[Photos: Getty Images]

• Tom: I want 10 kids [SMH.com.au]

If you're Cruise's agents at CAA, you need to do more than find a home for Cruise's production company. You need to find the right project for Cruise the actor. One marketing executive speaks for many in saying, "He needs to go away." The idea is that Cruise should stay out of sight for at least a year, allowing time to get over what one prominent agent calls "the cootie factor."

Apparently Cruise does not grasp the cootie factor and has no plans to take a break. And the agent says it would be very hard for his reps, at this delicate moment, to explain the situation to him. "He's in a zone that he's never been in and it's their job to make sure he feels the positive light," he says. Another source close to the star agrees. "You've got to be very careful in conversations with him," he says. "Tom is not ever going to face facts." [...]

How does anyone expect Cruise to "face facts" when he's been so comfortably cocooned in an impermeable, reality-resistant bubble of his own devising? No nasty thing the suppressive media might write about him can possibly replace the ecstatic feeling accompanying the happiest memory of his life, when Cruise woke up on the Monday following M:i:III's opening weekend and first saw the custom-printed copy of Variety celebrating the movie's unprecedented, $61 billion worldwide gross sitting on his breakfast tray.

• The Cootie Factor [Slate]

1. Mission: Impossible III—$24.5 million
Bolstered by a second consecutive weekend on top (though one that's still about 50 percent lower than last weekend's unimpressive number), official Paramount box office apologist Rob Moore told the AP, "It's not a bad start." Hardly poetry, but he was undoubtedly distracted by daydreaming about the sweet moment when their movie finally limps across the $100 million mark, and it's time again for Paramount to take out a cheery, full-page ad (screw it, let's do a two-page spread and give those eight zeroes room to breathe) in Variety publicly thanking Cruise for not making his incredibly expensive, disappointing™ movies with another studio.

2. Poseidon—$20.3 million
It takes a special kind of bomb to allow M:i:III to remain on top for a second weekend, one so profound that it leaves flustered executives scrambling for something, anything to cling to in their moment of desperation. Box Office Mojo quotes Warner Bros. president of distribution Dan Fellman doggy-paddling for the lifeboat of meaning floating amidst the wreckage of Poseidon's disastrous debut: "We did outperform the tracking. But it's too early to assess the financial viability of the movie at this moment. I think cruising is an international activity, and [director] Wolfgang Petersen has had great success overseas...We're going to wait it out." If cruising enthusiasts don't show up at the international box office, all is not lost; non-seafaring shuffleboard fans could still turn out in impressive numbers, or, failing that, the studio could make a last ditch appeal to tidal wave geeks.

3. RV—$9.5 million
Robin Williams' return to the big screen makes us long for a simpler, more innocent time, when the most outrageous things our movie stars did were appearing on Carson coked out of their minds and marrying their nannies.

4. Just My Luck—$5.5 million
This is how big a flop Poseidon was: We don't even have the strength to talk about how badly Lindsay Lohan's movie performed. Damn you, Poseidon, damn you to hell.

5. An American Haunting—$3.7 million
We're confident that when An American Haunting slips out of the top five, it will be quickly replaced by some other horror movie we have no interest in seeing.

• 'Poseidon' Capsizes, Cruise Clings to Top Spot [Box Office Mojo]

From:WorkLife Programs 05/12/2006 08:26 AM To: NotesMail_MelroseLot_MP cc: Subject: ReelFit Fair TODAY

Continuing our efforts to promote optimal health, Human Resources presents Paramount Pictures' ReelFit Fair
TODAY 11:30am - 2:30pm

32 HEALTH & FITNESS VENDORS along the Paseo at the Studio Store will provide food, beverage & nutrition bar samples; free blood pressure, blood sugar & posture screenings, therapy consultations, chair massages, fitness equipment demos; information on health benefits, local marathons, bike to work day, fitness discount offers, giveaways and special prize raffles! Don't miss it!

We've been assured by a recipient of one of the massages that they were performed by actual masseuses, not indentured servants in vaguely naval gear trying to convince knotty-muscled staffers that Dianetics is "like a vigorous rubdown for your brain," thereby not producing any further Tom Cruise-related tension.

• Paramount Takes Its Mind Off M:i:III [Defamer]

From: [redacted] To: NotesMail_MelroseLot_MP

The new trailer for our movie, "World Trade Center", will debut in theaters next weekend, and we are proud to give you the opportunity to get a special early look.

Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone tells the true story of the heroic survival and rescue of two Port Authority policemen - John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno - who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went in to help people escape. The film also follows their families as they try to find out what happened to them, as well as the rescuers who found them in the debris field and pulled them out. Their story shows how the best in people rose above the tragic events of that day.

Only 20 people were rescued alive from the World Trade Center after the collapse of the buildings. Officer Jimeno and Sgt. McLoughlin were the 18th and 19th.

The film will be released August 9th.

The trailer will be shown every 15 minutes in the Paramount Theatre on Friday, May 12th, beginning at 11:30 a.m. The last showing of this 2 minute and 30 second piece will be at 2:00 p.m.

It's really an inspired idea; by the time the last showing ends tomorrow afternoon, hardly anyone will care about how bad the second weekend projections for Impossible look. If studio chief Brad Grey has taught us anything this week, it's how important perspective is in the face of apparent tragedy.

• Report: Paranoia Returns To The 'Mount [Defamer]

• "He spent years not speaking about his private life, not discussing his Scientology beliefs and was criticized for that. He made the decision to talk about such topics, and now he is prodded into saying certain things. He answers the questions put to him." —Paula Wagner, Cruise's longtime production partner

• "The reason we made Mission is that Tom is clearly the most profitable and substantial movie star in the world. We made $118 (million) worldwide. I don't know, but where I come from, that is a lot of money. If Tom Cruise is doing a picture, I want to talk about it. I would absolutely make a fourth Mission." —Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures

Grey does make an excellent point. $118 million is a lot of money, even if you're the head of a studio whose job depends on sounding upbeat in the face of crushing disappointment. Many, many executives in Hollywood would sell their mothers into white slavery for the 57th biggest domestic opening weekend of all time, so it's reassuring to see that he's keeping a sense of perspective by publicly green-lighting another sequel.

But opinions of people with a significant stake in Cruise's continuing popularity notwithstanding, the superstar's trip to screen M:i:III for a contest winner in Aberdeen, Washington offers something of a conflicting view on the erosion of the actor's standing with fans. Sure, there was a smattering of sullen, flannel-clad suppressives present at the event, but according to this Seattle Times report, they seemed outnumbered by those who looked to Cruise to "put us on the map," or in a slightly more optimistic case, deliver unto them the promise of eternal life:

Standing nearby, Ginny Thompson, 37, had taken the day off from the Sears store in the mall, hoping to get a Cruise autograph in her collector's edition of People Magazine's "100 Greatest Movie Stars of Our Time."

She said she knows the meaning of Cruise's visit. She said it will stop Aberdeen from being a dying town. That's been a worry here for a decade, at least, since the collapse of the timber industry and lingering unemployment problems.

"There's a lot of poverty here," she said.

How will Cruise fix that?

"Look, you're here from Seattle, right?" she said to a visitor. "This will put us on the map." [...]

But would an argument — though certainly good-natured — break out at a downtown store about the significance of a Hollywood visitor to Seattle?

It happened here Tuesday in the Salvation Army store in the threadbare downtown.

"I had to tell my niece to stop obsessing about Tom Cruise," said Laura Eaton, 25, a clerk at the store. "I'm trying to get into her head that Tom Cruise is not God."

While the question of whether or not the star is actually God is probably the most hotly debated topic at the Celebrity Centre's in-house vitamin cafe, the fact that it's on the table—no matter how unfairly, deceptively, and facetiously pullquoted here—up in Aberdeen leads us to believe that America's love affair with one Tom Cruise is not quite over, USAToday/Gallup poll be damned.

[Photo: Seattle Times]

• Poll prompts Cruise damage control [USA Today]
• In public's eyes, Tom's less of a Top Gun [USA Today]
• Aberdeen embraces Cruise: It will "put us on the map" [Seattle Times]

Sources tell me that a catered lunch at the studio, planned ahead on Friday as a celebration, turned into a morbid affair. "Brad Grey and Rob Moore came to it, but no one spoke and eventually everyone left."

Apparently, reality set in faster in the Paramount executive suite than it did even among Cruise naysayers. [...]

You've got to feel for these people, though. Since Monday morning, every department at Paramount has been called on for immediate cost cutting, I'm told.

"Budget meetings are going on everywhere," says a source. "Everyone's being asked what they can do, and there's talk of layoffs again."

Can we not use the "L" word just yet? Before Brad Grey starts thinking about layoffs, a show of leadership in the face of this latest trial is imperative. Perhaps he can demonstrate his softer side by gathering all of his employees on Friday afternoon for a mass group hug, reassuring the staff that no matter what happens during M:i:III's second weekend at the box office, he won't even think about polishing his scythe until Wednesday at the earliest.

• Cruise Crash Causes Paramount Panic [Fox 411]

Sunday night, went to Century City to see MI3 (I guess I was one of the only ones this weekend...) and when we got to the theater, the first few chairs in a middle row were reserved. We couldn't imagine anyone notable would be seeing MI3 on SUNDAY night at Century City AMC but maybe his private screening room is endangered with his DreamWorks paycut because Jeffrey Katzenberg rolled in at the end of the previews. He did manage to get there in time for the Over the Hedge preview... He didn't look too pleased with it.

It's kind of touching that one of the industry's highest-powered movie executives showed up in person (in a theater full of "regular" people, no less—the horror!) to give his pals over at Paramount a boost. When your buddies' movie is underperforming, every little bit helps!

• Cruise Gets A Little Box Office Help From His Friends [Defamer]

I'm buying tixs for the movie here at the arclight and standing next to me is a woman self-admittedly from the scientology center who is buying 700 tickets with piles of cash. wow.

Hollywood Interrupted also has an eyewitness account of the (same, we assume) group sale, claiming a purchase of 900 tickets for almost $9000. It's not exactly churchloads of Christians renting out theaters to support Mel Gibson's little movie about Jesus, but at least there were a couple of screenings here in L.A. with fewer available seats where suppressive moviegoers could titter at every perceived real-life parallel between Katie Holmes and the kidnapping of Cruise's onscreen love.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke confirms an "an unusual pattern of ticket sales" at the ArcLight.

• CRUISE AND...BURN! [Hollywood Interrupted]

· Did all the hubbub surrounding Cruise's unfortunate tendency to overshare about virtually every aspect of his offscreen life hurt the movie's box office? Said Moore, "I don't believe that is a factor in how the movie opened," [NY Times]
· But doesn't it bother Paramount when all anyone wants to talk about is Cruise's adorable Miracle Baby and the woman who allegedly incubated it these last ten or so months? "There's no question it concerns us if the press is writing about things other than the movie. If people are writing about his personal life, then by definition, they're not writing about the movie." [AP]

· And what might happen in a world where the DVD player, cable, and the internet never existed, making it virtually impossible for younger fans to have heard of the previous two installments of the franchise? "If you're 17 today you were 11 when 'M:i:II' came out, and you weren't even born when the original TV series was on the air. To a young audience, you're launching a new franchise." [LAT]
· And, finally, Moore admits that in a perfect world, the opening weekend number might be a little more robust, while hinting that commercials might be recut to let the kids know that this is just the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the Mission: Impossible team: "You're always trying to aim for a bigger number, but we have a lot of momentum going into next weekend. We have to do a little work so that younger audiences know this is a franchise for them." [Variety]

1. Mission: Impossible III—$48.025 million
Tom Cruise did everything we could ask of our highest-visibility movie star: plucked an actress from semi-obscurity just before the release of one of his blockbusters, scaled the Eiffel Tower to announce his intentions to marry her at an undisclosed future date, immediately pretended to knock her up, confronted various beloved celebrities over any behavior perceived as incompatible with his controversial religion, and, in the globe-circling publicity run-up to a second blockbuster capping an almost solid year of media ubiquity, finally selected a daughter from the baby-patch lovingly cultivated by an army of drones inside the walls of his compound, allowing him to share the joy of alleged biological fatherhood with the world.

And after all this, the best we can offer the man in return for his selflessness is a piddling $48 million on opening weekend? Some might view this meager result as a referendum on Cruise's fading stardom, but we are inclined to point the finger back at ourselves, the miserly, disloyal public, who uprooted the actor's beloved tentpole, and while his back was turned, bludgeoned him with it.

For shame, America. Tom Cruise deserves better than Scary Movie 4 money.

2. RV—$11.1 million
Robin Williams, on the other hand, deserves exactly what he's getting. Though we must admit that the raccoon attack endlessly promoted in the commercials looks totally hilarious!!!

3. An American Haunting—$6.4 million
It would hardly be a weekend at the movies without some crappy, low-budgeted horror movie to occupy America's bored teenagers.

4. Stick It—$5.5 million
Jeff Bridges as a gymnastics coach should've been enough to get us into the theater, but sadly, even the sight of The Dude shouting at growth-stunted teenage girls didn't do the trick.

5. United 93—$5.2 million
Are we too late to be the first to ask if it's too soon for a movie about 9/11? We've been meaning to take the public's temperature on this issue, but we got distracted by the incredibly charismatic guy on the motorcycle with the new baby.

• May 5-7, 2006 [Box Office Mojo]

What's that sinister drone rumbling over Burbank? Three planes flying in some haphazard formation with long billowing banners emblazoned with the M:I:3 logo. Three planes...three M:I:3 films. Urgh. Tried to grab a camera...wasn't fast enough, and my camera-phone is shite.

The planes were spotted circling the Paramount lot a couple of hours ago, prompting one of our operatives there to complain, "As if we didn't know our biggest picture opened today." (Just in case someone might have forgotten, the studio's made sure that the Mission theme music plays whenever someone's on hold when calling the 'Mount.) And we've had other sightings of the planes buzzing the Universal lot, an unambiguous, airborne declaration of war against a competitor. Still, as unnecessary and tacky as the banners might be (whatever happened to the elegant simplicity of sky-writing?), they're still better than scaring the shit out of potential ticket-buyers just trying to buy a newspaper.

[Photos: Getty Images]

· Right now—live!—you can watch various actors walk into a movie theater playing M:i:III. The internet just gives and gives without taking. [Yahoo]
· Our sister site in NY had their spies stalking Cruise all day. Fire engines! Helicopters! Wheee! Shit, there we go again. [Gawker]
· We also had a spy of our own on the ground, who sent us this camerphone picture of Cruise doing something exciting! His amazing likability and accessibility has us feeling like we might die if we don't see this movie right now!