Mission Impossible: The Tom Cruise/Paramount contretemps

ABC News/August 23, 2006
By Jake Tapper

I think we can do it all in a trail of quotes:

"I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. If someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them. If someone wants to learn how to read, I can help them. If someone doesn't want to be a criminal anymore, I can give them tools that can better their life."

-- TC in Der Spiegel, April 2005. Since firing his PR agent -- controlling powerhouse Pat Kingsley -- and replacing her with his sister, Cruise became more outspoken about his religious beliefs.

Favorable view of Tom Cruise: 58 percent. Unfavorable view of Cruise: 31 percent.

-- USA Today/Gallup Poll, July 2005.*

"I'm in love! I'm in love!"

-- TC on the May 23, 2005, Oprah Winfrey Show in his couch-jumping appearance soon to be mocked on the Internet, Jeimmy Kimmel, and VH1.

"No definitive decision has been made; it's a discussion."

-- Unnamed Viacom executive to the New York Times, June 1, 2005, about whether Paramount would proceed with production of the ''Mission: Impossible III,'' while Cruise was "puzzling associates and members of the public with his behavior"

"Today is a magnificent day for me, I'm engaged to a magnificent woman."

-- TC at a press conference arranged after his engagement to Katie Holmes at the Eiffel Tower, June 17, 2005

"Why would you do that? Why would you do that?...You're a jerk."

-- TC after getting squirted by a European prankster on the red carpet, June 20, 2005

"Jung was an editor for the Nazi papers during World War II." (Not true) "Look at the experimentation the Nazis did with electric shock and drugging. Look at the drug methadone. That was originally called Adolophine. It was named after Adolf Hitler." (Not true) "Freud wasn't a Nazi, but the point I'm getting at here is that expressing these views isn't necessarily a public relations bonanza for you. What choice do I have? People are being electric-shocked. Kids are being drugged. People are dying."

-- TC in Entertainment Weekly, June 2006

"Matt, Matt. You don`t even -- you`re glib. You don`t even know what Ritalin is. ...here`s the problem. You don`t know the history of psychiatry. I do."

-- TC on his June 24, 2005, Today Show appearance in which he slammed psychiatry and antidepressants

"I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. .. comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general."

Brooke Shields, writing in a New York Times OP-ED on July 1, 2005

“I’ve never met anyone like Tom.”

-- Katie Holmes in a July 5, 2005, interview with the women's magazine W, which the interviewer called a "mantralike love letter," writing: "Arranged marriages are measured, often solemn affairs; the fist-pumping pomp of the Cruise-Holmes union is another story. And the more times Holmes tells it, the stranger it sounds."

"You adore him."

-- Jessica Rodriguez, Holmes's "Scientologist chaperone," described as ubiquitous and "cold-eyed" in that same interview.

"FREE KATIE"

-- popular Tee-Shirt for sale on the internet*

"They will not be working together again and Steven will never call him his friend."

-- a "close friend" of Steven Spielberg's to the New York Post's "Page Six" September 1, 2005

"Lee Anne has done a wonderful job on behalf of myself and Cruise-Wagner Prods. over the last few years. But she has always expressed a desire to oversee and expand the day-to-day activities of my charitable endeavors. With our current plans to increase those endeavors, and Cruise-Wagner's increased production slate of film and television projects, this seemed the appropriate time to make that segue and bring Rogers and Cowan on board to handle mine and the company's entertainment-related publicity needs."

-- TC in a November 8, 2005 Statement firing his sister

"When Tom Cruise switched personal publicists last week, replacing his sister with a 40-year-veteran of the trade, Paul Bloch, it was widely seen as the actor's acknowledgment of what much of the public had already concluded: that his image had gone off the rails."

-- New York Times, November 13, 2005*

So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies.”

-- South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone after their Emmy-nominated episode mocking Cruise was pulled from re-airing by parent company Viacom on March 15, 2006.

Favorable opinion of Tom Cruise: 35 percent. Unfavorable view of Cruise: 51 percent.

-- USA Today/Gallup Poll, May 2006.

"I can't fault the marketing campaign; I can't fault the trailers. The only X factor here is the Tom Cruise factor.''

-- Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office-tracking Exhibitor Relations, on why Mission: Impossible: III opened weaker than expected, May 2006

"According to two close friends of Spielberg, Page Six was accurate, although the item did not note the real source of Spielberg’s anger: After he mentioned to Cruise the name of a doctor – a friend – who prescribed Ritalin, the doctor’s office was picketed by Scientologists.”

-- Ken Auletta writing in the New Yorker, July 2006

“As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”

-- Sumner Redstone, Viacom Inc. Chairman, yesterday

Am I missing anything?