TomCruiseFan.com

The 411 on Tom’s partner Paula Wagner Posted: 12 Jul 2007 12:15 AM CDT Wow, massive print coverage on Tom Cruise’s takeover of United Artists, but little of it as cynical as my posting yesterday how this was hardly more than out of the box PR-think by slapping a studio name onto a housekeeping deal and grabbing positive headlines for the tarnished star. Isn’t everyone and their mother finding outside financing these days? I also feel the need to point out that, as a production company, Cruise/Wagner over the years has been surprisingly glacial in getting projects underway, considering they could get almost anything they wanted done at Paramount and any other studio, and also considering CAA genuflected to them on a regular basis. Why in the world weren’t they more productive as producers? That said, I’ve received emails asking me for the 411 on Tom’s partner, Paula Wagner. OK, here goes: she started out as an actress. After working in New York theater, Wagner moved to Los Angeles and hoped-for stardom, but had to settle for a few bit parts of television. Her agent, Susan Smith, had seen some of the best in the business (Sally Field, Kathleen Turner and Glenn Close) because of her acumen for spotting talent, and Smith quickly recognized that, as an actress, Wagner was only mediocre. After a year of trying to jump-start Paula’s career, Smith finally called Wagner into her office. “Go away over the weekend and think about what I say to you. You have three choices: either you must leave the agency because I don't know how to do it for you, or you have to go to regional theater and remember what acting is about again, or, and this is the one I recommend, you give up acting and let me train you to be an agent, because I think you could be terrific." As Smith talked, tears streamed down Wagner's face. That Monday, Wagner began her training as an agent. From the start, Wagner was good at it. After four years with Smith, Wagner caught the attention of Wally Nicita, Rick Nicita's then wife, who worked as a casting director. She told Rick about this "really tough lady" who would make a great agent at CAA. Nicita went to CAA head Michael Ovitz, and Wagner was offered a job. (When Rick and Wally Nicita later divorced, Rick would marry Paula and they became CAA's power couple.) At CAA, Wagner's unbridled ambition helped her rise fast. She was a good signer, partially because she used to give the same rehearsed half-hour speech to all prospective actors and actresses about how important it was for them to make movies with great directors. (Hilariously, she’d sit at her desk applying makeup while talking on the phone to clients.) She had a knack for recognizing on-the-rise talent. She happened onto Tom Cruise early in his career. When Cruise's star rose after his 1983 breakout in Risky Business, Wagner's rose with him. She left CAA to launch Cruise/Wagner Productions in September 1993. Her husband took over Cruise as a client at CAA. So there you have it. (www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com)

Copy of Hitler HQ built for Cruise film near Berlin Posted: 12 Jul 2007 12:13 AM CDT Berlin - A replica of Adolf Hitler’s secret wartime HQ was being built near Berlin Wednesday with just a week to go before filming of a controversial Tom Cruise movie begins, a civic official said. Cruise is to play the chief plotter in the true story about a vain bid to assassinate Hitler with a bomb in 1944. The film team have been banned from the Berlin building where the plotter, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, was executed by Nazi firing squad. Officially this is because of fears that filming would lower the dignity of a memorial. But German politicians had earlier assailed Cruise, 45, over his advocacy of Scientology and demanded such a ban. Scientology is suspected by many Germans of being anti-democracy. US commentators, cinema industry leaders and part of the media have attacked the ban, insisting Cruise’s beliefs have no relevance to his role in director Bryan Singer’s movie Valkyrie. Stauffenberg put a bomb under a table in a building at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret base in the woods near what is Ketrzyn in contemporary Poland. But Hitler survived the blast and within days many of those involved in the plot on his life were rounded up. The scene was being recreated in woods at Gross Koeris, 50 kilometres south-east of downtown Berlin. Reporters were unable to see the set, with the site sealed off by private security teams, roadblocks and kilometres of red-and-white tape. Filming, partly funded by a German government grant, is scheduled to begin July 19, according to Ulrich Arnts, chief executive of the Schenkenlaendchen district administration. Stauffenberg is revered in Germany as a national hero for his July 20, 1944 bid to kill Hitler, but leading German journalist Frank Schirrmacher has pointed out that the count had anti-democratic beliefs. Studio Babelsberg, the German movie studio which is co-producing Valkyrie, declined to give details of the script. Its deputy chief executive, Christoph Fisser, said “Cruise views Stauffenberg as a hero and will play him that way.” He said script had been carefully researched. Reporters say Cruise has already been sighted in Berlin. City newspapers say a huge suite was created in a luxury downtown hotel specially for Cruise and wife Katie Holmes. Film publicists decline to confirm this. In Schenkenlaendchen, Arnts said two other nearby locations were also being prepared for filming: A former East German Air Force reserve airfield and an area of recently burned-over forest. At the airfield at Loepten, warning signs said only that the airfield would be in use for takeoffs and landings and there was no word of filming. The project, reportedly also starring Kenneth Branagh, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Christian Berkel and Tom Wilkinson, is reported to be costing 80 million euros. (Source: Earth Times)

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