Tom Cruise friend and United Artists partner Paula Wagner is speaking out against accusations that Cruise is a flaming religious nutbag. Wagner said in a statement:
I have known and worked with Tom for more than 25 years. He's a rock-solid dependable partner, and I have the utmost respect and admiration for his talent, integrity, kindness, and dedication. Andrew Morton's book is a disgraceful piece of gossip-mongering, filled with distortions and outright lies that no sensible person will take seriously. I am not a Scientologist, nor are most of the people Tom and I work with, but that doesn't mean I can sit by silently while he is attacked for his religious beliefs. As a filmmaker and an American, I feel strongly that an individual's religion should have no bearing on their professional life. I have always believed that Americans celebrated these differences, and to see the vitriol that has been directed towards my friend is truly discouraging. It's easy to mock an out-of-context video, but that doesn't change the fact that Tom Cruise is one of the hardest-working and nicest human beings I have ever known.
"I have always believed that Americans celebrated these differences." What country have you been living in hon? People don't celebrate differences - they tolerate them. That's why it's called "tolerance."
And people are not attacking Tom Cruise for his religious beliefs - no one gives a god damn whether Tom is a Baptist or a Taoist or a Rosicrucian or whatever the fuck. It's his wild-eyed fanatical self-righteousness that people are attacking.
If Tom said, "Scientology is what I believe in. It may not be for everyone, but it works for me. I respect people's right to disagree with me as I hope they respect my right to disagree with them," then everything would be fine. But that's not what he's saying in those videos. Instead he's saying, "We Scientologists think we have all the answers, and if we had our way, everyone else would think the same way too." He's not celebrating differences in those videos or even tolerating them - he's claiming a superior moral position on the basis of his faith, which makes him as bad as any narrow-minded nut of any religion, and therefore worthy of attack by those who believe the enemy is not religion per se or any single faith but rather the mindset of the zealot.
Face it Paula - your buddy Tom fucked himself by letting people see what a wack-job he truly is. And he fucked you too because now any movies he makes for UA are going to be flops. No amount of damage-control is going to change the reality that a lot of people have been put off Tom Cruise forever because of this. He's finished, and you would do well to distance yourself from him. Rats abandoning the sinking ship and all that.
(source)
