Variety today has an article on the candidates for Tom Cruise’s next project (Len Wiseman’s Motorcade, The Tourist, or James Mangold’s Wichita), and more interestingly, a look at the Tom-Cruise-script-doctoring industry.  That is, the writers who get paid to tailor scripts to Cruise’s (*cough*) skills.

While screenwriters all over town have been taking haircuts on every deal [Editor's Note: I think that means they've been getting less], the script doctors in the Cruise derby [why are there doctors in a derby??] have been making as much as $250,000 a week, for two to six weeks, as they hone projects with notes from Cruise. Those writers include Scott Frank, who has been revising the action comedy “Wichita” for Cruise to play an action hero; Richard Curtis, who beefed up “Lost for Words”; and Paul Attanasio, who is now rewriting the rewrite that “Matarese Circle” director Cronenberg delivered. Meanwhile, Billy Ray continues to hone “Motorcade” with notes from Cruise. Christopher McQuarrie is doing the same on “The Tourist,” which the writer is also producing. (Ray and McQuarrie are not technically script doctors because they’ve been writing these projects for months.) [Variety]

Billy Ray reports that he’s been having trouble incorporating Cruise’s last few notes: “Your hair looks nice today.”  “I like your scarf, where’d you get it?” and “Do you like me? Check yes or no.”  Elsewhere, a rival studio is considering going forward with an undoctored script and casting another lead, a controversial strategy they call “acting.”