Free Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life by James L. Dickerson Page A
Authors: James L. Dickerson
as the screenplay calls her, whose own brain reels with romance every time Cruise’s character comes near.”
Desson Howe, writing for the Washington Post , found the film to be packed with MTV-like images. “Essentially an encore from the Top Gun team, director Tony Scott’s Thunder is exactly what it promises to be: Not much—but at dizzying speed, stripped down and free of wind-resistant subtlety,” he wrote. “There’s a certain integrity to that. A certain deafening integrity. Producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, two of Hollywood’s more successful antichrists of taste, should be congratulated—and they will be. Watch those box-office receipts pile up.”
Some of Cruise’s racetrack heroes came to his defense. Former Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine, who gave Tom his first ride around the famous track, compared the movie to Top Gun in an interview with the Miami Herald : “I can just see those Air Force/Navy pilots watching Top Gun and saying, ‘Ridiculous—that’s not the way it is.’ I’ve heard that from some people in the racing community: ‘This isn’t how it really is.’ Of course, it isn’t. It’s how Hollywood sees it. But it’s still pretty realistic. They just made it juicer and more spectacular.”
Some people thought it was a little too realistic. Remember race-car owner Rick Hendrick, whose friendship with Tom inspired him to make the movie? His crew chief, Harry Hyde, sued Paramount, alleging that he was injured by Tom using his career as a basis for Duvall's’ character, Harry Hogge. According to news reports, he took home forty thousand dollars from a settlement with the movie company.
~ ~ ~
Upon meeting Tom Cruise for the first time, the first words out of Nicole Kidman’s mouth were, “You’re funny!” She quickly forgot what he said that made her laugh, but not the fact that he had made her laugh when she least expected it.
If it wasn’t love at first sight, it was a reasonable facsimile. “He took my breath away,” she told Rolling Stone in a 1999 interview. “I don’t know what it was—chemical reaction? Hard to define—hard to resist.”
Tom felt it, too, although he was married at the time to actress Mimi Rogers. Nicole was unlike any woman he had ever known. His first response to the mysterious feelings that she stirred inside him was to panic and move out of the Brentwood mansion that he shared with Mimi. Then, feeling that he had overreacted—he had not so much as kissed his new co-star; his infatuation with her was little more than a fantasy at that point —he moved back into the house with Mimi, without ever explaining why he had left. The only problem with that was he could not get Nicole out of his mind. Each time he tried to focus on Mimi, images of Nicole crept back into his thoughts.
Nicole underwent a similar experience in her relationship with Marcus, but since he was thousands of miles away in Australia—and she did not have to face him—she handled the situation much differently. She simply stopped taking Marcus’s telephone calls, probably more out of guilt than anything else.
How could she ever justify breaking up with Marcus? Not only was he her lover, he was her best friend. She and Tom had shared no intimate moments—and, besides that, he was married. If she couldn’t understand what was going on between herself and Tom, how would she ever be able to explain it to Marcus?
By the time they left for Daytona Beach, Florida, to start shooting Days of Thunder , Tom and Nicole’s relationship seemed unstoppable. Since Tom was in nearly every scene—and Nicole was not—they were halfway through shooting before they got to spend any time together.
“Our scenes together went very well—we clicked,” Nicole told Cosmopolitan. “We made each other laugh.” Then, perhaps realizing that she was speaking in double entendre, she grinned broadly. “I don’t think we would have made it as a couple matched by a computer
Desson Howe, writing for the Washington Post , found the film to be packed with MTV-like images. “Essentially an encore from the Top Gun team, director Tony Scott’s Thunder is exactly what it promises to be: Not much—but at dizzying speed, stripped down and free of wind-resistant subtlety,” he wrote. “There’s a certain integrity to that. A certain deafening integrity. Producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, two of Hollywood’s more successful antichrists of taste, should be congratulated—and they will be. Watch those box-office receipts pile up.”
Some of Cruise’s racetrack heroes came to his defense. Former Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine, who gave Tom his first ride around the famous track, compared the movie to Top Gun in an interview with the Miami Herald : “I can just see those Air Force/Navy pilots watching Top Gun and saying, ‘Ridiculous—that’s not the way it is.’ I’ve heard that from some people in the racing community: ‘This isn’t how it really is.’ Of course, it isn’t. It’s how Hollywood sees it. But it’s still pretty realistic. They just made it juicer and more spectacular.”
Some people thought it was a little too realistic. Remember race-car owner Rick Hendrick, whose friendship with Tom inspired him to make the movie? His crew chief, Harry Hyde, sued Paramount, alleging that he was injured by Tom using his career as a basis for Duvall's’ character, Harry Hogge. According to news reports, he took home forty thousand dollars from a settlement with the movie company.
~ ~ ~
Upon meeting Tom Cruise for the first time, the first words out of Nicole Kidman’s mouth were, “You’re funny!” She quickly forgot what he said that made her laugh, but not the fact that he had made her laugh when she least expected it.
If it wasn’t love at first sight, it was a reasonable facsimile. “He took my breath away,” she told Rolling Stone in a 1999 interview. “I don’t know what it was—chemical reaction? Hard to define—hard to resist.”
Tom felt it, too, although he was married at the time to actress Mimi Rogers. Nicole was unlike any woman he had ever known. His first response to the mysterious feelings that she stirred inside him was to panic and move out of the Brentwood mansion that he shared with Mimi. Then, feeling that he had overreacted—he had not so much as kissed his new co-star; his infatuation with her was little more than a fantasy at that point —he moved back into the house with Mimi, without ever explaining why he had left. The only problem with that was he could not get Nicole out of his mind. Each time he tried to focus on Mimi, images of Nicole crept back into his thoughts.
Nicole underwent a similar experience in her relationship with Marcus, but since he was thousands of miles away in Australia—and she did not have to face him—she handled the situation much differently. She simply stopped taking Marcus’s telephone calls, probably more out of guilt than anything else.
How could she ever justify breaking up with Marcus? Not only was he her lover, he was her best friend. She and Tom had shared no intimate moments—and, besides that, he was married. If she couldn’t understand what was going on between herself and Tom, how would she ever be able to explain it to Marcus?
By the time they left for Daytona Beach, Florida, to start shooting Days of Thunder , Tom and Nicole’s relationship seemed unstoppable. Since Tom was in nearly every scene—and Nicole was not—they were halfway through shooting before they got to spend any time together.
“Our scenes together went very well—we clicked,” Nicole told Cosmopolitan. “We made each other laugh.” Then, perhaps realizing that she was speaking in double entendre, she grinned broadly. “I don’t think we would have made it as a couple matched by a computer