ROME – Tom Cruise said he finds Lauren Bacall’s recent remarks about him “supremely ironic.” Bacall’s observations, which appear in the August 8 issue of Time magazine, begin with the charge that Cruise’ recent behavior is shocking.
“It’s inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially,” said Bacall, who appears in the occasional ad for a discount store chain and for prescription drug companies. “I think it’s kind of a sickness.”
“That’s marvelous,” said Cruise, tilting his head wryly to one side and purposely employing a that term Bacall uses frequently herself. “Just marvelous, you know. I really dig the irony there.”
Irony?
“Of course,” said Cruise. “I’m well acquainted with irony, and I know the difference between irony and coincidence. Anyone who knows a thing about irony or about Lauren Bacall’s life, will see the irony in her remarks, too.”
Cruise, who is in Rome filming Mission: Impossible 3, considers the parallels between his life and Bacall’s “instructive.” To begin, both changed their names. Cruise, 43, from Thomas Cruise Mapother IV; Bacall, 81, from Betty Joan Persky.
What’s more, both made news for their romantic attachments. Cruise for getting engaged recently to a woman sixteen years younger than he is; Bacall for being nineteen when she met and fell in love with her future husband, Humphrey Bogart, on the set of To Have and Have Not. Bogart was forty-four at the time, and working on his third failed marriage.
Bogie and Bacall were married the following year, 1945, on a farm in Ohio.They appeared together in The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo before Bogart died of cancer in 1957.
Cruise, who once studied for the priesthood, credits Scientology with helping him “to discover the irony that informs human conduct” and to cure his dyslexia. He laments the fact that “people are so uptight these days you can’t have a little fun with them.”
According to Cruise, his well-publicized comments about Brooke Shields were “just a little post-modern levity.” So was his confrontation with Today show host Matt Lauer.
“Where in the world is Matt Lauer coming from?” chuckled Cruise. “Obviously, he and Brooke are a lot less hip than I gave them credit for being. I thought everyone knew Freud was gay.
“That’s one of the things I like best about [fiancee] Kate [Holmes],” Cruise continued. “She got a highly developed sense of irony. She cracks me up. The more the press reports that she’s not allowed to talk for herself, the less she says. Now there’s ironic!”
With that Cruise smiled ironically and said, “It’s been great talking to you, but I’ve got to check in with Kate’s baby sitter. I didn’t have time to reprogram Kate this morning, and I’m afraid she might start trying to think for herself.”
In related news, Cruise said he “finds it ironic” that President Bush believes in the theory of intelligent design.
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