This entry is all about the recent stuff about Tom Cruise, so if that kind of gossipy nonsense annoys you, ta-ta for now and I promise not to do it again. I really understand, because I usually don’t even think about giving a thought to what is making Hollywood headlines. But I find myself a little fascinated with this one, because I can’t decide whether Cruise is being the most bizarre, or the studio is, or we (the public) are. And also, there might be a hidden religious angle to all this, so maybe I’m not being totally off-topic.

The recent story, (one write-up here) is that Paramount has dropped him “because of his offscreen behavior.” Really? As opposed to Susan Sarandon’s political screeds, Robert Downey Jr.’s constant drug arrests and the offensive remarks and behavior of numerous other celebrities whose star, if no longer on the rise, isn’t being shuttered by the studio guys? Just what is it that Cruise is supposed to have done? The explanation always runs about the same:

“Cruise raised eyebrows with several publicity gaffes in the past year, including his couch-hopping appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” his outspoken espousal of Scientology and denunciations of psychiatry.”

Couch-hopping appearance? I have now heard about this so much that I had to go hunt it down on the internet. I knew it would be there, and it was. Here it is, thankfully edited down to just get to the highlights. Well, yeah. It’s for sure that that boy’s just not right. But then, that audience just ain’t right either. Where in the world did they round up a passel of women who would go into a bobbysoxer squealfest over weird ol’ Tom Cruise? And why is Oprah acting like she’s seeing a guy whose just crazy in love? People in love don’t fidget, giggle, pound the floor, jump on furniture and act like they want to kill you. (This video doesn’t really seem that much of a stretch.) Are show people really that totally out of touch with normal behavior? She should’ve slapped the snot out of him and told him to behave himself. Or maybe she should have told him that for a guy who has been accused of being a homosexual for years to come onto national television and leap around going “I’m in love with a woman! Yep! I’m straight and I’m high on heterosexuality, baby!” might not have been the smartest thing to do.

Still, I can’t understand why Paramount would give a rip about this. So he acted stupid on Oprah — big whoop. What about the “denunciations of psychiatry” charge? I won’t even try to hunt this down on the internet, because I’m afraid I’d have to watch too much of an interview show, and then I’d have to go directly to sleep to replenish the lost brain cells. But I gather that he chewed out a couple people about taking anti-depressants or giving their kids Ritalin. Well, again, I’m not sure I see the unforgiveable offense here, at least if the studio is claiming to be watching out for what the public thinks. Those drugs probably are at least a little bit controversial to people, and unless he did the furniture-hopping baboon number on those shows too, I’d consider that a person is entitled to their opinion and even occasionally entitled to feel strongly enough about it to confront someone.

The unspoken truth is that Cruise probably isn’t seeming like a big moneymaker to the big corpo guys anymore. I get the impression that others share my response to Tom Cruise: he just seems curiously unappealing at all times. The only movies where I’ve been able to stand him are the ones where he plays a total jerk — “Rainman,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Magnolia” for examples. (Come to think of it, Cruise’s behavior on Oprah reminds me a lot of his “Magnolia” character’s response to an interviewer trying to get him to be honest.) Coming off self-righteous by laying him off isn’t likely to be a bad move with the moviegoers, and it may shake up a lot of big stars who think they’re untouchable.

And then there’s the bit about him being too outspoken for Scientology. I guess that’s so, but since when has a movie studio been watching out for my religious sensibilities? But as “Get Religion” notes, both the studio and the reporters covering the news aren’t really spelling out what they mean by that:

I would argue that, for millions of Americans, all of this seemingly bizarre behavior is connected. Many Americans now believe that Cruise is bizarre because they consider his personal beliefs bizarre. In short, the connecting thread is the public’s view of Scientology.

This is hard for the media to deal with because (a) it’s hard to write about Scientology, period, in Hollywood and elsewhere; (b) quite a few people in the MSM consider all strong, doctrinaire religious beliefs somewhat bizarre; and (c) because all of this is linked to years of rumors about Cruise that, frankly, may never escape the world of innuendo.

That’s just it. The great unsaid is that a lot of people in this country are Christians of some stripe, and a lot of Christians have a problem with Scientology. And a lot of secular reporters have a problem with Christians AND Scientology, and so they don’t tend to shed any real light on the problem because it annoys them to discuss any organized religion without saying that it sucks.

I still don’t think that’s enough to have gotten Cruise fired, but maybe some combination of all those factors more than explains it. And it’s unlikely to make a real crimp in my day to know that he’ll only have the other forty-bajillion dollars he’s made to scrape by with. But he may have to settle for just jumping around on his own furniture for a while.