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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Cruisin’ for a bruisin’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A new biography of Tom Cruise has skulked into bookstores, cobbled together by the esteemed biographer Andrew Morton. It’s probably not the low point in unauthorized celebrity biographies. But I’m sure it’s pretty close to the rug in that particular limbo contest.
I haven’t read the book, nor do I intend to. The New York Times has weighed in with a review, and thank you, Janet Maslin. If you’re collecting money to be hosed off after reading it so that others don’t have to, I will gladly send you a couple of bucks.
Why my contempt? Well, Morton is not exactly a great writer. He got super-lucky once, when Princess Diana decided to dish to him to get her version of events out without actually having to go on the record. Since then he’s been sort of a British Kitty Kelley, knocking out bios of Madonna and Monica Lewinsky.
As for the subject, I switched off Cruise a while ago. Loved him in “Risky Business” and “Jerry Maguire,” tolerated him in “Top Gun,” and stopped going to his movies sometime around the second “Mission: Impossible.” He’s capable of being a decent actor, but for 10 years or so, it’s been all about the promotion, and his Scientology, and not about the acting.
So we have a self-promoter doing a book about a guy who has become a self-promoter. Gee, where do I get my autographed copy?
Standard response from the media and the gawking masses to these books is to ask: What are the big revelations? I don’t care. I don’t care if Morton has videos of Cruise meeting with Osama bin Laden, or signed affidavits that he once beat a hobo to death with a hammer, or photos of him getting out a limo with no underpants.
OK. Time to go take my meds. Return to what you are doing. Unless you wish to take issue with that assessment.
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