Does This Film Seem Familiar?

By RICHARD CORLISS

Wake up, turn on the Today show. Why, there's Dennis Quaid, talking about his new film, Everybody's All-American. Drive to work, turn on the car radio. The local station is running a chat with Jessica Lange, another star of the intriguing new film Everybody's All-American. Park your car, pick up a newspaper, and read an interview with Taylor Hackford, director of that fascinating new film Everybody's All-American. At lunch, walk past the newsstand. Vanity Fair has a cover story on Jessica Lange, star of the new film Everybody's All-American. Get home that evening, channel-hop from the local news to Entertainment Tonight to USA Today. They're all showing behind- the-scenes footage of that warm, witty, winning and winsome new film Everybody's All-American. The picture hasn't yet opened at a theater near you, but you feel as if you know all about it. And maybe want to see it.

You have just been massaged, pummeled -- and maybe had -- by some savvy movie publicists, the spin doctors of the entertainment industry. They operate in the slick new tradition of political handlers, whose job is to reduce a campaign to photo ops and sound bites, keep their candidates away from rancorous reporters and try, ever so discreetly, to manage the news. For a movie publicist, the methods and motives are the same; only the product is different. And by orchestrating the burgeoning infotainment press, a smart flack can detonate a bigger bang for the buck. Without spending a dollar on advertising (though millions will be lavished on print and TV ads), without cozying up to a single critic (though rave reviews are nice), he can secure a client's name in people's minds. "Publicity isn't a buckshot medium," says Robert Friedman, a senior vice president at Warner Bros. "It's very carefully directed. Putting the best face on a picture is a good way of getting people into the seats for that first weekend."

Art and hype have long been partners; there must have been some prehistoric Frenchman urging his fellows to catch the cave paintings at Lascaux. But movies, as the first mechanical art form, have always churned on assembly-line publicity. With the mid-'70s success of People magazine, and later + Entertainment Tonight, the celebrity industry went high tech and high gear. Nearly every hour of the TV day, from Today and Good Morning America through Oprah and Donahue to Carson and Nightwatch, is filled with show-biz interviews.

It's a superbly symbiotic arrangement. The celebrity media fill their space and time; the hype Houdinis manage simultaneously to alert and to anesthetize the moviegoer. At times, they stroke and stoke each other. "Appearances on a lot of shows are designed to impress the media rather than the public," says Warren Cowan, chairman of the Rogers & Cowan agency. "Writers and editors watch the morning shows, say, and decide to check the stories out." For the sake of detente, these natural adversaries must get along to get ahead. "Some journalists say that the publicity machine isn't worth the powder it would take to blow it up," notes Tom Green, a writer for USA Today. "I disagree. Publicists are an integral part of the picture. If you want access, you have to play the game. At times I feel very manipulated and frustrated."

There are master manipulators at the studios. They know some exposure is a heaven-sent perk, like last month's 60 Minutes report on a murder case that inspired the new Meryl Streep film A Cry in the Dark. But they also know their job. So they hire a firm to tape a generic interview with their star, then send local TV stations a cassette in which the star's comments can be intercut with questions posed by a station reporter. It's no-fault, no-sweat, no-work journalism.

The best publicists know how to woo and use even the jackpot shows like Today and Good Morning America. A studio may let a show do a location report in exchange for multishow exposure when the film is released. Nowadays, the big stars expect more than at least three segments on the breakfast clubs; for a Clint Eastwood, the Today show should be renamed Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Says one studio publicity executive: "If you have a few Class A stars in a picture, you can play the two shows off each other until you get everything you want. On Steel Magnolias, for example, you could tell Today they can have Sally Field and Dolly Parton if they take on some lesser-known actors as well. Then you tell Good Morning America that they can have Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis if they do other segments on the film. On a picture like that, I'd go for the gold."

The gold is media saturation, not great reviews. In the movie business, the still, small voice of the critic is . . . still small. The movie-critic TV shows -- Siskel & Ebert and their clones -- have some influence, at least as consumer alerts, because they devote much of their time to running film clips. But the print critics are hardly relevant to Hollywood. They may be able to help a small film, but they can't break a big one. "You always want a happy Friday," one studio exec says of critical raves. "But if the movie is an audience pleaser, it can overcome bad reviews, especially in the summer. People aren't walking in out of the heat to get art. They're looking for diversion."

So, presumably, are the readers and viewers who sit back and gorge on junk news. But what nourishment can they take from these myriad factoids about a film's budget, an actor's motivation, a director's neuroses, a special-effects man's wizardry? If moviegoers gain infotainment, they may be losing their innocence -- the magic tingle of walking into a big, dark theater whose pleasures are yet to be revealed. By pushing its stars and its secrets across the breakfast table, Hollywood may be hyping itself right out of the wonder business.

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles