TOM CRUISE RANT DUBBED INTO CLASSIC ‘RUDOLPH’ CLIP ON TWITTER:
Santa needs to get his mouth washed out with soap.
It was almost mission impossible, but a Twitter user managed to make Saint Nick spew Tom Cruise’s F-word-laced rant by dubbing the TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” which first aired in 1964, Fox News reported.
“This is my December passion project,” wrote Jason Gallagher, who posted the hilarious mashup, which shows Santa flying off the handle a la Cruise in front of a cast of characters from the iconic show.
Looking on in apparent abject horror are Rudolph, the Abominable Snowman and Yukon Cornelius, among others.
On the flip-side, at Breitbart.com, veteran film critic John Nolte writes:
Two things are worthy of note here… If you listen to the entire audio, he never once says anything about PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE!!! YOU’RE KILLING PEOPLE!!! YOU’RE A SERIAL KILLER! There’s none of that BS, none of that anti-science, smug and sanctimonious emotional blackmail. What Cruise is worried about, and Mission: Impossible 7 was already shut down once due to a coronavirus outbreak, is everyone losing their jobs and homes.
On top of that, Cruise is saying that this film set represents the standard now being used throughout the industry, and that standard is allowing other productions to go back to work. So if the Mission: Impossible 7 standard fails, that could mean everyone gets shut down, and that’s a lot of jobs.
Listen, I made a living for 17 years as a corporate bill collector and have been at the wrong end of my own share of what we used to call Come To Jesus Meetings, and they were a lot worse than this. That doesn’t mean it’s right for Cruise to be calling everyone a “motherf***er,” but one thing I always appreciated about those Come To Jesus Meetings was the honesty. You knew where you stood. It was coming straight at you.
And let’s also not forget that this is not a “star tantrum.”
Cruise is a producer, a hands-on producer of this franchise. There’s $200 million he’s responsible for and everything about the guy’s reputation tells you he takes that responsibility seriously.
I can see Nolte’s point, but much of the public is listening to Cruise’s rant with two issues in mind. First as the late Cathy Seipp wrote at NRO in 2005 in a piece titled “California Screaming,” Hollywood superstars and executives often come equipped with serious anger issues, and thanks to clips like Cruise’s and former Batman star Christian Bale’s rant on the set of Terminator Salvation going viral on social media, moviegoers increasingly knows this:
Behind the New Age grin of beatific self-righteousness with which so many Hollywood celebrities greet the world often lurks a tantrum ready to erupt. When the full, roiling boil is over, the slow simmer can last for weeks, if not months. By comparison, old-style screamers can seem quaint, almost benign. The storm may have been intense, but it passed quickly. A classic of the type–the agent Norman Brokaw, for instance–could suggest lunch within minutes of a blowup. And the scream usually took the form of a statement: “Get outta here!”
But new-style screamers eschew declarative sentences for rhetorical, F. Lee Bailey-esque questions: “What were you thinking? Why did you even pick up the phone? Do you even have a brain?” This can be harder to bear. As an observer told me once, “If it’s ‘You’re fired,’ then at least you’re out. If it’s someone trying to teach you a lesson, you’re there, and you’re stuck.”
Some screamers can hardly utter a sentence that doesn’t contain the f-word. The syllable almost seems to function as their sound, signifying only that they are in the room. Others are more careful with their language, because being sworn at is the point where many screamees stop listening and may even quit. So bland, schoolmarmish words of displeasure are amplified to ear-splitting volume. A vein-popping “Un-ACC-EPT-able!” is a great favorite. Also, a drawn out “DIS…A…PPOINTED!!!”
When in full throttle, the classic Hollywood screamer cannot be neither stopped nor shamed. I once heard a story about a studio executive who screamed at someone’s assistant for a good five minutes before realizing he was in the wrong office–possibly even on the wrong floor. “Well, if you see her,” he yelled before stomping out, “tell her what I said!”
Screaming actors, it seems, can be easier to deal with, perhaps because they are not always famous for their brains. Many years ago, I read a story about how Roger Moore (a nonscreamer) took a younger actor aside and suggested he stop attacking everyone on the set. “I’m not in this business to win a popularity contest,” the screamer fumed. “I just want to be a good actor.”
“Well, you’ve failed at being a good actor,” Moore replied reasonably. “Why not try for the popularity contest?”
Then there’s the giant clam in the room, as America’s Newspaper of Record reported earlier this week: ‘We Must Follow The Science!’ Screams Actor Who Believes Xenu Dumped Frozen Aliens Into Volcanoes And Exploded Them With Bombs 75,000,000 Years Ago.