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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, April 17th, 2006 - 1 Comment »
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Cruise to Hijack Tribeca; De Niro Looking Forward to it Like a Vasectomy


As woefully out of the loop as I have been this month, you can imagine I am playing serious catch-up in my coverage of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Really though, despite world premieres of sure-to-be-worse-than-shitting-blood disaster films like Flight 93 and Poseidon, and despite the word on the street that has most of the other, smaller titles faring not a whole hell of a lot better, and despite a May 2 music showcase featuring an increasingly erratic and unlistenable Nellie McKay, the 2006 festival promises at least one event of a sparkling, life-affirming magnitude that this puny blog could never hope to contain.
And though by now it is somewhat old news, do not even think you are going to tell me it does not continue to swell your sex organs with blood:

Tom Cruise, the most exciting and successful action star in the world, returns to one of his signature roles, Secret Agent Ethan Hunt, in the summer’s most highly anticipated action thriller, Mission: Impossible III–and Cruise will celebrate the U.S. premiere of the film on May 3 at the Tribeca Film Festival with a full day of screenings and events throughout Manhattan as part of “Mission: NYC.” …

“We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City,” said Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro.

“Having the support of Tom Cruise and Paramount is a gift to us and the community,” said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the Festival. “We are delighted to host Director J.J. Abrams, Tom and the cast as we celebrate our own mission impossible–the fifth Tribeca Film Festival in only four years.”

The inevitablity of such a stunt–starting in the afternoon with Cruise’s appearance on TRL and ending six hours later after a boat/car/train/helicopter/motorcycle pentathalon of retardedness–was nothing anybody could not see coming. The same can be said for the film’s multiple screenings: Cruise will hit Tribeca and Harlem before exhaustedly crashing into the the Ziegfeld for the official premiere.
However, you cannot likely explain (or defend) Robert De Niro’s complicity in such garish antics, nor can you picture him actually uttering the words attributed to him in this press release. In fact, as I struggle with the reality of the whole apocalyptic package, I must withdraw to my imagination and ask: Which De Niro are we dealing with here?

1. COMPLACENT DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”


2. INVALID DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”


3. SUICIDAL DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”


4. FURIOUS DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”


5. HAUNTED DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”


6. CONDESCENDING DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

I hate to think the guy is even partially responsible for any of this–that his only “fall from Grace” occurs after a late-night bedroom bender. Alas, shit happens, and I think a particularly astute Cinematical reader named Nana said it best about the powerful phenomenon at hand:

I can’t wait even if I’m not living in America! lol

Tom Cruise litteraly invent premieres!

I read Dianetics by curiosity: it is dangerous because it is so beleivable and facsinating.

May 3, gang–plan your days off accordingly.
(Photo #5 by Mathias Bothor)

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1 Comment »

One Response to “Cruise to Hijack Tribeca; De Niro Looking Forward to it Like a Vasectomy”

  1. Anonymous says:
    April 20, 2006 at 11:30 pm

    this is hilarious

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon