I guess I don’t understand why Jerry Maguire has been restored (did it ever look like it needed rejuvenation?) and why it’s getting the big 30th anniversary whoop-dee-doo treatment this weekend with a special three-day booking at various AMC and Cinemark theatres. Not over the actual weekend, though — it’ll screen between Sunday, 4.12 and Tuesday, 4.14.
The restored Maguire will also be shown at the TMC Classic Film Festival at month’s end.
One of my all-time happiest press screenings was seeing Maguire at Sony Studios four or five weeks before it opened (early to mid November of ’96). Before the film started I remember staring at producer Richard Sakai and thinking “this is very cool…I can feel a special vibe here…something is telling me this is going to be really good.”
10 or 15 minutes in I knew it would be a commercial hit, and once the Jerry Maguire-Dorothy Boyd relationship began to grow and build I knew it was an emotional powerhouse…one of those rare mainstream films that really touch the heart and melt you down. And that wonderful Dicky Fox finale…perfect.
In my mind Maguire was Cruise’s greatest career moment…his peak in the sense that Cruise wasn’t known for emotional connection movies, and this was a kind of breakout. For the first time audiences were really rooting for Cruise / Maguire, really felt an extraordinary emotional bond. Except for the surprisingly emotional Collateral, Cruise never made another sophisticated, deep-down heart movie after Maguire. On top of this he was playing a guy who was really struggling to stay afloat, and was on the verge of serious money problems.
Okay, he played a guy living on the proverbial knife’s edge in American Made, but his law-skirting character was always in command in a sense….always a rakish dare devil. Jerry Maguire, on the other hand, was a guy who seemed emotionally uncertain or unfulfilled, and certainly vulnerable.
During that first viewing I recall saying to myself “ahh, Cruise has new stress lines in his face…he’s acquired a certain amount of character.” And he was only 33 or 34 when Maguire was filmed.
Then again Jerry Maguire persuaded me that sports agents are bad guys because they raised the fees of athletes and subsequently made the price of tickets close to unaffordable to average wage-earning schmoes.
“Guy gets on the MTA in LA…dies. Think anybody’ll notice?”
Cruise’s “hello, I’m looking for my wife” scene in Jerry Maguire still ranks first, but Vincent’s final line in Collateral [4:15 to 4:40] is first runner-up. In a way it’s almost more moving than the Maguire scene because you’re not expecting cynical, hard-case Vincent to emotionally reveal himself.