J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible
There's something quaintly old school about Hollywood PR fluff machine Entertainment Tonight, whose "reporters" accept every word that tumbles from the mouths of their A-list fixations as celebrity gospel. They recently sent Jann Carl (cloned, we think, off a sample taken from Mary Hart's right ankle) to interview Tom Cruise about Mission: Impossible 3. The result was yet another Cruise-controlled conversation about the diminutive daredevil's fearless stunt work ("You prepare and you prepare, and even if things go wrong, you prepare so that it won't go that wrong. But I do feel the adrenaline!") But it was a bonus video with a nervous-seeming M:i:III director J.J. Abrams, made available on the ET website, that revealed perhaps a more candid glimpse at what's involved in directing a Tom Cruise vehicle. A partial transcript:
From the outside in, I probably would have been paralyzed with fear doing something like this, 'cause you think huge movie, biggest star in the world. [...] I felt like it was a movie franchise that hadnt really as good as the first two were that hadn't...really...taken advantage of what the TV series promised, and taken advantage of the potential in that regard, which is taking advantage of this team... I mean, clearly, Tom Cruise is the star, but this is very much a movie where the team works together plots and executes these incredibly intricate and very cool missions. And that for me was the fun of the series.
You have to pity a talent like Abrams, who tumbled out of the safe zone of his Lost TV universe, and landed with a shell-shocked thud into the world of summer blockbuster filmmaking: treacherous waters filled with increasingly hungry Paramount alligators and one toothy little piranha in wrap-around shades who'll chew through your stomach sooner than have you forget who's the star of the show.
