The Time I Stole John Cusack's Mail...

So back in the late 1980's, right around the time "Say Anything" came out, my friend Christina and I were strolling around Chicago. We came across a cool, old-fashioned car (like maybe a 60's model Thunderbird or something?) and stopped to admire it. Upon closer inspection, we saw that the inside of the car was littered with crumpled-up, trampled-on fan mail addressed to John Cusack--I mean, there were thousands of letters!

The windows were rolled down and being young (and stupid) Christina and I "helped ourselves" to a few of the letters and sat on the curb to read them. Now, let me just say that I know how awful this sounds--but remember, I was very YOUNG and very STUPID! I guess our mindset was that it certainly didn't look like Cusack cared about or was ever going to read the mail, so why not...?

Anyway, the letters we read were hysterical! I remember one in particular was saying how great L. Ron Hubbard was (I still remember quotes from some of these letters because Christina and I laughed about them so much)--it said "Have you ever heard of Dianetics? It's great!" Another one asked Cusack if he would go to prom with her, another one had poems written about Cusack, some included pictures...on and on...these people were crazy-obsessed with John Cusack and he was just throwing them all over the floor of his car.

So we came up with this scheme that we would write the fans back--pretending we were John Cusack. We took the letters (I know, I know!) and we wrote these absolutely hilarious letters back to the desperate fans. I think we wrote about four and each one was custom-made for the fan We praised Dianetics to L. Ron Hubbard Girl, kindly turned down the prom, told poem-guy that we dabbled in poetry too and wrote a poem for him, etc., etc.

I wish that I could find copies of the letters we wrote (I'm sure I have then somewhere...) because they were truly amazing. They were masterpieces!

We decided that the only way we could send them was if we had Cusack's permission (we already feeling uneasy enough about reading/taking them) so we sent him a letter (we figured out where he lived based on where the car was parked) with the original fan letters and copies of our responses to the fans and asked him to call us if it was ok.

Point blank: John Cusack loved the idea! He called and left a message (I'm still kicking myself that I wasn't home) and said that, yes, we could send the letters and actually thanked us for doing it! He even referenced the poem we had written--you could tell he thought the whole thing was hilarious!

So we sent the letters and probably made some die-hard John Cusack fans really happy!