Tom Cruise visits Yahoo

Yahoo continued it's "Influential Speaker's Series" on Tuesday with a guest appearance by Tom Cruise. Cruise is an old pal of Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, so he stopped by the Sunnyvale campus to share some thoughts on his career in the movie industry. Cruise was 45 late, because he decided to fly his vintage WWII P51 Mustang up to the Bay Area from Southern California, and the weather didn't agree with his flight plans.

After arriving at SJ Airport, he jumped in a limo and trekked over to the Y! Campus with girlfriend Katie Holmes in tow. Cruise talked about some of his experiences with Semel, and answered a few questions about his career. He also jumped up on his chair to proclaim that he and Hlmes will be parents in a couple of weeks (if you haven't been in a supermarket in the past 6 months to see any tabloids, she is indeed prego).

Cruise also talked about stunt work on Hollywood sets, and brought a couple clips of his upcoming Mission Impossible III release. The action scenes weren't bad, but seeing that I haven't set foot in a movie theater in about a year (not counting a group outing to see King Kong), I'll probably have to wait until MI3 comes out on DVD.



When asked about his thoughts on movies translating to mobile devices, he said that he personally enjoyed seeing movies in a theater, but that technology was something that was inevitible and that everyone in the movie business had better embrace it if they wanted to survive. The only other relevant thing he had to share was his experience working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut. The film took two years to make, but it was one of the "best things" he had the chance to do in his career.

The wild thing was watching a video montage of all of Cruise's movies while we waited for him. It wa pretty incredible to see the long list of movies that this guys has pumped out over the last 20 years. His first was a bit part in Endless Love and his first supporting role was in Taps. I still remember seeing Top Gun for the first time back in 1986. Time sure does indeed fly.

There are TONS of photos of Cruise's visit to the Y! campus on Flickr.