Cruise's Small-Town "Mission"
When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes arrived in the town of Aberdeen, Washington, on Tuesday, they were greeted by screaming fans, a red carpet and even a marching band. They were not greeted by a couch-jumping contest.
Cruise and Holmes visited Aberdeen (population 17,000) in order to take in a private screening of Mission: Impossible III with 27-year-old Wal-Mart employee Kevin McCoy, the winner of an online trivia contest. (Suri stayed home.)
In honor of the actor's stopover in the blue-collar town, two local radio stations had scheduled a couch-jumping contest in a nod to Cruise's now infamous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. But after Paramount caught wind of the event, the stations were forced to cancel.
"They felt it reflected poorly on Tom's image," Tom Schlaht of Selmer's Home Furnishings, which had provided a sofa for the scuttled event, told the Associated Press.
Spared from any embarrassing displays of furniture acrobatics, Cruise and Holmes walked the red carpet--borrowed from a Seattle event planner--and signed autographs for a good number of the 2,000 fans who turned out at the local mall to welcome the couple to the town.
"I am amazed at how beautiful it is here, and you're really warm and wonderful people," Cruise told the crowd, as he and Holmes accepted honorary Aberdeen citizenships from the mayor pro tem.
It wasn't Aberdeen's first brush with fame. Besides being the birthplace of Kurt Cobain, the town also hosted a Metallica concert in 1996 after another resident won an MTV concert.
But in the eyes of some residents, Cruise's touchdown marked the high point in Aberdeen's history.
"It's surreal," Roxanne Lingnau, 19, told the Aberdeen Daily World. "It's the coolest thing to ever happen to this town."
Not everyone agreed. "I couldn't care less that he's coming," supermarket worker Tanya Murray told the Daily World last week. "I like his movies, it's just everything else. He seems to be such a jerk."
Murray's opinion seemed to reflect the sentiments of many former Cruise fans. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that the actor's approval rating had dropped 23 percent in the last year among adults, particularly women. And, while Mission: Impossible III opened to $48 million, that was still $12 million less than anticipated by industry analysts.
The actor's dip in popularity is widely believed to be a result of his decision to make his private life and personal beliefs as public as possible--whether it be shouting his love for Holmes from the rooftops, lecturing a "glib" Matt Lauer on the evils of Ritalin, or trashing Brooke Shields for using antidepressants.
"When the public learns too much about a star, it's dangerous for the whole business," Universal Pictures president Ron Meyer, who was once Cruise's agent, told USA Today. "You're hiring a mystique. No one is as attractive as they are portrayed."
At least Nicole Kidman still loves him.
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