Defamer
Michael Cieply's latest dispatch from the Tom Cruise beat inventories the wreckage from the mid-air collision that is Valkyrie and United Artists, including exclusive interviews with hobbled pilots Paula Wagner and Bryan Singer. For Singer's part, he's fine to let the film speak for itself if and/or when it's ever completed and released. But for Wagner, Cruise's UA partner and designated press scold, skeptics like us just! Don't! Get it!
Mr. Cruise, his partners at United Artists and the Valkyrie filmmakers are bracing for what will likely be a nine-month fight to prove their critics wrong. "We will not be daunted," Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists, said last week.During a 90-minute interview at the company's headquarters in a Century City office tower, Ms. Wagner said she and her fellow executives were intent on overcoming negative reactions that she saw as rooted in ignorance of the process of building movie production companies.
"Anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn't understand the business," Ms. Wagner said. She added: "Nothing is going to stop us. We are determined to make this work."
OK, we admit it: We don't understand the business. Like the second release-date shift out of Oscar season and into the dramatic dumping ground of February? That's apparently totally normal. That whole thing about Mary Parent showing up on the scene and reportedly getting a base salary of $5 to $6 million to remake MGM on her own, non-UA terms? Totally coincidental — nothing to do with UA's flailing! MGM chief Harry Sloan's vague defense of UA? A ringing endorsement! That public lunch date between Cruise and Sumner Redstone? Nothing to do with movies! Redstone probably just wanted recommendations for Suri's birthday gift — preferably an action franchise installment under $125 million.
Or maybe we understand the business just enough to know we've seen this before. To paraphrase Paul Sunday in There Will Be Blood, "We'd like it better if you didn't think we were stupid." It's not like we want to see UA fail, but come on. Even Roger Friedman can see this one coming.
Comments
I'm not sure I appreciate the tone of this post...so glib.
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Please let these vaunted shingles die. Mayer, Goldwyn, Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin are spinning in their graves.
If it's going south, Tom Cruise will save it. He doesn't just stand around when something happens, he does something, you know.
But keep in mind, if Michael Cieply wrote it, the article may have a whole lot of bullshit leavening the actual, you know, facts.
Tom Cruise's greatest accomplishment has been to unite the entire world in a single hope: To watch Tom Cruise crash and burn.
@InkStainedWretch: You mean other than Paula Wagner's defiance?
NYT quotes Fox columnist saying the accent issue (use plain 'murican accents rather than german ones) makes the movie "worst idea ever for a film,"...or is that 'wurst idea...' Sorry, had to. Ja! Wunderbar!
Is it just me or does that pic of Tom Cruise and Carice van Houten look like Bill and Hilary circa 1967?
[i28.tinypic.com]
The war can still be won, der Fuhrer says.
I am still in charge, Saddam says.
The economy's fundamentals remain strong, the President says.
Can't say it if it ain't true, right?
Not only did Roger Friedman see this coming, he wrote about not getting credited for breaking this story 12 years ago. Sure, it was about some black music guy getting screwed over by some Jewish music guy, but read between the lines. It's all there.
You know how the publicists send out these little pieces of crap so we'll remember their stupid movie is opening? Like when Road Trip was going to open, and they sent critics a sperm collection kit with rubber glove and plastic tube (oh, and thanks for calling us wankers)? I keep thinking I'm going to get a loop of piano wire in the mail with a piece of paper reading Valkyrie, FEB 2009.
Oh, wait, that should read "FEB 13, 2009". Watching Nazis blow each other up is the perfect date movie for VD Day.
@LoveHandles:
oh no, I see a whole cottage-industry of Tom Cruise jokes ala- "Chuck NOrris" sayings...
"Tom Cruise can kill 5 movies with one studio..."
ps.
Is Paula Wagner a Scientologist? just wondering...
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