EXCLUSIVE: Paula Wagner, the one-time budding actress-turned-superagent-turned studio owner in partnership with Tom Cruise, who helped produce the first three Mission:Impossible movies, was asked a question several years ago by students at DePaul University in Chicago that she was amply qualified to answer: What is a star?
A star, Wagner explained that day, “lights up the sky and gives heat and light and energy, and then they burn out.”
Greta Garbo, she observed, “retired at 30.”
Where does Wagner place Cruise, I ask, just as Mission: Impossible– The Final Reckoning was having its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
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“He’s Tom Cruise, he is a phenomenon. He really is. And from the moment I met him in July of 1981, he exuded that quality. The difference is that his star is such a great magnitude that it’s not burning out anytime soon,” Wagner declares, referring to her earlier point about Garbo.
His “secret sauce,” she suggests, is that he’s not only “an action star, and a real movie star, but he’s a great actor.”
He has the substance, Wagner argues, “to match the glitter, the glow, the stardom. He’s a real talent, a great producer. I know him as an actor, he was my client, as a producer we were partners, and we’re still good friends.”
“He’s fearless,” states Wagner. “That was always the concept from the beginning, working with him really early,” noting how she herself studied acting. She’s nutty about Shakespeare and adores a good play or musical. She and I first met in connection to her interest in the theatre.
“So I knew as an actor what a great role was, what you looked for as an actor. And Tom has that instinct, that instinct as an actor. He does the research, he does the work, and he always finds something outstanding to do that demonstrates the essence of who the character is. He physicalizes something. Like when you look at Risky Business, when he slides across the floor. That moment, one knew — I knew, everybody knew the moment you saw that — that this is the star igniting. In every one of these movies he finds something to do physically that expresses the inner life of the character. It says something very human about who people are and how we express ourselves.”
What’s key is finding the great roles, Wagner says, and working with great directors. “And the size of the role, the number of lines is not what’s important. What’s important is the quality in the essence and working with great directors and working with major actors. What did they say? If you’re going to play tennis or do a sport, play with someone better than you.
“Because when you have high-quality talent together, they all make each other better, and you make each other reach beyond the comfort zone. Actors push past their comfort zone,” she says.
I’ve often wondered why Cruise’s greatest performances in pictures like Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, Sydney Pollack’s The Firm, Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men, Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the Top Gun films, some — but not all — of the Mission: Impossible movies and there are others, are sniffed at by some critics. It often baffles me because he has such a compelling screen presence, a seemingly easy presence that belies the work that has gone into achieving that.
“That’s right — you can’t take eyes off eyes off him,” she agrees.
“When I originally signed him, he had just done Taps. I saw dailies early on of him in Taps. … and then he played an entirely different character in Risky Business. And he understands the depth of character. He does the work that an actor needs to do. I represented Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July. That film is a particular passion of mine. And when I read this script that Oliver Stone had written, it was magnificent, “ says Wagner, recalling that her conversation with Stone was that “Tom should do this. Tom knows how to do this. He has that kind of dimension.”
Wagner’s “very proud “ to have been involved with Mission: Impossible films “from Day 1.”
Paramount had the rights to Bruce Geller’s story “because it was a Cold War television series and it was primitive for now in terms of what we can do with special effects.”
Smiling, Wagner, says that members of the Impossible Mission Force “slip in, they slip out, they fix the world.”
The task, Wagner explains, “was to take this concept and turn it into a post-Cold War movie that would appeal to the new generation. And it was very challenging.
“There were a lot of naysayers, who asked incredulously, ‘You’re literally going to take a television series and try to turn it into a movie?’ Well, yes. I always say that Shakespeare took from Plutarch. He took stories from existing intellectual properties, so why can’t we?!”
Wagner credits Sherry Lansing, John Goldwyn and the whole team that worked with her at Paramount.
“We had been looking for something for Tom to star in, to have a vehicle, to have a franchise, have something. Although the concept of putting a franchise together wasn’t fully there. The film started as a one-off. Tom’s and my approach was, ‘Let’s make this film as great as we can make it. Let’s make a great movie.’
“This was Mission 1. And then go from there.”
Sitting back in her chair, she reflects that the evolution of the franchise has been “amazing,”
“The evolution of what it has done and where it has taken this idea and this concept, and expanded it and made it this viable, beloved international franchise that people all over the world see. It is the quintessential epic film experience.
“And I think it’s everything that we hoped and dreamed and wanted. And I credit Tom and his team for having done such an amazing job and committed so totally to seeing this through.”
Wagner was involved with the first three films but has obviously kept an eye on, from afar, the subsequent five Mission: Impossible pictures. She’s “thrilled,” indeed “absolutely thrilled” about its success “and to see what Tom has done with this and his team, and Chris McQuarrie.”
She’s rightly proud of the work Brian De Palma did on the first movie released in 1996, and she still gets excited by his vision of it, as do I!
“All the twists and the turns, and it was the first three, which were the ones I was involved with, where it was really finding itself. What is this we asked ourselves? We know it’s something amazing, but what is it and what are the concepts? And who is Ethan Hunt? That was always a big question. And I’m proud of everyone that has taken this series to make it what it is today.
“It’s a movie, and it was always designed that way to bring people into the theater, get them out of their houses into the theater.” she adds.
I mention the stellar lineup of actors cast for the first Mission: Impossible movie. Vanessa Redgrave, for starters!
“What happened,” Wagner explains, “is her agent called me and said, ‘Do you have any male roles for Vanessa Redgrave to play? She always likes to play things kind of out of the box that aren’t the obvious.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s interesting.’ I said, ‘Let me talk to Tom and Brian.’ So we all conferred about this. And the idea came up to have her play Max, the villain in Mission 1. So that role was originally a man … but when Vanessa Redgrave wants to play a male role in your film, you go for it,” she shrugs.
Wagner has had five careers. Number 1 was actress. Number 2 was agent “with CAA, I was one of the first female agents there, and then producing partner with Tom. We started a production company, Cruise Wagner, at Paramount, and then two years at United Artists executive co-owner there. Tom and I did that, and then started my own production company and started producing theater in addition to doing movies.”
Her Chestnut Ridge Productions keeps her busy.
On top of that Wagner’s now an adjunct professor. “I teach, I’m on the faculty of a graduate course at Carnegie Mellon University,” she tells me.
Presumably, she lectures about acting and producing?
Shaking her head ,”Actually, no. [The course is] called Navigating the Practical Realities of the Entertainment Industry.”
So what do you tell them, I wonder?
Relishing getting to this moment, Wagner smiles. “I tell them that we are in the midst of a huge disruption, and out of it will come something fascinating. It always does, but you have to navigate your way through what it is now. Because every day something new happens in the business,.
“Every day there’s something new in the film industry. It’s fascinating. I speak to younger people, and I say to them: ‘Look, you’re the future leaders. So what you want to be thinking about is, how do you take and understand the past and translate it into the future of it?’ There’s always disruption. And the movie business itself was disrupted. Technology changed theater [on stage]. It used to be that the prime entertainment was the theater that you went to, but that’s the core elements. So I say you go back to the core elements: great actors. You can’t do it without actors. And AI can’t replicate that,” she insists.
“AI,” Wagner continues, can’t replicate an emotion “or subtlety or irony — all of the things that are very human, it can’t do. But I think AI can be our friend. I see it as more something to be in control of. … I envision it as something that we use as a supplement, as an adjunct to us as human beings, and that it will inspire us to evolve as human beings, our brains, our thoughts, our emotions, who we are, the worlds that we create because we create these worlds ourselves.”
I ponder why doesn’t Trump want U.S. citizens to enjoy culture unless it’s on his terms. Why is he taking over these cultural institutions?
“I don’t know. I have never met him. I don’t know what he wants,” she laughs.
“I don’t know how you have a world without the arts, but that’s my proclivity,” Wagner adds, sighing.
“I think about early humanity where we have the cave paintings and drawings and that all of these relics and things that we find ancient, that art was always so much a part of it in some way. And human beings have this need to tell stories. Our lives are stories. We thrive on narrative, and we want to see stories that involve other people and other situations. And the essence of art feeds our soul. And we have to have that. It makes us more human. It helps us to evolve in more positive ways. So I’m a deep believer in the support of the arts. And besides being a producer, film producer, theater producer, et cetera, my passion has always been education and working with students, which is what I do now.“
But that’s not all. Wagner reveals that she’s working on two pieces of work for the stage that will involve her working on them for the West End in London.
One is a stage version of the Fred Zinnemann classic High Noon, with its screenplay by Carl Foreman. It was adapted from a story by John W. Cunningham.
The other show is still in very early development.
Plus, Wagner’s working on another project, with husband Rick Nicita and her stepson Jesse Nicita. “It’s like a family thing,“ she adds. “My other son, Zachary, is a film composer, and I’m working with an amazing writer named Danny Strong.
“We are working on a film about John Fogerty, his story and Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
Fogerty’s music is groundbreaking rock. “It’s some of the most well-known music in the world, but his story is really interesting. … This is a man that didn’t play, would not play Creedence music for years.”
Wagner’s interests away from the entertainment arena are instructive. I remember, at a performance of musical Pretty Woman, which she was producing, introducing her to my wife, and the two of them chatted away about the feminist roots of the piece, each of them citing scholarly feminist texts.
But as we chat over Zoom and as I recall past conversations, and I just love this course in disruption that she’s teaching, I think of politics and diplomacy.
However, we’re running out of time, so I switch to the age-old question of women and men in the entertainment business, particularly thespians, and why it’s fine for Tom Cruise, for instance, to still be at the front of the field at 62 — and if he wants, he can still get the girl — but female actors generally get shown show at a much younger age.
There are exceptions, of course. I mention Meryl Streep. “Absolutely,” Wagner nods.
“Well, I think in the last 40 or so years, it’s been more difficult. Ironically, as women were making more strides in terms of political and sociological strides, I think it actually became more difficult for women in film, television, theater to sustain the sustainability. And look at the films this year that really were about women coming to terms with their own youthfulness or age; look at Demi Moore, who did an amazing performance in The Substance. I was one of her agents over the years, and I’m very proud of her, still going and doing.”
However, Wagner believes “we’ve stereotyped women. When I first got to New York as an actress, it was so frustrating. I co-wrote a play called Out of Our Father’s House based on a book called Growing Up Female in America, which was really a feminist play because women were either the ingenue or the streetwalker or whatever. I mean, it was so stereotypical.”
Warming to the theme, she continues: “I think that was hard for women to get out from under that. It’s almost as we became more liberated as human beings, the roles didn’t follow suit necessarily. Also, a lot of the business is based on data and algorithms, and somehow the data and the algorithms said a movie starring a woman doesn’t do as well at the box office. I mean, there are a few women throughout history that have changed that. So I think it is something to deal with. We’re all acutely aware of it that there need to be more films directed by women. There need to be more leading roles, more films led by women, more starring roles. I don’t have the absolute answer, but I think it’s changing slowly.”
