effects on society, and its adherents. To have this blithely disregarded in the service of such an obvious puff piece does not speak well of those who currently are managing the Village Voice.