Ground Control to Major Tom...

Tom Cruise

This is an illustration I did to coincide with the release of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, where Cruise was facing enormous public pressure after making disparaging remarks regarding Brooke Shields’ medication and professional treatment for Post-partum depression. As well publicized, Cruises’ faith, The Church of Scientology, dismisses Psychiatry as a pseudo-science. However there are no shortage of people who believe that Scientology is a bogus cult whose distaste for psychiatry is due to the medical belief in hypnotic techniques, and the further assertion that the Church of Scientology exploits people through this very method.

Cruise was also criticized for his bizarre behaviour on the Oprah Winfrey Show around this time, and this influenced this illustration. Like the popular term for when a TV show has gone down hill – “Jumping the Shark” – after the famous episode of Happy Days where Fonzie water-skied over a shark net, the term “Jumped the Couch” is being employed for who have unwittingly destroyed their own career.

Hopefully Tom will come back from this perceived slump; personal matters aside and despite a reputation for cheesy roles (“I feel the need; the NEED for SPEED!”) all you have to do is watch his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia as Frank T.J. Mackey (author of Seduce and Destroy, a self-help book for men to get women to sleep with them) to see he is a considerable talent in his own right.

(Click on the illustration for a large-scale version; hold apple/control and wheel your mouse to fit in screen)