HOLLYWOOD -- If you boil it right down to the bare bones, Stanley Kubrick's swansong film, Eyes Wide Shut, is a movie in which Tom Cruise spends an entire night trying - and failing - to have sex.
Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson figures that's why Cruise was so eager to sign on to Magnolia, Anderson's sprawling ensemble drama about a group of loosely connected Los Angelinos, opening Friday.
Cruise plays Frank T. J. Mackey, the Tony Robbins of sexual predators. Through seminars and videotapes, he teaches men how to befriend and beguile women for the sole purpose of luring them into bed for a one-night stand. A nurturing '90s guy he isn't.
Anderson, the wunderkind writer-director who turned the ripe old age of 30 on New Year's Day, says being able to play the bad boy was what attracted Cruise to the role of the cocksure, leather-clad, stud-among-studs.
"I think that was a major draw for him," says Anderson.
"I made fun of him after I saw Eyes Wide Shut. 'No wonder you were so anxious to be in this movie. You were the repressed Dr. Bill for two years. You had to not get laid in that movie.' "
As a coincidental homage to Kubrick, Cruise's character makes his seminar entrance with the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey blasting in the background.
"Tom got this wonderful kick out of it," says Anderson. "He said, 'Stanley's going to love this.' "
Almost as surprising as the character he plays in Magnolia is the fact that Cruise is in the film at all. Anderson, who earned an Oscar nomination for his Boogie Nights script, seems to follow the Robert Altman school of filmmaking - assemble a group of lesser-known actors you like and use them in everything you do.
Making the transition from Boogie Nights to Magnolia are eight different actors, including Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Cruise was like the outsider crashing a family reunion.
"Tom knew that he was coming into a group of people that worked a certain way and had a certain vibe going and that's what he was after," says Anderson, who wrote the part with Cruise in mind.
"He totally blended in with the furniture, as much as Tom Cruise can blend in with the furniture."
Cruise's role is also smaller than most of the other primary characters' parts, and he was paid no more than anybody else for his three weeks of shooting - even though, as co-star Macy puts it, "When someone of his star power signs up, I think the budget goes up."
As the Mackey character, Cruise oozes a menacing, slimy charm, degrading the fairer sex to targets that need to be conquered. He even utters the dreaded c-word on screen, one of the few truly taboo vulgarities left.
(Some film reviewers have also pointed out that in the scene where Cruise strips down to his underwear in front of a female reporter, he seems to be packing the legendary prosthetic penis from Boogie Nights in his Calvins. Either that or his wife, Nicole Kidman, is a very happy woman).
But Cruise also shares an emotionally wrenching scene with Jason Robards, who plays his dying father. It was this versatility and commitment to the project that impressed his castmates.
"Tom Cruise is something," says Hoffman, who plays a male nurse caring for Robards' character.
"He just put it out there. He had to do that a lot, all that stuff with Jason. And he did it every time. On camera, off camera, over his shoulder.
"The guy's an athlete as an actor. He's a workhorse."
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