Cruise Ship Down

This summer Tom Cruise is starring in the most ham-fisted publicity campaign ever. Pat Kingsley, where are you?

by Nelson Handel

Hollywood marketing geniuses have a gift for pitching their wares squarely at our most vulnerable spots. The highest expression of their art comes during the summer blockbuster season. Each attempt to extract millions from our wallets represents a careful analysis of what makes the country tick, each campaign expertly designed to resonate harmoniously with our deepest unexpressed needs. But as the media blitzkrieg for War of the Worlds, the Steven Spielberg–directed, Tom Cruise–starring Martians-attack spectacular, peeped its bizarre head clumsily into the public square last week, two disturbing memes crept into its otherwise familiar message.

The movie, H.G. Wells’s oft-told story of xenophobic paranoia pitches itself squarely at the same post-9/11 fears that have small towns in North Dakota gearing up for imminent Al Qaeda attack. Teaser trailer proclamations of a complacent empire being the target of “envious eyes” quietly making “plans against us” demonstrated clearly that the marketing brains at Paramount and Dreamworks know on which side their popcorn is buttered. I wonder who designed the Martian kaffiyehs.

More disturbing is the contribution of Team Cruise. He hit the airwaves in typical style, exploiting a babe-of-the-week scenario designed to get tongues a-waggin’ in beauty shops across the country. After some staged canoodling for the cameras, the Cruise machine “announced” that he is dating Katie Holmes, who is not coincidentally starring in another big summer movie, Batman Begins. We learned that Holmes, 16 years Cruise’s junior, is “saving herself” for marriage and that as a ’tween she fantasized about marrying Cruise. How very average.

This seeming fabrication, with its odd mixture of May-September wickedness and virginal delusion, is an icky tabloid fantasy spun by a marketer who can’t decide if America desires to be a Polanskian cesspool of pedophilia or a sunny Main Street church social, circa 1954. Even the celebrity-narcotized readership of Us Weekly didn’t buy it. (Two thirds of those polled deemed it hooey.)

But the most bizarre element of this year’s model Cruise is the sudden appearance of Scientology in the plot. After years of being the most tightly controlled and programmed celebritytron on the planet, last year Cruise fired superpublicist Pat Kingsley amid rumors she had resisted Tom’s increasing desire to talk publicly about Scientology. Responsibility for shaping his new image now falls to longtime hanger-on Lee Anne DeVette, the star’s sister and, mark this, fellow Scientologist.

Suddenly, after years of inaccessibility, restrictive pre-interview contracts, and aggressive legal fuck-you letters to transgressors who dared ask what-must-not-be-spoken (Gay? Cult? Who fathered the kid?), Cruisie is out there in an unfettered way that has veteran Cruisologists scratching their heads. As the editor of one major celebrity mag says, “It used to be, like, ‘He’s a freak, he’s an android.’ Now that Pat is gone, he’s not as dark and weird and mysterious as he used to be.” Goodbye, I, Robot. Hello, The Passion of the Cruise.

In this new glasnost, Tom has decided that WOTW is an evangelical opportunity. His contract for the movie stipulated that the Church of Scientology be given a booth on set from which to proselytize to cast and crew. (“[They] were there to help the sick and injured,” Cruise says. Lee Anne, dear, are you high?)

With the door thus opened, German weekly Der Spiegel was the first to confront Herr Cruise. When, in a recent interview, he claimed that Scientology has “the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world,” DS’s reporter called bullshit, with the facts to back it up. (Presumably DS doesn’t worry about being shut out of the halls of celebrity. Silly Germans.)

In the old days, when Pat Kingsley commanded the good ship Cruise, the DS writer would never have gotten to “-ology” before his tape would have been confiscated and his tax returns audited. Now the ship looks to be running aground. Cruisie lost his cool at DS, saying, “If someone is so intolerant that he doesn’t want to see a Scientologist in a movie, then he shouldn’t go to the movie theater.”

Marketing War of the Worlds to our national paranoia is cynical but understandable. A nation content with the feds X-raying its shoes is due for some serious cathartic release. And one can even run with the Holmes thing. As a culture we look to celebrities to embody our repressed psychosexual yearnings, every celluloid hero a picture of Dorian Gray to absorb our evil desires. But do we really need another ill-informed religious believer claiming to hold the keys to redemption? Can’t we simply enjoy being blown up by Martians?

The solution? A celebrity death match, Tom Cruise vs. Mel Gibson vs. Cat Stevens. Put them in a cage, call it “My God Is Stronger than Your God,” and let them go. The Jews can just sit this one out.

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