Aziz Ansari MAY be funny and all, but the comedian wasn’t the first choice to host the MTV Movie Awards two weeks ago. The network actually wanted Tom Cruise.
That wouldn’t have been big news in 1989 or even 2004. But in 2010, it signals a seismic shift.
At 47, Cruise no longer caters to the network’s demographic sweet spot. (True, he’s been in a vampire flick, but that movie didn’t involve staring dreamily into Robert Pattinson’s eyes.) What’s more, during the past few years, Cruise has suffered so many personal and professional setbacks that he’s verged on becoming Hollywood’s answer to Michael Jackson: a past-his-prime figure who generates more headlines for bizarre behavior than his work. (Even if he’s still capable of earning boatloads of cash.)
Who ever thought that Tom Cruise would even need a comeback?
But MTV’s interest may be the beginning of a turnaround for the wounded star. In lieu of hosting the MTV ceremony, Cruise made an appearance as Les Grossman, his balding, abrasive studio exec character from Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder.” Cruise’s hip-hop dance duet with Jennifer Lopez was the water cooler moment of the show and earned the actor massive amounts of positive buzz. Within 48 hours, Paramount confirmed that Cruise and Stiller had signed on to make a Les Grossman movie.
“Les Grossman’s life story is an inspiring tale of the human class struggle to achieve greatness against all odds,” Stiller said in a statement. “He has assured me he plans to ‘f – – king kill the s – – t out of this movie and make “Citizen f – – king Kane” look like a piece-of-crap home movie by the time we are done.’ ”
On Wednesday, with the release of “Knight and Day,” his first marquee film since 2008’s “Valkyrie,” Cruise may climb another inch out of the deep hole he has dug for himself. He plays a possibly delusional secret agent trying to protect a high-tech battery from an evil arms dealer. (Is there any other kind?) Along the way, he literally bumps into Cameron Diaz, and the two become reluctant partners, jetting from the Caribbean to Spain to Boston.
After the flop that was “Lions Before Lambs,” his first film as the head of the newly reconstituted United Artists studio, and the middling reception of “Valkyrie,” Cruise is in desperate need of a hit. If not to refill his overflowing coffers, to at least steer the conversation away from the gossip that has enveloped him for much of the past decade. There was the divorce from Nicole Kidman, the Oprah couch gymnastics followed by a quickie marriage to Katie Holmes and the birth of their feverishly scrutinized daughter Suri.
And then there were the Scientology eruptions. After keeping his beliefs a mystery for much of his career, Cruise suddenly began letting loose. In 2005, he criticized Brooke Shields (opposite whom he’d appeared in his first movie) for taking Paxil to deal with postpartum depression. He clashed with Matt Lauer on “Today,” sounding condescending and calling the host “glib.”
He raised eyebrows by setting up a Scientology tent on the set of “War of the Worlds.” He also appeared in a Scientology-produced video making head-scratching proclamations such as, “When you’re a Scientologist and you drive by an accident, it’s not like anyone else. You know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help.”
Not an EMT?
Cruise denied that his behavior and proselytizing was hurting his career. In 2005, he told Der Spiegel, “If someone is so intolerant that he doesn’t want to see a Scientologist in a movie, then he shouldn’t go to the movie theater. I don’t care.”
But there’s little doubt this pileup of negative publicity was taking its toll. Cruise’s Q score, which measures likability, went from a hugely positive 29 before the Shields and Lauer incidents to a barely above average 19 in 2006.
What’s worse, his image hasn’t yet recovered. As of March, Cruise rated a 17 — below average. That means that he’s currently getting his clock cleaned by the likes of Taylor Lautner (Q score: 23), Shia LaBeouf (21) and even Ashton Kutcher (22), whose most compelling work is done on Twitter.
“I would liken Tom Cruise, the postpartum criticism and some of his talk about Scientology, to the impact of Mel Gibson and [his anti-Semitic gaffes],” says Glenn Selig, a crisis publicist who currently reps former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. “Before all this happened, people may have seen a movie just because they loved Tom and wanted to see him in no matter what he did. Now, it may have gotten to a point where they say, ‘Oh, I have to see the movie even though he’s in it.’ ”
“A lot of this negativity is directly related to how celebrities deal with the crisis after it happens,” says Henry Schafer, executive vice president at Marketing Evaluations, which creates Q scores. “If they don’t come out and explain to the public and do interviews, the negativity tends to grow, which looked like it happened with Cruise. I recall he was pretty staunch. He didn’t back off.”
Schafer says that when stars take this kind of publicity hit, it usually takes about five or six years to recover. The good news for Cruise: That window is right about now. And from all accounts, the actor is making all the right moves.
Leaning on Les Grossman is seen as a particularly shrewd decision.
“When you get a rep for being wacky or out of touch, the very best thing you can do is make fun of yourself,” says Sharon Waxman of show-biz Web site The Wrap.
“Les is a genius character,” co-star Diaz tells The Post. “It’s completely opposite of who Tom is. This is his alter-ego. It’s a part of Tom that he probably doesn’t get to get in touch with very often.”
Cruise also seems more under control these days. So far, he’s made it through the grueling “Knight and Day” publicity gauntlet without saying anything controversial.
His outbursts back in 2005 were widely attributed to changes he made in his management team. He had parted ways with longtime Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley and hired his sister and fellow Scientologist Lee Anne DeVette. DeVette eventually lost the gig and now Cruise is back with more seasoned representation, 42 West, which looks after Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, and appears to be keeping Cruise on a tighter leash.
(Perhaps too tight a leash: The firm declined to make Cruise available to speak with The Post.)
“Every icon, their careers are cyclical,” says Maggie Marr, a former ICM agent and author of “Hollywood Girls Club.” “Take Clint Eastwood. He once starred alongside an orangutan, now look at him today.”
“I think that if Tom has a couple successes at the box office, it will be portrayed as ‘he’s back,’ ” Selig says. “People love a comeback story. As long as he continues to move forward on this path, I think people will be more apt to move forward with him.”
One success Cruise may be able to count on is “Mission: Impossible IV,” scheduled for next summer. The film is a continuation of the star’s popular (and only) franchise, and more important, marks a reconciliation with Viacom, which rudely dumped Cruise in 2006, after complaining that his antics had sucked $150 million from the projected box-office take of the last “Mission.” Viacom head Sumner Redstone went so far as to publicly declare that Cruise’s behavior was “embarrassing the studio.”
In March, the two made up over lunch in Beverly Hills — just one more sign that Cruise is clawing his way back.
“I don’t pay attention to what’s written about him in the press,” Diaz says. “What I do know about him is that he has two passions in his life: He is passionate about his family and he’s passionate about making movies. There’s only one Tom Cruise in the world, and he is who he is because he works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen and he loves what he does.”
Is public ready to love him back — or is it just another Mission: Impossible?
reed.tucker@nypost.com