VANITY FAIR'S SURI STORY: FACT OR FICTION?
A BLOG BY NEIL BLINCOW
Now that Tom Cruise has allowed Annie Leibovitz to photograph his baby daughter Suri for Vanity Fair, it's clear what his next move should be. He should fire his publicist and hire Jane Sarkin, VF's features editor — who wrote the two-and-a-half pages of fawning, sycophantic drivel that goes with the terrific pictures of cute-as-a-button Suri.
This article should be posted on every noticeboard of every publicist school in America (or wherever publicists get the qualifications for what they do) as a shining example of how to write a press release for a celebrity. And this cover story — Cruise's seventh for VF — is just that: a press release written by a woman who obviously became so star-struck during her five days staying with Tom, Katie and family at Cruise's 400-acre estate in Telluride, that her story sounds like it comes from a Disney fairy tale, not real life.
Sarkin kicks off describing Katie and Tom as "the ultimate hands-on mom and dad to their baby girl Suri Cruise." And it's all downhill from there. She quotes Cruise as saying, "I'd never make a promise to my kids that I couldn't keep. I'm not one of those people who believe you can spoil a child with too much love. You can never give a child too much love. There's just no way."
She paints an idylic picture of life at the Cruise home. "The family gathers around the fire and talks, trading stories while sitting on hewn-timber benches. One night it's hot dogs and s'mores; another night, back at the house, a barbecue is followed by 39 flavors of ice cream." In one sickening passage, Sarkin describes a scene where Leibevitz was photographing the family during a sunset. "Tom's mother, an upbeat, outgoing woman from Louisville, Kentucky, moves in closer. She watches her son and daughter-in-law-to-be kiss. She sees her granddaughter Suri smile for the camera. The sun reddens the peak in the distance. Tom's mom begins to cry. Others on the hillside start to well up too. Tom seems to be forcing back the tears himself." I know how he feels. I'm forcing back my own lunch as I'm reading this.
Come on. Doesn't Tom ever scold 11 year-old Connor for farting at the dinner table. Or admonish Isabella, 13, for taking too long in the shower? If he does, you won't read about it in Vanity Fair. In fairness to Jane Sarkin, maybe she wrote a more balanced piece that was sanitized by Cruise's reps. (Or maybe she joined the Church of Scientology during her stay in Telluride). But if that were the case, VF should have dumped the story and just run the pictures of Suri — who really is adorable. Like they say, a picture tells a thousand words.
Click here for more on the Suri pics!
