#ProjectTom — Entry One: The Journey Begins

Scott Fluhler
Aug 8, 2017 · 6 min read

[August 19th, 2015: 2:14 AM] — (EDITOR’S NOTE — the year 2015 will now be significant for no other purpose than a reference point for my state of mind two years ago. I’m embarrassed for myself already.)

Yes, 2:14 AM. I bolt upright from a dead sleep.

I’ve got it! I’ll watch every movie of the Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise canons in order and blog about it. What a fun journey that’ll be!

Needing no further elaboration on the idea, I fall back asleep, praying I remember my epiphany in the morning.

I could’ve written it down but… Nah, I’ll roll the dice. One of my favorite personal rules for middle of the night ideas is: If it sticks and I remember in the morning then I know it’s worth pursuing. If not then it fades away into the abyss, alongside other gems like the perforated banana peeler (an automated machine to help peel a banana perfectly every time) or “You should wake up an hour early tomorrow and go running”. (EDITOR’S NOTE: I work out at least 5 mornings a week now at this amazing local gym called Basecamp. A rare moment of me actually improving upon my life.)

Fortunately, the idea stuck. Which leads to the following question: Why?

Simple answer: The Tom’s are officially a part of my life.

As it concerns Tom Hanks, this was no surprise. It was a slow, methodical process. Years of endearing acting roles combined with ET! introspective fluff pieces to cement him as my favorite actor and my favorite person. Disclaimer: My favorite person outside of my immediate family… Disclaimer for the Disclaimer: Though, honestly, there were some angst-y teen years where I would’ve put him above my family too.

Originally posted by theworstmobster

Hanks is, to me and (frankly) to everyone, infallible. Playing the ordinary guy you can’t help but love. His persona follows him from screen seamlessly into the real world. Charming, normal, relatable. Just what we want in a movie star. You can pick up a copy of Us Weeks and confidently proclaim; “Hey, he’s just like me!”

Look, I have a father. A great one. One I look up to and admire. But in a hypothetical parallel universe where I am forced to choose a new father because some wrinkle in the space-time barrier, or whatever sci-fi people say, forced me to choose someone besides my own, biological father… I’d choose Hanks.

Maybe he and I have a catch. Maybe he puts a little heat on the ball to keep me honest. We laugh. We josh around. We sip some iced teas on the porch afterwards. We’re pals.

Originally posted by millionsofsuns

And then there’s Tom Cruise.

For Cruise, it hit me, like, two weeks ago. It made about as much sense as me adopting an entirely new dating strategy because some moss on a boulder in Joshua Tree told me to. We can get to that story another time. (EDITOR’S NOTE — Holy crap another area I improved. No more dating woes! Maybe a month after I put Project Tom on ice, I met an incredible girl who learned of my obsession for Tom Hanks on our first date…ill-advised ice-breaker I now recognize…and she’s still my girlfriend! Look at me. But actually, let’s look back at Tom Cruise.)

I’ve spent a lifetime being put off by Cruise’s personal life, tolerating his movies mostly because I wanted to see another series of explosions and dangerous stunts. The man did nothing for me and frankly, was a joke. The only Cruise moments that stood out in my mind were the Oprah couch incident, Cruise’s opening scene cameo from Austin Powers: Goldmember and, weirdly, Rosie O’Donnell’s (and my own mother’s) “Cutie Patootie” obsession with him. That’s it.

But for whatever reason, somewhere during Cruise’s obligatory press marathon for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, something flipped and he transformed from a joke into an endlessly fascinating study of human behavior and development. He’s secretive, larger than life, and some even describe him as evil. He’s highly inaccessible and almost unbelievable as a human.

Try picturing Tom Cruise as a child… Try picturing him as a grey-haired, wrinkly old man… Try picturing him sitting on a couch and watching an episode of Friends. It’s impossible. Does “We were on a break!” even mean anything to him?!

And yet, by all accounts, we assume Tom Cruise to be a human. How is this so? He must have things that he enjoys outside of movies? Or does he?…

Originally posted by leekimhoung

Cruise has been quoted saying that making movies is his vacation. Okay… suspending our disbelief and assuming this were actually true, what must his normal life be like to warrant him making that statement? A statement that boils down to: working IS a vacation. Implying that real life is therefore, work.

A scientific paper always starts with a hypothesis. And while I don’t claim whatever it is that I’m doing here to be science, or based on anything other than what I choose to make of this human being, my hypothesis for Tom Cruise is that: His greatest acting role is simply day-to-day life. He, unlike Hanks, has no real concept of how to relate to the every-man and therefore, is most comfortable when he is given a script and source material to base his “character” off. In real life, there is no script. No set of rules/code to abide by. Perhaps it’s a major reason why he almost joined seminary school as a teen or why he has thrown himself so whole-heartedly into Scientology. He needs a framework to live by. Any framework.

Hanks, on the other hand, seemingly uses acting as a brand building process. He makes projects that interest him and furthermore, projects that he wants others to be interested by. Hanks has figured it out. Hanks makes what Hanks want, to bring himself and others happiness. And the rest is all gravy.

I can’t hide the fact that while both Toms are people I think about on a weekly and, now, daily basis, Hanks is in another echelon and were I to pick someone that I’d expect to learn the most from, it’d be him. Though, there is also something oddly alluring to the trajectory of Cruise. His focus, his drive and his mystery. So, I wonder, what could I glean from studying Cruise as well?

And here we are.

Two actors diverged somewhere around 1980, both destined for super stardom and, yet, both fundamentally and dynamically different. Are there lessons to be learned from each? Or am I shooting too high and this post will be the ironically prophetic words that I will look back on in two weeks, two months, one year from now and laugh at? (EDITOR’S NOTE — I undershot it. It’s two years later and…no…I’m not laughing at all. Shit, this was kind of a good idea.)

Originally posted by imthehuman

Scott Fluhler

Written by

#ProjectTom is back. Enjoy my brain dump

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