Tom Cruise Wants to Die and That's What Makes the Movies So Good

The stunts are not stunts to him, they're cries to God

Themes: Mission: Impossible 8, my dad, my body, being tired

I am so tired. I’m so tired! I told EJ I used to think this was something people made up when they didn’t want to do something, but didn’t want to be rude. “Oh, I can’t, I’m really tired!” and then they’re out of the plans. But I didn’t know tiredness was something that could affect you and that you tended to like thaT.

I’m not sure if this is a fat thing or what, but I’m not really affected by physical stuff that much. If I eat or don’t, sleep or don’t, sick or not, take medicine or not, my alertness and capabilities never really seem to change. In my teens and twenties and thirties, I would stay up late sometimes doing nothing, sometimes drinking or partying or hanging, and then no matter how little sleep I would get, the next day it would just be like a reset.

The night before the SAT I was really nervous and got like 3 hours of sleep and did fine. (BETTER than fine!!). I never got hungover or headaches- this isn’t to brag and I hope the universe doesn’t take back this gift that I took for granted, but I’m feeling tired now!!!!!! Like, often. A lot.

I think it’s because I’m doing jiu jitsu at 7:30am a lot of days so not only am I exerting more, I’m getting less sleep. Sleep is so hard for me. And it always has been. I don’t know how to fall asleep. Falling asleep is scary and hard for me. I worry. I lay awake worrying or daydreaming about being skinny (vulnerable!!!!!!) I used to a lot more but I still do. I think about what outfits I would wear, and plan them in my mind, if I was comfortable and GOD FORBID confident in my body.

Somewhere along the line (I blame all the media I watched in the early 2000’s) I equated being confident in your body with being raped. This is fucked up!!! And I know all the stuff that’s cognitively right that dispels that, but it’s this deep fear that connected for me. There was a girl who went to a different high school but I knew through friends who was very confident and posted naked/revealing pictures on myspace and went on to do burlesque and boudoir and be a photographer and when I see her out in her outfits I’m physically scared for her. It makes me scared. I think someone’s just going to pick her up and rape her.

It makes me scared to dress in a way I think men will find inviting or that I couldn’t run in. Realizing that this fundamental way I present and see myself is so affected by fear, it’s honestly kind of a lot. I’ve tried to talk about it in therapy but I do well when I can unravel something, find the beginning where it started and connect it to other things that paint a picture that makes sense to me and then I see myself more clearly. ‘Oh, that’s why I feel that, that’s why I do that.’ This has always been there and I’ve never understood it. Why me? Why doesn’t everyone else feel this? Why is it so intense?

Looking back on my sexual experiences, a lot of them would count as nonconsensual, because I didn’t feel like I could say no. I was scared but didn’t know I was, and trying to be ‘sexually independent’ an idea I got from shitty writers in girl teen magazines who if I met now I would strangle. The way we used to talk and address young girls (13-30) makes me sick if I sit with it. How to please men, how to make men like you, how to dress to get attention. It’s so harmful!! I hated myself because men who were worth n o t h i n g didn’t like me.

I have this tendency to have a crush on men who I can’t be with-(teachers a lot of the time), and I think it’s because I want validation in that space but I also want to be seen and valued by someone I respect, and because I assume it can never happen so it’s safe. I keep having these weird crushes on my jiu jitsu coaches pop up that don’t even make sense, I don’t know these men at all, just that they know how to choke people and have curly hair or tattoos.

When I think about it for more than one second, I don’t actually want anything to happen with them, that would suck. I’m in love with jiu jitsu and if the person teaching it to me was also trying to have sex with me or having sex with me that would suck. I don’t want to complicate an already hard space, I actually think that’s a fucked up thing that happens in art spaces, I observed it a lot in comedy but assume it’s the same everywhere- a girl enters a scene trying to learn something and she’s immediately hit on and pursued by men who are much more established than her in that space, and then they date or hook up and often she either continues dating them or doesn’t but she ends up not sticking with comedy, or being more in his shadow, which I hate and am grateful that didn’t happen to me.

Often you think you want male attention but male attention actually sucks. When men want something from you? That’s awful! The worst. When men you don’t know think they can talk to you or try to get to know you because they’ve decided something about you without speaking to you once- I think it’s a curse. Being conventionally attractive I actually think is a burden that I’ve been grateful to not have and sometimes I think I have self-sabotaged (binge eaten, had eating disorders, gained weight) so as to be invisible and not worry about any of that. It’s scary to imagine all of a sudden being someone men care about.

None of this is self-pitying or fishing, I think I’m pretty, just not in a way that makes men I don’t know approach or notice me, which was the bane of my existence when I was younger but now I see as a blessing. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s all a jumble. Identity and self and image and weight and desirability, it’s all tangled together.

As I’ve been doing jiu jitsu I’ve been getting smaller which has been nice but then feels like a betrayal to my fat activism, and feels scary for all the other things I’ve said. No conclusion or insight, just a messy pile of thoughts.

We’re going to Europe again relatively soon, just got the tickets for me to go to NC a week before leaving and it’s in like 3 weeks. I am anxious to not do jiu jitsu for that long, and worried about my depression and leaving my routine that’s been working so well for my mental health. Worried about spending that much time with the kids, and the money and Covid.

My dad was just here and it was maybe the nicest visit we’ve ever had. He and I are both doing a lot of work on ourselves and I feel like this trip that was really apparent. We were both able to enjoy each other’s company and have so much fun for three days. No fights, or tense things and we talked about a lot! Trans women in sports, capitalism, the death of the two Israelis, colonialism, mental illness, etc. In the past these things could have easily devolved into yelling or arguing or crying, but we both were listening and calm and sharing and hearing. It didn’t even stand out to me as impressive until writing this honestly.

He came another time and we got in a fight after a play, which also happened with my mom. My family gets in a lot of fights! But not this time and it was a really great visit. I was especially charmed by his ability to be open to things and flexible- we wanted to go to the MOMA, met outside and realized we were both hungry. We got halal guys which was a long line but we chatted and finally got to the front. We didn’t finish our food so I put it in my bag. Apparently the MOMA doesn’t allow any food inside, not sealed in bags, not in a coat check-you can’t bring it in at all.

I assumed I would just have to throw it out but surprisingly (to me) my dad got mad when I told him and immediately said, “Fuck them” and we didn’t go! He said, “I don’t want to pay for the privilege of throwing my food away” and we left! Fuck the MOMA!!! It was so cool! Then we had to use the bathroom and the 53rd street library was right there and I love libraries and knew they would have public bathrooms. In we went, and it was a gorgeous huge library. They had so many amenities and activities. An adult puzzling table caught our eye and we sat down, looking through a binder of the printed pictures of all the puzzles you could ‘check out’ (they remain in the library) and work on!

We got a ‘cozy glamping’ Ravensberger one and sat there for close to three hours talking and puzzling. We almost finished it, it was so nice. I’ve never done that before! We had lunch with my cousin and went to an Irish bar to watch the Knicks and the Pacers, went to his hotel so I could poop, the Lego store, the Vessel, went to the Frick to see their collection, to Bay Ridge to see the Fort Hamilton canon his father used to put him on when he was little, to Marie’s Crisis to sing showtunes, the biggest movie screen in America to see the final Mission: Impossible, got ramen and greek and Japanese, we did so many things. I really enjoyed it. I told EJ he was the ultimate visitor.

I have been watching all of the Mission: Impossibles because someone at my work told me he and his husband were rewatching all of them before seeing the new one in IMAX at the Lincoln 13 AMC, the largest screen in America, half the size of the Statue of Liberty. This sounded awesome so I decided I was also doing that. I saw the first three then the newest one, then I finished the fourth one today. They’re so great.

Tom Cruise is the prince of one of the worst cults in existence, but wow can he jump off a mountain on a motorcycle. I have a theory, based on a lot of things, that he’s gay but because he’s in an evil religion that doesn’t want anyone to be gay that he can’t leave because he’s treated like a God and power corrupts, he’s trapped but hates himself and isn’t free. So I think he kind of wants to die but wants to leave it up to God so he does all these dangerous stunts hoping God will just take him. But alas, he is cursed to car chase another day. And now it’s the last one I wonder what he will do. I saw an interview with a director of one of them who is clearly in disbelief, describing how Tom Cruise not only did a very dangerous stunt that no one expected him, the first name on the call sheet most famous actor alive to do at all, but then went on to do it 5 more times. He just kept crawling back up the mountain unstrapping his parachute being like, “I think we should do it one more time,” five times. You watch this and tell me that’s a person who wants to live.

Do we all know that Christian Bale based his performance in American Psycho on a Tom Cruise David Letterman appearance? He said he was so charismatic and laughing and smiling but it wasn’t connecting to his eyes. There was nothing behind the eyes.

The thing about a lot of action movies is that if you pay attention to the camera angles it’s all POV, or behind the back, or someone has long hair or a helmet, etc. This is because it’s not the real actor doing the fighting/jumping/kicking/chase, it’s a stunt double. With Tom Cruise, it’s a wide angle long frame of him doing a standing backflip or flying high kick or whatever the hell he’s doing, and this makes the movies incredible. They just look so good. It’s sad he’s a cursed demon because if he was normal he’d be one of the coolest people alive. I enjoy the movies despite knowing he has probably killed. Everyone has their thing.

My favorite Mission: Impossible is the second one because it’s the first one I saw, and because it’s amazing. People often don’t like that one but I think that’s because the first one is incredible and it’s not the first one. I think Mission: Impossible 2 had the hardest job because it had to set up the franchise and also take the brunt of not being the first one. I had the privilege of seeing it with no expectations because I had nothing to compare it to, also I was 11.

And wow did I love it. It’s so good! John Woo!! Something I think a lot of people get caught up on is that these movies are over the top. Yes!!! They are!! That’s their charm and allure! They’re campy! They lean into it more as the franchise goes on, but in the first one a helicopter goes into a train tunnel! The first four all have different directors and the last four have the same one but I think they should have kept letting new people direct each one. I think it’s a fun playspace for people who love movies to experiment and just do the biggest wildest things they can think of. There’s no limit with a Mission: Impossible movie, if you can think it up and Tom Cruise could die doing it, it’s gonna make the cut.

These are the directors and movies in order:

Mission: Impossible Brian De Palma

Mission: Impossible 2 John Woo

Mission: Impossible III J.J. Abrams

Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol Brad Bird

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible-Fallout Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning Christopher McQuarrie

I mean both the 7th and 8th ones have ‘reckoning’ in the title? That alone should have a been a sign they should have used different directors. This guy’s running out of words! I wonder if anyone was like, “Chris we used reckoning in the last one, should we change to something else? How about The Final Score? Or The Final Reasoning? The Final Estimation? The Final Summation?” and he’s like, “No it’s Reckoning twice. Get me a coffee!!!” Maybe he’s nice. He wrote The Usual Suspects so that’s good. I’m not even sure if I’ve seen the last three so I really should reserve judgement.

Something the Mission: Impossible movies also do is have the Schrodinger’s Cat of dead wives. An action man’s greatest accessory is his dead wife. He used to love and be sweet, but that’s over now. Now he’s all business and his business is killing and not smiling. This is hard when you have a franchise though because you want to have a love interest but don’t want him to get comfortable- Always Be Seducing, but then it’s hard to have that not get old or seem formulaic or even callous after like 8 times. But Mission: Impossible does this thing I’ve never seen where his wife ‘dies’ like a few times.

Because first they open the movie (M:I3) with her being tortured in a chair in a hopeless situation and you assume she’s going to die, then we watch her get shot in the head in front of him, then it’s revealed that was someone else in a mask and we hear her voice on the phone, then she rescues him and the movies over but in the next one she’s not around and Simon Pegg says she left him so you’re like oh wow okay so dead to him, THEN it’s revealed that Jeremy Renner was supposed to be protecting her in Saudi Arabia and she was killed and Ethan Hunt avenged her death but didn’t tell anyone, THEN Ethan Hunt is like well actually I faked that so she could be safe, THEN he sees her in a market and she’s not with him? And she’s surprised to see him but not that surprised? Not surprised enough if she thought he was dead? So you’re like- okay wait, he faked her death to keep her safe, and she knows he’s alive, they’re just not together? And they can’t say hi in public? So you see, she both is and isn’t a dead wife. The action movie dream.

Today I went to the house of a woman I don’t know and played with her ten kittens. Technically nine because one was asleep on a shelf the whole time. But she rescues cats and she has ten kittens right now and in the Buy Nothing group she posted about needing cat food if anyone had some to donate for her ten rescue kittens and then people were coming by to adopt but I just wanted to play with them and they need to be socialized so we set it up and today was that day.

They were so cute. Some of them were sick and had eye things and that made me nervous and she was like, “You can’t get anything from the kittens” but people are getting things from birds so it’s not unheard of. I wore a mask and then took a shower when I got home. They were so cute. I get why people have and love cats. The desire to keep and care for something that little and cute, it’s embedded deep within you. I felt like I was having a breakthrough about why people like babies, their baby is a kitten they made. Huge. I don’t have the evolutionary thing for babies because I’m so scared they’re going to die it’s just stressful and not calming to be around them. And if you’re a long time reader of this newsletter you’ll know a friend did my chart and told me my psychic wound was dying in childbirth in another life which makes sense to me!!! I have always had an aversion to childbirth that feels rooted in experience.

My friend had her second baby and I was so relieved. Her pregnancy was really scary to me. She was so sick and throwing up and losing weight and to me it’s not worth it!! But she has the baby now and everything seems alright and the baby is beautiful and perfect and I hope it’s all smooth sailing now. If this newsletter had a theme it would be that babies don’t make sense to me, (and other stuff)- I feel like I always come back to that no matter what else is going on. I think it’s just this phase of my life, a lot of friends are in that path and it’s so confusing. I’m not sure if I wrote this in the last newsletter (and I will NOT be checking) but recently I had the revelation/realization that I didn’t really have a childhood the way I think some others did, my childhood was stressful a lot of the time and I feel living on my own starting in my 20’s was the beginning of me getting to know myself and follow what I want to do for the first time on my own terms. So no, it’s not appealing to me to create someone else to take care of forever and I genuinely can’t access the perspective where that would be appealing but I’m so in the minority I just accept that it’s good for other people. But I genuinely think choosing to have children is insane. I’m grateful I live during a time where I am allowed to not choose it.

Motherhood seems like a secret club that is special and beautiful and meaningful and I’m so happy to be on the outside looking in. It’s like a fancy house that’s locked and I’m eating a picnic under the window outside and my friends keep going in and I say hi to them as they visit in and out, but I’m so happy on my blanket. Also the blanket is movies, that’s where my heart lies. The feeling you get watching your baby open its eyes and smile I get from watching the movie Braveheart and I think we’re all better off that way. Everyone isn’t meant to be a mom! Some people would be bad moms and we should be respected for having the self-awareness. I think I would be a bad mom. And not in a fun kitchen sign wine kind of way, like a sad kind of way. I think it would be sad for me too, I don’t want my life to be about someone else. I want my life to be about me. And I guess I haven’t seen a version of motherhood that’s good where that’s true. Perhaps it’s out there, and I’ll be 76 see it and think, “Well I’ll be damned. There it is,” and smile to myself.

I don’t really know who all this is for, no one wants me to have kids. No one asks or expects it of me. I’ve been pretty vocal about it thus far. But I guess growing up and living in a society that’s so forcefully one way, makes you feel defensive when you go a different way. I want to light a path for those who are like me but haven’t found it yet. “It’s okay!! This is cool too!!” I want to yell to girls in their 20’s settling for things they don’t like to achieve something they think they’re supposed to want. It’s how I feel about monogamy too, it’s definitely right for some people but when it feels like it’s the ONLY thing presented as ‘normal,’ and everything that’s not that is relegated to subculture or ‘alternative,’ it doesn’t feel there yet. ANYWAY I’m glad you’re a mom and that you love your baby. They’re perfect.

I saw the season finale of The Rehearsal and I didn’t like it! It was incredible and important and he’s a genius, but I didn’t like the feeling of watching it. It felt dangerous and scary and like we were being tricked in some way. EJ liked it (I think) and was explaining his perspective and I get the point/why but it just didn’t feel good to watch. I saw someone else write about how he ends up in the air- tightrope walking at the end of Nathan for You, in the atmosphere in The Curse finale, and now flying a 737. Love that observation, want to think about that more. I also saw a web comic his ex-wife made that touched briefly on their marriage and divorce and it seemed bad, which I was very curious about.

My tooth is still broken and maybe it always will be. I've now started to wonder if I should just try to get it fixed while we are in Europe. I got new sneakers there last time, why not a new tooth this one? Health tourism is popular, other places have socialized medicine, maybe my new tooth is one thirteen hour plane ride away.

My dad and I went to see this cannon he played on as a child from the Civil War and I did not know how big cannons were. In the movies they are a reasonable size. Not the case in real life apparently! It was shocking to think about anyone firing this at anyone else. Way too fucking big.

That’s all for me! My eyes hurt. I’m tired!! Some pictures:

The cannon is way too big! Thank you for reading.

Julie