Tom Cruise's Dream Role was Steve Prefontaine
The story of short, stalky, misfit kid that always dreamed of playing a short, stalky, misfit kid on The Big Screen.
Since nobody knows when Oregon basketball will be back in any form, and since I’ve somehow been writing an Oregon-centered newsletter for like four months without even once mentioning Steve Prefontaine, I figured it’s a perfect time to cover a UO topic that is near and dear to my heart:
Prefontaine films produced by Tom Cruise.
And it looks like 1998’s Without Limits just-so-happens to be the only film that lands in the middle of the Pre/Cruise Venn Diagram—and it’s also the ONLY dramatized Prefontaine film that is officially recognized by Ditch Rich.
It might surprise some of you to learn that Hollywood’s resident couch-jumping, own-stunt-doing maniac was so deeply involved in such a seminal piece of U of O movie history, but many have said that Without Limits might have never been made if Cruise hadn’t championed the project with every ounce of his late-nineties clout.
But before he signed on as a Producer, Cruise originally envisioned himself donning that iconic yellow Oregon singlet.
Director Robert Towne (Writer of Chinatown, Mission(s) Impossible 1 & 2, et al.) had no doubt that the then-thirty-six-year-old Cruise had aspirations to bring Steve Prefontaine to life. A quote from Towne in a 1998 interview with The Morning Call makes that clear:
“Tom always seemed like the logical guy to play Pre,” says Towne. “But after Mission, Tom felt very, very old. He wisely pointed out that he couldn't pull off playing a 17 year-old kid any more.”
During the production of Without Limits (which was heavily shot on campus in Eugene) Cruise was actually filming Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut—a process that has been infamously known as punishing, tedious, and unending, much like a 5000 meter race.
But even after enduring Kubrick’s constant criticism and brutal shooting schedule, Cruise would leave the set and devote his free time to reviewing dailies from the Without Limits set. He cared about making sure Pre’s story was told right.
Tommy boy found himself in some controversy last month after berating a few maskless crew members on the set of the latest Mission Impossible. Some people thought Cruise was being a bit of an asshole, but when I think of him hulled up in some London hotel room, exhaustingly pouring over footage of Billy Crudup running around Eugene, I can’t help but recognize the pure passion for filmmaking that the guy has always had.
Sure, he’s a TOTAL headcase. Sure, he’s a Scientologist. But he’s one of Pre’s People. We at least have that in common.
In that same 1998 piece, Cruise did a Very James Vos Thing™ by comparing himself to Pre:
“Without Limits says that the hardest thing to do in life is to hang on to a dream,” notes Cruise. “Both Steve and I know how you can make your dreams come true.”
I don’t know how Without Limits would have been received by the world if Cruise had starred in it. Billy Crudup absolutely nails the role, and sometimes I think Crudup’s mythologized version of Pre is the one that lives in my memory more clearly than the man himself.
Plus, we all know Tom loves to run on screen, so it’s safe to say that he has thoroughly made up for aging out of Prefontaine by doing all his own running in every other movie he’s ever been in since.
Like I said before, Without Limits is literally the only Prefontaine movie ever made—and if you even try to tell me that there’s a Jared Leto one you will find yourself promptly kicked from this newsletter—but I’m not without my own nitpicks of the film itself.
There’s a scene, about forty minutes in, where Steve calls after Monica Potter’s Mary Marckx from the now-defunct outdoor Mac Court balcony. She rejects him and proceeds to cross the street into the Pioneer Cemetery. The next scene shows him running to catch up to her, and—with the silhouette of Mac Court visibly less than a hundred yards away from them—she unironically asks the greatest American distance runner:
“How did you get here so fast?”
And then about three more lines are wasted between the two of them, as Pre explains that he “does workouts” there, and that she is actually leaning on a Civil War monument. Of course, she is astonished by the fact that he frequently runs along a vast system of trails that sits in the heart of campus, and is within a quarter mile radius of both his home track (Historic Hayward Field) and his central team facility (McArthur Court).
It’s mistakes like this that I know wouldn’t have happened if Tom Cruise had been on set to notice that there’s nothing “remote” or “unique” about knowing where Pioneer Cemetery is located on campus.
But alas, Stanley Kubrick had other ideas.
And if that’s the only thing wrong with the film—and it just might be—then I think I can live with that.
So, dear reader, as you step out into a world that is slowly opening back up with opportunity and optimism, the lesson here is that we should all pursue our goals with the same relentlessness that Tom and Pre chased their dreams. Go give it your best.
To give anything less—after all—would be to sacrifice the gift.
Go Ducks.