“You need a scorecard to keep track of who’s dating who in Hollywood these days,” observes Charlene Tilton, a scribe for the Globe tabloid, tossing cardboard Olympian tens and nine-point-fives around like evil eavesdropping boomerangs with gossip-mongering guidance systems. “It hasn’t been this crazy since Liz Taylor and Richard Burton!”
Although we live in an age where Prince has likened himself to Beethoven and Puff Daddy claims his romance with J.-Lo. akin to that between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the Cruise / Kidman divorce still packs a punch. While John Cusack dumps Neve Campbell only to date ex-Seinfeld ex-Affleck babe Shoshanna Lonstein, jealous Jack Nicholson proposes to ex-soul mate Lara Flynn Boyle, Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett kiss and make-up, WWF star Chyna busts big daddy bo Triple H. in flagrante delicto and news that Bill Clinton tried to steal Julie Cypher from lesbo rocker Melissa Etheridge back in ’92 shimmies up the sides of our collective unconscious like juicy slop in a pig trough, the Blue Ribbon Porker remains The Wall Street Journal’s “Most Powerful Man In Hollywood,” risky business herself, Mr. Thomas Cruise.
After all, one of the greatest directors of the 20th Century actively solicited Tom and then-wife Nick for nine months before they agreed to shoot Eyes Wide Shut: But don’t for a second think that Stanley Kubrick was simply and innocently bedazzled by those pretty boy snouts & trotters. The perfect and perfectly orchestrated casting points to a very special subtext, an arduous, sly reality that both supports and obfuscates the dreamy allegory of a complex marriage on the rocks, told within and about a world of deception and illusion.
Although Kubrick’s last film went over-the-head and between-the-legs of most critics and movie-goers, his themes are crystal clear, their expression obsessively, breathtakingly realized: Husband Bill, played by Cruise, lies compulsively to his wife Alice, played by Kidman, who equally compulsively tells the truth. By living a lie, nothing is real for Bill, so everything becomes possible, thrusting him into a world of desire expressed outside himself; by teasing her husband with truth, everything is real for Alice, so only one path is possible, forcing her to play out her feelings in dreams. That interplay, the point of singularity between wakefulness and sleep, perception and illusion, truth and fiction, fidelity and infidelity, the reds and the blues, reaches a zenith by movie’s end, when we realize that neither partner has ever actually betrayed the other: Perception eventually supercedes reality, re-shaping it, over-powering it. Such an ongoing, unresolved dichotomy compels the astute viewer to ask: “If we’re damned if we ‘do,’ and equally damned if we ‘don’t,’ then what, if anything, is left, and how can we really know anything at all?” Not to end his career on a false or incomplete note, Kubrick answers that question, through the forever truthful lips of Alice, with perhaps the ultimate homage to Nature, the movie industry, and symbolically the high-profile Hollywood marriage of Tom & Nicole: “Let’s just fuck.”
As Peter Sellar’s Inspector Clousseau would say: “Not, any more,” while skeptics might scratch their heads and balls and mutter, “-;if ever.” With their divorce finalized, Nicole is now, officially and for the record, free to date Russell Crowe, George Clooney, Ewan McGregor or the ghost of Stanley Kubrick, and Tom is equally free to date Penelope Cruz on the cover of People magazine and sue gay porn star Kyle Brandon in the court of law. Meanwhile, we can’t help but visualize Stanley lying there, six feet under and grinning, oh so mischievously. Much like a dream, a multimedia processed Hollywood dream, we wake up in 2001 to find the very archetype of heterosexual glamour, success and envy disrupted, disjointed and perhaps a flat-out lie, a computer-generated phantom, like those pixellated studio additions blocking the orgy scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, steering the movie clear of an NC-17 rating, fun for the whole family!
Of course, not everyone’s fooled, or even remotely shocked, for that matter-;But we’re all entertained. Most of those “in the know,” especially in the entertainment industry, acknowledge, accept and effortlessly perpetuate the lies. After all, Hollywood is all about the creation and sustenance of Illusion, a business plan that permeates every level and every nook of show biz: It always has, and it always will. Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it sure doesn’t sell; and if you think that “Coming Out” doesn’t hurt someone’s career, then go ask Scott Thompson-;Or, or, what’s her name again?-;Oh, yeah. Ellen.
Meanwhile, all these straight people are having loads of fun! Nicole, divorce proceedings aside, got shady and mucked-up Russell Crowe’s roe with Meg Ryan, while Meg’s ex Dennis Quaid has hooked-up with Shana Moakler, Olympic boxer Oscar de la Hoya’s ex, who’s just … Q.: Is anybody really keeping score? Does anybody really give a shit? A.: YES. “Incoming!”
-; But hey, do you really think those talking velociraptors in Jurassic Park III are gay?