Tom Cruise Nixes Katie Holmes Love Scene

PARK CITY, Utah – Tom Cruise put the scissors down on his fiance Katie Holmes’ steamy love scene in Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking, a political comedy screened before a packed house at the Sundance Film Festival last Saturday.

Most of the standing-room-only audience was there to see the virginal Holmes wearing nothing but a bawdy expression as she engaged in an act for which the Romans had a word.

The sizzling twelve-second hook-up between a journalist played by Holmes and a tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart had torched the screen at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, but it was conspicuous by its absence at Sundance. So was Mr. Cruise, who chose to go skiing rather than attend the screening of Thank You for Smoking with Ms. Holmes, who was accompanied by her usual phalanx of Scientologist minders and food inspectors.

The missing love scene led insiders to claim that Mr. Cruise had exerted his influence to ensure its removal, IMDb.com reported.

A source close to Mr. Cruise said that his portable E-meter had begun to smoke and to emit a “high-pitched squealing sound” when he and Ms. Holmes attended the Toronto Festival showing of Thank You for Smoking. Mr. Cruise vowed never to watch the scene again, telling reporters that grand imperial Scientologists such as himself could suffer a damaging, not to mention costly, negative engram experience if they watched their fiances making love with other men on film.

Director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman) suggested that Ms. Holmes’ controversial scene had been lost owing to a “technical glitch” during a reel change. He laughingly told reporters that if they wanted to see Ms. Holmes’ [breasts] they could rent The Gift, but he promised that the missing scene would be on full frontal display when Thank You for Smoking hits theaters in March.

Mr. Cruise, who has sued everyone from his high school remedial reading teacher to his dog, threatened to “ruin” Mr. Reitman if Ms. Holmes does her Paris Hilton imitation when Thank You for Smoking is released.