This happened around the time of the War of the Worlds release, and I remember laughing quite a bit about it, but I have to side w/ Tom in this case: I’d be pissed.
The crux of the story is that someone was faking an interview w/ him, complete w/ a camera to capture the shenanigans. What they did, however, was use a fake microphone that was actually a squirt-gun. They asked him a few legit questions to get him to drop his guard, and then squirted him.
At first, Cruise was somewhat of a good sport about it, but then he realized that he’d just been made a fool of, and handled it pretty well, I thought. My second reaction, after laughing, was, “What if someone had squirted some bio-terrorist substance on him?”
In the end, it was just some young guys poking fun at Cruise during a time when he was truly acting strangely in the public eye (jumping on Oprah’s table, declaring his love, insulting Brooke Shields for using meds to get over her post-partem depression). No permanent harm done, but someone posted the clip to YouTube, so I wanted thought I’d talk about it.
I don’t think I would’ve handled it as well, but my livelihood doesn’t rely upon the public’s opinion of me, so I’m impressed at how much self-control he showed.