Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly
Running time: 3 hours and 8 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language, drug use, sexuality and violence

by Jaime Davis, Ian Hrabe and Emily Maesar

The Tommy C. Appreciation Club, or TCAC, solemnly swears to watch and appreciate all theatrical performances by Tom Cruise then recap them, round-table style. In this edition, the Moviejawn crew dissects Tommy’s performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.

Jaime Davis, The Fixer - Hi everyone! I’m jumping up and down on the sofa like Cruise in my excitement now that we’ve finally gotten to this point in the Tommy C. Appreciation Club - Magnolia time! P.T. Anderson’s sprawling, three hourrrr longggg 1999 opus about dealing (or not) with our past trauma while navigating life’s coincidences is my favorite Tommy C. performance EVER. Cruise plays intense, immature lady-killer self-help guru Frank T.J. Mackey, general of the “Battle of the Bush” and all-around “Master of the Muffin” who’s just been informed his estranged bad dad is about to die. I love it so much, I’m not even sure where to start, actually. So let’s go with...the hair! Omg that hair. I even grew my hair out recently (it used to be short) just so I could wear it in his signature half-up, half-down pony.

What I think really gets me so emo over his iconic role is how close the film mirrors his own relationship with his father, which inspired Anderson’s final script. In real life, Cruise only saw his abusive, neglectful father twice after the age of 12 - one of those times was while his father lay on his deathbed. And I think this really adds to the nuanced layers of his performance - he really goes for it here. You watch this and think, Cruise can actually, like act. Like he can do that thing!

Nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in the best supporting actor categories, Cruise was ultimately shut out by the Academy for all three of his Oscar nominations (though the HFPA granted him Golden Globes for all three of his noms). At the 2000 Academy Awards, Cruise was up against Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules (the winner), Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile. Nothing against any of these films, because I remember liking almost all of them, but like, what? First of all, Haley Joel Osment was too young anyway, Jude Law was just playing a slightly smarmier version of himself, and does anyone remember anything at all from The Cider House Rules? (I have nothing bad to say about Michael Clarke Duncan. He was a treasure.) So here’s my question to the group: was Tommy C. robbed at the 2000 Oscars or am I just overthinking?

Emily Maesar - I think, especially with how well you’ve laid out the nominees from the 2000 Academy Awards for Supporting Actor, it’s pretty clear that Cruise was robbed. I think both his performance in Magnolia and Michael Clarke Duncan’s performance in The Green Mile were the two that should have actually been competing for the award. And I wonder if maybe that’s why Michael Caine won in the first place? Perhaps those two performances were too strong that they split the vote. All five actors are good in their respective flicks, but powerhouses I think they are not. At least not in the films they were nominated for, in particular. Now, do I think it should have been Cruise over Duncan? I honestly don’t have an answer to that question and I’m grateful I didn’t have to vote on it!

Magnolia is an interesting film for me because I didn’t see it for the first time until a few years ago. Maybe 2016, I think? I was obsessed with it, though, from the moment my then-boyfriend sat us down for the three hour and nine minute film (a length that seems excessive, but I think Paul Thomas Anderson uses exceptionally well). I think I’d seen a few PTA films by then, but I still hadn’t actually seen any of Cruises’s more “mature work,” or at least not work where I thought of him as anything but a movie star. Tom Cruise was always big and fun to me. He’s either swimming in the River of Ham with fun roles like Lestat, being cool and hot in 80s flicks like Top Gun or absolutely killing the stunt game in recent years as Ethan Hunt. Those were the three modes for Cruise for me, even though film school.

And yet… Magnolia is pure actor Cruise for me. This is the absolutely drop dead amazing performance of a character actor that wins them an Oscar. He’s in Duncan’s company for a reason, after all. But “character actor” Tom Cruise is decidedly not. He’s just a damn good actor in general and the swings he makes in just the interview scene alone is absolutely Oscar worthy. And I wonder if the fact that he didn’t win the Oscar for this film, one that was so personal and deeply emotional, changed his acting trajectory at all.

Ian Hrabe - You are both 1000% correct re: this performance getting robbed at the Oscars. This was my third viewing of Magnolia and it was so much fun to just key in on Tommy C’s performance. I always loved this performance going back to the first time I saw it when I was 17, and I feel like it plays a lot differently now that I’m a grown ass man in my mid-30s. While most people probably remember the over-the-top “Seduce and Destroy” seminar Cruise in this movie, my absolute favorite part of this role is when the interviewer confronts him about his past and he silently sits there glaring a hole through her head. Behind all the braggadocio and insane confidence he’s still the 12 year-old boy his father abandoned to take care of his dying mother. The second half of the performance--where he confronts his dying father--we see all of that confidence fully evaporated. Though Frank T.J. Mackey’s character has the film’s most pronounced arc, Cruise is out to prove that he is more than just a swaggering handsome guy and delivering the most nuanced performance of his career feels like Magnolia’s dramatic core.

I am so curious as to what was going on in Tommy C’s life circa 1999-2001. In a filmography that is almost exclusively romantic leads and action heroes, you have Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, and Vanilla Sky. You can maybe extend that out to Collateral in 2004, which is a great performance in a legitimately great film, but it’s nowhere near as capital-W WEIRD as those other three. The only other off-kilter performances I can think of are his brilliantly goofy turn in Tropic Thunder (2008) and Rock of Ages (2012). Everything else is jumping out of airplanes, explosions, car chases, fist fights, white samurais, and smarm. Was it his agent’s idea to get weird at this time? Certainly not, right? This is one of the all time handsomes. You see those glimmering pearly-whites and each one might as well have a dollar sign etched on it. It just seems shocking that Scientology leader David Miscaviage would sign off on allowing Cruise to take a role that is so emotionally vulnerable.

I’m just wondering if we will ever see Cruise this raw again, or if this is one of those roles he regrets because it peels back the veneer to an uncomfortable degree. I bet we get at least one “Old Tom Cruise” movie when he’s doing his latter days Paul Newman gimmick, but honestly if anyone is going to be making blockbuster action movies into his 70s it’s gonna be Tom Cruise. While I’d certainly love to see him going for that ever elusive Oscar in some tender end-of-life meditation 30 years from now, I’d also like to see him ramping off a skyscraper in a Rascal in Mission Impossible 23: Geezer Protocol. Or a close quarters action sequence where he beats down 5 dudes with a tennis ball-tipped cane in Mission Impossible 24: Fogey Nation. Ok somebody else better go before this thing evolves into a never-ending spiral of Mission Impossible fanfiction.

Jaime Davis - Emily, that’s an interesting question you pose about Cruise’s acting trajectory after losing at the Academy Awards for his performance in Magnolia. I read like a tiny little tidbit (maybe in this article?) that basically confirms your hypothesis - that post-Oscars 2000, he decided to stop awards hunting and just have some fun, which can perhaps explain why his Ethan Hunt antics went crazy off the charts starting with him hanging from a goddamn mountain rock in Mission: Impossible II. And I realize he probably filmed that just prior to losing the Oscar that SO CLEARLY WAS HIS (or Michael Clarke Duncan’s) but still, I feel like the rock-climbing thing really kicked off his serious M:I stunt game.

Ian, I’m really intrigued by your ideas for the future of the Mission: Impossible franchise (and I want there to be a Fogey Nation - this must happen). But you’re so right, he hasn’t branched out as much in terms of his acting besides the movies you mention (omg Collateral - yes!) It would be amazing to see him reach for that golden statue in his golden years - I think my dream role for him would be playing an old curmudgeonly charmer who changes his ways alongside an all-star cast, like a Newman in Nobody’s Fool moment. So, as we wrap up this installment of Tommy C. Appreciation Club, I ask you both one final thing: what kind of role would you write for Cruise’s awards comeback in 2035?

Emily - Ooh, I love when I think something without a shred of evidence and then maybe get some with a google! It’s a bit sad, though, because his more serious drama roles are all so good and interesting. Not that I don’t love all the films in Cruise’s catalog. There’s no doubt that he cares very deeply about the films he makes, especially the audience experience. I think that’s why he’s one of the biggest stars in the world, in all honesty. I think it’s very possible, and likely, that those strange outliers of his career, like Tropic Thunder or Rock of Ages as Ian mentioned, are possibly Cruise realizing that the general audience might want something fun and funny in between his action films. They’re pretty well spaced when you look at his overall filmography.

As for your questions, Jaime, I think I’d end up wanting him to do something akin to The Master. Obviously, there’s a lot of things that make up that PTA flick, but Scientology is a very clear baseline. (Side note: very curious what Cruise’s relationship to Anderson is now, both after Magnolia, but specifically after The Master. Apparently they were still friends in 2012 when the flick was coming out, according to The Wrap. Wonder if that’s still true or not.)

I think that if he were to have his personal life change drastically, and do a film that has an emotional core for him, like Magnolia clearly does, then that performance might be the absolute best of his career. I think it’s very possible he could finally win an Oscar for it, not just be nominated. Here’s hoping we get to do a Tommy C. Appreciation Club about that film in the future.

Ian Hrabe - This is the most mental bandwidth I have ever devoted to Tom Cruise and the more I let his glimmering chiclets stew in my brain, the more I think about what it must be like to be Tom Cruise. This is a guy who clearly manages his life like a machine. We all got a peek behind the curtain when he was reaming out the Mission: Impossible 7 crew about not adhering to COVID protocols, and while I was personally delighted by his rage, the flipside is that you clearly heard a dude who sends back his meal if his boiled chicken breast and egg whites aren’t cooked just so. This is why, to Emily’s query about Tommy C’s relationship with PTA, Tommy C probably classifies PTA as a Suppressive Person after his masterful (I am so sorry) Scientology hitjob.

Tom Cruise’s Oscar winning role in 2035 can go two ways. In one, he improbably abandons his Operating Thetan VIII status in Scientology and stars in a loosely autobiographical story of his life. The Academy would give him the Oscar sight-unseen for that. The other path is some sort of forgettable <insert Oscar Bait here> movie where the Academy gives him the glorified lifetime achievement award (like the one Brad Pitt just got for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…, though to be fair Pitt legit earned that puppy). I think he gets it someday, if only because I feel like he’s the type of person who will actively try to win one at some point in an attempt to <adopts Werner Herzog voice> fill the unfillable void at the center of his person. And if that fails, we can always look forward to Mission Impossible 32: Get Off My Lawn You Whippersnappers.

The Tommy C. Report Card was completed by Alex Rudolph, Emily Maesar and Ian Hrabe. The final score reflects an average of all report cards completed by TCAC and is taken extremely seriously...which is to be expected.

Come back next month when the Tommy C. Club discusses a flick perfect to watch with your sweetheart, Endless Love!