What's the boards view on this. The complete article is long, but a good read. Shows how blown out of proportion this event was. Here are a few points. The first part of the story focuses on how Cruise took measures to distance himself from those seeking attention early in his career. Its a shame this happened to him really... Scientology aside, he seems misunderstood.

How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last Real Movie Star

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A weird thing happens when people watch a viral video. In catching up with a cultural touchstone, the clip everyone's talking about at the water cooler, we assume we're on top of the whole story. After all, we've seen what everyone else has seen. Whatever gets edited out isn't part of the conversation.

Tom Cruise and Oprah talked on TV for 43 minutes. "Tom Cruise Kills Oprah" was 15 seconds. Even the longer YouTube clips of Cruise on Oprah's couch clock in at only four minutes. Yet it was the latter two that were shared, discussed and remembered.

With all context gone, we're judging soundbites of Cruise on a screen. We forget he was experiencing a live, long and loud interaction — a literal stage performance before a raucous crowd.

Harpo Studios seats 300 audience members, all of whom answered a questionnaire months before, listing their favorite actors. The show's producers try to match up their spectators with their guests. It's a recipe for good TV. "They want the bat-shite people," Tugman explains. "All those people that were in there were most likely picked because they're Tom Cruise fanatics."

That's why Tugman could hear their screams from the next studio over. It was his first day on the job, but during the next 200 episodes, it was the loudest audience he'd ever hear except for the crowd for George Clooney.

If you track down the full Tom Cruise episode on YouTube — only one user from Spain has bothered to upload it across four videos, thanks to the site's roughly 10-minute cap — the room is deafening. Oprah's first words to the live audience are, "OK. Let me just say you all are going to have to calm yourselves." They don't. They're on their feet jumping up and down. She has to ask them to settle down twice more before Cruise even walks onstage, and then the screams get even louder. Oprah starts screaming, too. If you listen closely, you can hear Cruise says, "Wow! Is it like this every day?" "No," Oprah says, shaking her head. After a full minute goes by, Oprah starts to look annoyed. "It's too much," she commands the audience. "Sit down, sit down."

Like a gladiator at the Coliseum, Cruise plays to that screaming room. When a fan in the crowd pumps both his fists in the air, Cruise pumps his back. When kneeling on the floor makes the audience holler, he simply keeps doing it.

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When Cruise finally stands and grabs her shoulders — the moment that was remixed into "Tom Cruise Kills Oprah" — it's while jokingly begging if they can talk about his new movie, War of the Worlds.

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It wasn't until after the show aired that Tugman realized he'd been a witness to pop culture history: Tom Cruise scaring Oprah by jumping on a couch. Says Tugman, "I heard about it as more of an Internet thing and was like, 'Oh my God, I was there for that.'?"

Except Cruise never jumps on a couch.

It is Oprah who seeds the idea that he should stand on it. She thanks Cruise for attending her recent Legends Ball, where she honored Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. "I turned and looked at one point and you were standing in the chair going, 'Yes! Yes!'?" she gushes to Cruise. "I loved that enthusiasm." Minutes later, he stands on the couch for a second, and after she and the audience cheer that, he does it again. When she continues pressing about if he wants to marry Holmes, he exhales, "I'm standing on your couch!" as if that's the answer he thought was enough. All told, Cruise on the couch — the key image of what the gossip blogs deemed his meltdown — is less than three seconds of airtime.

This post was edited on 9/13/14 at 9:39 pm