It doesn’t matter how much anybody loves movies, the chances are at least 99% that they don’t love them anywhere near as much as Tom Cruise, who holds such an adoration for his chosen art form that it regularly borders on obsession.
The star has freely admitted that he sees almost every theatrical release to emerge from Hollywood, but nobody has any idea what his favourites are because he staunchly refuses to reveal them. He loves watching them, he loves making them, and he knows more about how they’re made than the vast majority of high-powered industry figures, but he’s keeping that knowledge all to himself.
In addition to working with many of the industry’s greatest-ever directors, from Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick to Paul Thomas Anderson and John Woo, across drama, thrillers, comedy, romance, and action, Cruise is also a storied producer with billions of dollars in ticket sales to his name for the projects he’s built from the ground up and backed to the hilt.
His co-stars regularly heap untold volumes of praise on his dedication and commitment to the art of filmmaking, and even his infamous rant at the crew of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning came from a place of love after he outlined in no uncertain terms how the sequel shooting at the height of the pandemic was keeping so many people gainfully employed and ensuring their livelihood.
Cruise has never shown any inclination to direct, but he did have a short-lived stint as a studio mogul when he and long-time producing partner Paula Wagner briefly assumed command of United Artists. In an age where Hollywood’s biggest productions are experiencing regular struggles at the box office and succumbing to both the law of diminishing returns and becoming increasingly formulaic, Cruise laughed all the way to the bank when Top Gun: Maverick and the aforementioned Mission: Impossible sequel combined to clear $2.1 billion.
He’s been an A-list mainstay for almost 40 years, he’s one of the few stars left in Tinseltown that can open a movie based on their name alone, he’s learned from many of the finest filmmakers to have ever stepped behind the camera, and his passion for cinema is unwavering. Cruise could teach a lesson or two to every studio head around town, then, but he’s keeping his personally-curated crash course to himself.
As it turns out, there’s one thing more prestigious than getting on Cruise’s cake list, and it’s watching his self-taped film school. Maverick co-star Glen Powell revealed to GQ that he sat alone in an empty cinema for six hours watching a video of Cruise talking directly to the camera and breaking down everything he’s ever learned about filmmaking over the decades, but the actor disappointingly shared that “he said this is just for my friends.”
Admittedly, creating an exhaustive homemade film school that runs for six hours and won’t be shown to anybody he doesn’t consider a buddy is insane, but it’s also typical Cruise. The industry is continuing to struggle in the face of an ongoing downturn that’s being increasingly eaten into by streaming and shortened windows between theatrical and VOD releases, which is something the star cannot abide by.
He’ll never make a movie for streaming, it was written into his contract that Maverick and Dead Reckoning wouldn’t be available at home after they’d spent months on the big screen, and he’s become a massively successful and incredibly wealthy fellow by understanding what it is audiences want to see and then giving it to them. The man is an untapped fountain of knowledge, and if any boardroom had common sense, it would be going out of its way to make the Tom Cruise film school appointment viewing.
