Heavy hitters

      "Show me the money."
      That pithy catch phrase from the Oscar-nominated "Jerry Maguire" hasn't been adopted as Hollywood's official slogan -- yet.
      But no one in the movie business could ever doubt its aptness.
      Not after Hollywood's annual four-day Las Vegas vacation, known as ShoWest.
      Every March, thousands of movie industry professionals -- from stars to studio executives, theater owners to popcorn makers -- converge on Bally's to meet and greet, wheel and deal, preview coming attractions and assess the state of the art.
      Make that the business.
      Let the annual Academy Awards concentrate on artistry. (At least that's what the Oscars are supposed to recognize.)
      Part convention, part trade show, part pep rally, last week's ShoWest '97 focused on a more practical criterion: the bottom line.
      Like the Consumer Electronics Show or Comdex, ShoWest provides a showcase for new products, including projection equipment, theater seats, automated operating systems and such new snack-bar items as the Pretzel Cookie ("Looks like a pretzel, tastes like a cookie").
      But ShoWest's main product comes in a far less tangible package: a succession of images reproduced on spools of celluloid and projected onto a blank screen in a darkened room.
      Such an ethereal product might be a tough sell -- that is, unless you have Harrison Ford or Julia Roberts or Will Smith making the sales pitch.
      These and numerous other marquee names dutifully made the ShoWest trek, urging theater owners to support their upcoming movies.
      Roberts touted her romantic comedy "My Best Friend's Wedding" as "a terribly funny movie and I'm here to beg you all to support it and make it a big hit." During a presentation featuring future Columbia and TriStar releases, she added: "It's the only mushy love story out there (this summer) and my hair is a lovely shade of red and very long and curly the way you guys like it -- for the love of God, please see this movie!"
      With "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek introducing the talent -- all introductions being in the form of a question, of course -- the event enabled Jack Nicholson and Tommy Lee Jones to show off their monosyllabic cool, while such demonstrative performers as Will Smith and Michael Keaton indulged their talent for improvisation.
      Smith, for example, couldn't resist offering an impromptu sign-language translation of remarks by his "Men in Black" director, Barry Sonnenfeld. And when Keaton bounded onstage, he bowed to Harrison Ford -- and then proceeded to kiss Ford's foot. (Rene Russo also was the recipient of Keaton's foot-fetish routine.)
      As for Ford -- back on top at the box office thanks to the return of the "Star Wars" trilogy -- he proved that he's only as good as his script, delivering a canned statement extolling his summer thriller, "Air Force One," in an appropriately deadpan monotone.
      After extracting the statement from his pocket and donning reading glasses, Ford placed tongue in cheek and droned, "It feels good to be back on Planet Earth. As you know, I've spent most of the year off in a galaxy far, far away -- but I've traded in the Millennium Falcon for `Air Force One' ... a thrilling adventure I know you're going to love."
      Despite the vicarious thrill of sharing the same cavernous ballroom with some of the most famous faces in the world, even the most star-struck ShoWester waited for the studios to show them the real money in the "product reels," elaborate trailers featuring footage from upcoming releases.
      Watching the product reels "kind of puts the whole year in perspective," explained 14-year ShoWest veteran Doug Kinney, concessions manager for Nebraska's 82-screen Douglas theater chain.
      Such previews serve as a motivating factor, he said. "You go back and you're fired up" about the movies and the business to come.
      In that sense, ShoWest is no different from other sales conventions, acknowledged Scot Safon, senior vice president of marketing for the TNT cable network, which featured extensive ShoWest coverage, including a live telecast of Thursday's ShoWest Awards.
      Unlike other sales conventions that hold little interest for the general public, ShoWest is "a sales convention that impacts your movie entertainment," he noted. "You're going to walk into the multiplex this summer and have 14 screens to choose from."
      And on those 14 screens will be more wannabe blockbusters than ever before, slugging it out for audience attention in an increasingly overcrowded movie marketplace.
      Leading the charge this summer will be such high-profile sequels as "Batman and Robin," "Alien Resurrection," "Speed 2" and the "Jurassic Park" follow-up, "The Lost World."
      Not to mention such potential heavy hitters as the Disney animated feature "Hercules," the action-adventures "Con Air" and "Face/Off," the epic "Titanic" and "Men in Black" (the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones alien action-adventure that generated particularly strong word-of-mouth), to name a few of the three dozen or so major releases expected between May and September.
      "Like Thelma and Louise, we're heading for a cliff," warned MGM chairman Frank Mancuso in his ShoWest keynote speech. "But will we stop before we go over the edge?"
      In their zeal to make more movies and build more theaters, studios and theater officials have "lost our sense of restraint, continually overproducing and overbuilding," he charged.
      Other industry officials echoed Mancuso's concerns.
      "We're spending a lot more money -- but we're not getting any more for our money," said Robert Harper, president of marketing at 20th Century Fox. "We're fighting each other."
      Especially during peak summer and holiday release periods, when movies that don't perform in their first weekend may not get a chance to find a second-week audience.
      "When the studios cluster films into certain time periods, at the end of the day we all lose," said Howard Lichtman, executive vice president of marketing and communications for the Cineplex Odeon theater chain.
      "Film fans don't lose interest in movies just because it's early February or late September," Mancuso pointed out.
      Studios also need to concentrate on quality, not quantity, he maintained, arguing for productions that "tell a great story because they entertain, not because they conform to some theory about budgets. We must follow our instinct, not a formula, for what makes movies work."
      Such doom-and-gloom predictions are as much a part of the annual ShoWest ritual as star-studded luncheons, souvenir-crammed tote bags and Hollywood honchos' perennial promises of nothing but sure-fire, can't-miss blockbusters.
      Inevitably, some of them do miss. That, after all, is show business.
      So is ShoWest's status as a premier industry showcase, a status that in turn raises its public profile.
      "There are certain events in the film industry that have become really big news in their own right. Cannes, Sundance -- and ShoWest is now in that category," according to TNT's Safon.
      "It's a place for distributors to promote their product," said William F. Kartozian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, which co-sponsors ShoWest. Studios "bring the stars -- and stars create excitement."