The indie movie Tom Cruise saved from disaster
Whilst superhero movies dominate contemporary cinema and Disney seems to have its fingers in every single box office pie, the modern industry is screaming out for a saviour. Directors such as Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve and Robert Eggers are certainly trying to pick up the pieces of a broken creative industry with the likes of Oppenheimer, Dune and The Northman, but it is the star power of Tom Cruise that is still proving to be the most potent antidote.
With a dedication to the art form, Cruise has become a bastion of the cinematic experience, releasing movies that pulsate with frenetic energy reminiscent of Hollywood’s heyday in the late 20th century.
First came the release of Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, finally heading out to cinemas after years of delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Gaining six Academy Award nominations, including for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, Cruise’s largely practically-made film that featured roaring jet engines and spectacular dog fights walked away with just one Oscar for ‘Best Sound’.
He followed this success with the seventh movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise, titled Dead Reckoning Part One. Delivering high-concept action sequences and a bombastic storyline, the movie was a hit with audiences, even though its financial success was stunted by the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer just a couple of weekends following its release.
But, it turns out that Cruise has been saving cinema for far longer than we thought, with the American filmmaker Todd Field telling The New Yorker that the Hollywood icon saved his 2001 film In the Bedroom from the cutting room floor.
Debuting in 2001 at the Sundance Film Festival to significant industry praise, the film, which stars Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei, was later acquired by Miramax. Placed into the hands of the disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, who was notorious for messing with the final cut of indie movies before their eventual release, Field was concerned that his version of the flick wouldn’t see the light of day.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Field called up Cruise, who he had previously worked with on the 1999 Stanley Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut, seeking support on getting his film released.
“I was weeping in the bathroom,” he stated in the interview, “I called up Tom Cruise and said, ‘Something terrible has happened.’ He basically said, ‘This is how you’re going to play it. It’s going to take you six months, and you’ll beat him, but you have to do exactly what I’m going to tell you to do, step by step'”.
The actor’s recommendation was to allow Weinstein complete freedom to re-edit the movie and screen it for test audiences. When these scores from test audiences were inevitably poor, Field could then recommend to the producer that they release the film in its original form, with this plan playing out to perfection in reality, leading to five Oscar nominations for the movie in 2002.
