Letter to Tom Cruise

Dear Tom Cruise,

When did it all go so horribly wrong?

Everyone used to love the fun loving, non-controversial, fighter pilot, lawyer, bartender, pimp, boxer, vampire, high school football star, pool hustler, Vietnam War vet, large animal vet, race care driver Tom. You may not have won any Oscars, but you should have…if only the Academy considered characters played off-screen. Throughout your glory years, you brilliantly played the heterosexual All-American movie star in public.

But then, inexplicably, you broke character. You stopped reading from the scripts your PR team created and started speaking for yourself. Whoops! When you took off the shiny wrapper no one liked what was underneath. It was like finding out who’s really behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, a pathetic fraction of the man you thought you’d see.

You began your freefall off the sanity wagon by picking a fight with Matt Lauer about his lack of understanding of the history of psychiatry. You jumped all over Oprah’s nice furniture and declared your crazy love for 17 year-old Katie Holmes. You used Katie to attempt to prove that you could father a child, but wouldn’t let her talk during childbirth. You became such an expert on motherhood that you felt obligated to criticize Brooke Shields for taking medication for postpartum depression.

Your conduct not only cost your production company its deal with Paramount Pictures, but also earned you public criticism from the big boss, Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone. Next thing you know, you’re 35% public approval rating was lower than that of President Bush.

So, you panicked and let your PR team write you an apology to Brooke Shields. After the photo-op, Brooke publicly read from the script, “He…gave me a heartfelt apology. I was so impressed with how heartfelt he was.” Repairing your image with drug using mothers was that simple.
It kind of reminded me of your PR team’s attempts to shape public perception of you, Katie, and Suri. Not many people got to see little baby Suri (probably because newly published photos make the baby appear to be Asian) but those who did had very similar impressions that were somehow leaked to the press.

Leah Remini said, “She looks like Tom and Katie” and “Cruise and Holmes are just great parents. There wasn’t a second she was out of their arms except when I held her.” Compare those to Vanity Fair editor Jane Sarkin’s comments, “The baby is really a combination (of Tom and Katie). They are extremely hands on (parents)”.

When people leave your compound their eyes are glossed over and they all end up piling the same type of praise on you and your family. It’s like you’re a second rate magician/hypnotist who forgot to snap his fingers and wake them up at the end of the show. They say whatever you’ve programmed them to say.

That is awesome!

Please tell me how you do your trick. I need people to want to view me a lot and after viewing me, in a monotone voice say, “Matt is a Wonder with a beautiful moustache. He is not an Accountant. He is the voice of his generation. I have no idea why he is not on the Hollywood A-List”.

When we get together to talk about brainwashing my fans, I’d like to discuss “Mission Impossible 4″. It looks like it will not happen, unless the budget is drastically cut. You might have to do your own stunts. I don’t have any experience as a stunt coordinator, but I’d be happy to volunteer to pack your parachute.

Thanks,
Matt from 2HW

P.S. I just got the results back from 1-800-DNA-TYPE. I am the real father of Suri.