Timing is everything

nobody@vox.com(Mikester) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:39:29 -0800

I had nice chuckle the last couple of weeks. Anyone who read my post about Tom Cruise and Sumner Redstone, I posited a theory that Mr. Redstone's behavior, i.e., "firing" Tom Cruise, was driven by the price of Viacom stock, or perhaps more directly, to the magnitude of his fortune. Whenever a theory is put forth, it always is a good idea to revisit it later as more data becomes available to see if it still fits the circumstances. Well I have to smugly say it does with an exclamation point!

One odd thing is this is very old news now. The so-called firing took place in August and here we are in November and all of a sudden, Mr. Redstone has been at it again. The time coincidental event is the release of the Mission Impossible III DVD (October 30th). One theory that has many adherants is any publicity is better than none. I suspect Mr. Redstone believes this. He is interviewed in the December Vanity Fair, which appeared on October 31st (one day after the DVD release). Among the comments he made was that "Paula, like women everywhere, had come to hate him." This is of course a very suppressive comment and there certainly is no possible way he could know the viewpoint of all women. But I digress. The point is, this publication came out almost to the day with the release of the MI III DVD, which I noticed was being promoted heavily on television.

I find it very peculiar (not really) that the leading DVD in sales this week is MI III, a showcase for an actor that Sumner Redstone believes half the population hates. He expounded "his [Tom's] behavior was entirely unacceptable to [my wife,] Paula, and to the rest of the world. He didn't just turn one [woman] off. He turned off all women, and a lot of men.… He was embarrassing the studio. The truth of the matter is Tom is a star, is very popular and the sales figures support this. MI II came out in May 2000, was a huge blockbuster at the theatre, and this was before people had DVD player en masse and before the industry-wide slide in theatre attendance. Sumner Redstone will still make some decent money off of this movie.

Meanwhile, Tom is now running United Artists with his producing partner Paula Wagner. Not bad!

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Timing is everything