Tom Cruise has been a busy man lately with his new romance and the unveiling of the Steven Spielberg movie, War of the Worlds, in which he starred. So Cruise never got the chance to see the Little League field he, Spielberg and Paramount Pictures gave back to Bayonne for use of the property in the movie.
For this year, Lisa DeMonaco, when she won a free tickets to ABC’s morning talk show, The View” as the result of a raffle at Mount Carmel Church during care night, she asked for the day Cruise would be there to promote the movie and she brought with her pictures of the field so that he could see the good deeds he had done.
“I wanted him to see it,” the 37-year-old DeMonaco said.
Little League officials have been seeking to get Cruise to come down to the field for months, and the city almost lured him back to Bayonne for the May unveiling with negotiations lasting to within 24 hours of the event. But Cruise could not come.
“They email everyday trying to get Tom Cruise to come to the field, but they’ve not been successful,” DeMonaco said. “This way I was sure he would see it.”
DeMonaco also received free passes to see War of the Worlds at the 68th Street Loews Theater in Manhattan.
During the break on the June 23 taping, DeMonaco approached Cruise ostensibly to get him to pose with her and her friends, Marcianna Colabraro, Joan Conney and Jean Gormley, but also to give him the pictures of the field.
Unfortunately, she had to get him to pose several times before they got an acceptable picture. But Cruise seemed genuinely interested in the pictures of the field.
“He asked if he could keep the photos,” she said. “I said `Sure.'”
A few minutes later, he showed the photos to of the field on air where Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins and other actors from the movie were guests.
“He was really the nicest guy,” DeMonaco said, refuting reports in the media that Cruise was somehow “off the wall.”
“I didn’t think he was off the wall at all. He was a sweet heart and a gentleman, and everyone in the audience was screaming for him. He looked as if he wanted to get there to greet them. He made the rounds. When our picture didn’t come out, we asked him to pose again. He asked `Didn’t I already pose with you?’ but agreed to pose again. When I was speaking with him he gave me eye contact as if he cared about what I was saying.”
DeMonaco said Cruise has a right to a private life and if he is happy with his new romance, he should be able to feel good.
“He’s entitled to be what he is, and if he’s coming back out into the world and feels happy, that’s fine,” she said, describing him as vibrant.