Jumping the couch and landing on Tom's side

In the high-stakes celebrity fatcat imbroglio between Tom Cruise and Sumner Redstone that currently has picked up in Hollywood where Mel Gibson’s tequila-soaked highway career pileup left off, it’s hard to beat the movie star for sheer folly. It’s almost unfair, actually. Cruise is good-looking, famous and successful, and he is devoted to a religion conceived by a failed science fiction writer that believes space aliens who contain countless numbers of your past lives are floating around prepared to destroy everything you hold dear unless you turn over all your possessions and dress like a sailor.

Advantage, Thetan Tom.

Yet in the interests of fairness, let’s consider the old goat’s case. And I do so with all appropriate sensitivity and the full knowledge that someday I too might lose my marbles and publicly say something dopey enough to invite a deluge of assisted-care pamphlets in the mail.

First, Redstone is Jewish. He’s one of the highest-profile members of the entertainment community. He didn’t make a peep during the whole Mel Gibson mess. He didn’t lend his prominent voice to the many critics who publicly flogged Gibson for his anti-Semitic remarks. And yet, he cited Cruise’s “behavior” as a reason to sever their business arrangement. I believe that shows where Redstone’s priorities lie.

CNBC VIDEO Rough ‘bon voyage’ for Cruise Aug. 23: In Hollywood, people are aghast at the way Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone laid off his studio’s highest paid employee. CNBC’s Jerry Cobb reports. CNBC

Also, while Redstone is perceived as a titan of big business, a mover and a shaker, a man who survived the jungle of corporate culture with cunning and guile and ingenuity, Cruise is considered by many to be merely a pretty boy actor who got lucky.

But Cruise is actually the self-made man, because in order to get where he did, he had to follow the tortured actor’s path from humiliation and bad scripts to adulation and bad scripts. Redstone’s road was made smoother when daddy handed him a chain of theaters to run. By becoming head of a conglomerate, Redstone had to work himself all the way up from head of a corporation.

As such, it’s important for Redstone to act like a chief executive. There’s a certain weight to the position. His conduct reflects upon the entire operation, down to the lowliest stockholder. Dignity is of the utmost importance. It’s a little like the expectation for the President of the United States to act presidential. Well, maybe that’s a bad example, but you get the drift.

When Paramount and Cruise/Wagner, the production company run by both Cruise and partner Paula Wagner, decided to end their long relationship, Redstone told the Wall Street Journal: “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.” While everyone assumes he meant the Oprah couch romp and the trashing of shrinks and antidepressants in a Matt Lauer interview and all the Katie Holmes moopie-schmoopie, the “recent conduct” Redstone really refers to here is the fact that “Mission: Impossible III” grossed just under $400 million worldwide and not the $591 million raked in by “War of the Worlds.”

That kind of conduct is unacceptable at Viacom.

But Redstone should have kept his lip buttoned. This was, after all, just a business negotiation that fell apart. Cruise had an incredible sweetheart deal at Paramount that allowed him to make movies and share significantly in the grosses. These days, however, stars are fading as earners. Redstone detected mad cow disease in this particular cash cow, and decided to have it exiled. Belt-tightening is happening all around the movie business, and even anorexic celebs are feeling the pinch. That’s life in corporate America.

MORE FROM MOVIES

Movies Section Front

‘Avatar’ could get nine Oscar nominations Brittany Murphy had movies in the works How Robert Downey Jr. got his groove back Downey brings action to ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Man wins ‘Christmas Story’ house sleepover Utah man who inspired ‘Rain Man’ dies ‘Avatar’ blasts off with $232 million worldwide Streep and Baldwin — not a ‘Complicated’ pair ‘Nine’ women latest to bewitch and bewilder You’ll wish you didn’t ‘Hear About the Morgans’ Movies Section Front   Add Movies headlines to your news reader: