Why Tinseltown still loves those glitzy premieres.

Movie studios make a lot of bad pictures, but they seldom throw a bad premiere. Hollywood premieres remain almost as important today as they were 40 years ago, when starlets wearing mink coats over bathing suits preened to the delight of paparazzi.

Seemingly endless red carpets and klieg lights are still part of the Hollywood scene, but studios are doing fewer grand events. Today's subdued protocol calls for starlets and movie moguls to show up in muted black Italian designer outfits.

The reason they show up, though, hasn't changed. Studios want to get maximum publicity for their new flicks, most of which cost $25 million to $30 million just to make.

Getting coverage on CNN and in USA Today is a goal, studio executives say, because of the vast national and international reach of these outlets.

"Premieres are done for publicity, and they add to the heat of a movie," says Tom Sherak, executive vice president of marketing at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. "We are doing less of them because of expenses. A premiere doesn't make or break a picture, but sometimes it makes sense to do them. Each picture is its own entity, and each studio sees premieres a little differently."

Premieres are often a barometer of a studio's confidence in a film. If there are low expectations, the studio will often send out invitations to screenings at smaller theaters. If there are higher expectations, it will more likely hold a big screening at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills. A major premiere is usually held only for those films the studio is confident will play well or be critically acclaimed.

Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Entertainment have been the biggest premiere hosts the last five years, while Walt Disney Co. has kept the lowest profile. Disney doesn't even use the term "premiere." Instead, it refers to its low-key screenings and small apres-screening parties as "industry events."

Warner's most recent premiere on Nov. 15 for "A Perfect World" was fairly typical, with some 65 still photographers and news crews in attendance. As Clint Eastwood popped out of a limo in front of the Mann's theater, camera lights flashed, and the screams of star-struck fans broke the chilly Westwood air.

From behind barricades, spectators tried to get the actor's attention with cries of "Clint, Clint," but he went about his business and quickly entered the theater after posing for a few photos.

Although most major studios typically have $15 million marketing budgets per movie, they are spending less on premieres, studio executives say.

Despite industry estimates that some studios spend as much as $1 million for lavish parties, such as last summer's "Last Action Hero" bash at UCLA, the biggest parties top out at around $500,000, say studio executives and the independent contractors who cater and build props for these events.

When studios stage big premieres, they usually do them as fund-raisers for various charities, and they share the premiere's expenses with the charity organization. In the past, studios underwrote the entire tab.

Studios prefer to work with well-oiled charity machines, like Cedars Sinai Medical Center, that can sell tickets and almost guarantee a sold-out theater. If all the seats aren't sold, the studio then typically takes the remaining tickets and papers the house by giving away tickets to studio employees to assure a full venue. No studio wants the embarrassment of not filling up a theater for a premiere.

These premieres can raise big bucks, but can be boring, according to some of the top reporters who cover these events for national publications.

For the launch of "Sleepless in Seattle" last June, TriStar Pictures held a premiere to benefit the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation. More than $2 million was raised because the biggest Hollywood honchos got behind the event, despite their competing studio affiliations. The foundation benefits the entire industry, which is why Peter Guber, chairman of Sony Pictures, parent of TriStar, was the event chairman, and Disney's Jeffrey Katzenberg headed the benefit committee.

The committee was able to sell 14 ticket packages worth $100,000 each. The event honored Edie Wasserman (wife of MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman) and was held at the Century Plaza Hotel. Some of the biggest moguls in town showed up to pay homage. But reporters in attendance said they found the event staid and flat, although they chose their print prose carefully for fear of offending the honchos.

"Sleepless" went on to be the summer's biggest sleeper, rolling up $121 million at domestic box offices. And the premiere party was one of the industry's top fund-raisers ever.

For a premiere to get the best media coverage, it needs to attract the "A" list stars, a group headed by Hollywood's top actresses -- Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Annette Bening and Emma Thompson, according to Hollywood social beat writers, such as Merle Ginsberg, who covers premieres for W Magazine and was with Us magazine.

Bening hosted a party for "The Joy Luck Club" in September at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center and it was considered a "hot ticket."

Ginsberg said, "Here in Los Angeles, premieres are the only chance to be seen, unless you run into somebody in a shopping mall. At these events, business is always being discussed, and deals are often made. At the 'Remains of the Day' premiere, I saw a woman with her script chasing Emma Thompson around the room. There seems to be no such thing as bad protocol at these events."

There is a pecking order, however. The stars and their friends, along with the studio brass, sit in the theater's best seats in a roped-off area. Young men and women guard these rows and make sure no interlopers infiltrate this rarefied turf. This often ticks off other guests, many of whom are business bigwigs who paid big bucks to attend a movie that they could have seen for $7.50 at their local cineplex a few days later.

Hollace Davids, TriStar's vice president in charge of special events, has staged more than 50 premieres, from "Annie" to "Gandhi," and often deals with the complainers.

"We try to be rational, and I never make a scene. If people become irrational, I offer them their money back. There is a pecking order, but on the night of a premiere, the stars and the execs are equals. Imagine as if this were your wedding. The bride and groom get the most consideration and then their parents. It goes down the line from there to Aunt Tilly and then all the way down to your second grade teacher."