The director Tom Cruise never wanted to work with again: “Didn’t know how to make movies”
Within a decade of his big-screen debut in 1981’s Endless Love, Tom Cruise was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and he realised early on that he’d have to make his own way to the top.
When an actor begins their career, they don’t have much say over their direction. They take the parts that are offered because they’re not in a position to turn them down, which meant Cruise ended up in one movie that made him realise he couldn’t abide it anymore.
It’s not a coincidence that in the years to follow, he sought out, tracked down, and picked the brains of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, and Ron Howard, all of whom could pass on valuable knowledge that would help him achieve his dream of reaching the summit.
It was a path he continued following throughout the mid-to-late 1990s when he added Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, John Woo, Brian De Palma, and Cameron Crowe to his list of collaborators, but following the infamous couch-jumping incident, he’s spent the better part of the last two decades with Christopher McQuarrie as his permanent shadow.
1982’s Losin’ It was a pivotal moment for the young Cruise, who has always regretted the ribald comedy. Following four teenagers on a quest to lose their virginity, it was by-the-numbers fare that reflected the style of the era, and it would be the last time he ever made a movie he wasn’t interested in.
“The quality wasn’t there, nor was the intention to make a great film,” he said. While plenty of people are involved in bringing a picture across the finish line, the buck usually stops with the director. In this case, that was Curtis Hanson, leaving Cruise to offer a withering assessment of the brains behind Losin’ It.
“It was the first time I realised that some people didn’t know how to make movies,” he declared. Although he doesn’t name Hanson specifically, he was the one behind the camera, even if the filmmaker was every bit as guilty as screenwriter Bill Norton, the producers, and the studios, in crafting such a terrible thing.
Still, he managed to find the positives, describing the experience of Losin’ It as “just as valuable and important” as his first major role in Taps, with the former’s failure inspiring him to spend “more time interviewing people before I go into work with them.”
In his defence, Hanson had a decent career. He won a ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ Oscar for co-writing LA Confidential, which also earned him nominations for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’, with Eminem’s 8 Mile, Meryl Streep’s The River Wild, and Michael Douglas’ Wonder Boys other notable works, even if we’ll all just pretend he didn’t helm 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
Losin’ It was only his third feature as a director, but that was more than enough to convince Cruise he only wanted to work with people who knew how to make movies the way he wanted to make them, and Hanson evidently didn’t fit the criteria he was looking for in a creative partner.
