MOVIES : NAKED TRAILERS : The following STORY has been rated “I” for INSIDE AND INFORMATIVE on the new power of movie previews

When Lawrence Gordon, who has produced such box-office hits as “48 HRS.” and “Field of Dreams,” discusses the merits of a script in a development meeting, he will often close his eyes and try to imagine one of the most pivotal elements of the film.

The trailer.

“I want to be able to see how we can make a trailer from that script,” says Gordon, a former president of 20th Century Fox who is now chairman of Largo Entertainment. “And if we can make a picture that will fit that trailer, then I know we can sell the picture.”

Selling your picture is big business in Hollywood today. It’s no secret that movie budgets have skyrocketed in recent years, but studio marketing expenses have been spiraling as well. In an increasingly fierce battle to attract opening-weekend audiences, film studios now routinely spend $10- to $15 million to market a major new release--and you can double or even triple that figure for splashy “event” films like “Robin Hood,” “Terminator 2” or “Dick Tracy.”

If your trailer (also known as a preview of a coming attraction) works, the payoff can be enormous. Fueled by a massive trailer campaign that began more than six months before its release, “Terminator 2” had a box-office gross of $53 million in its July 4 opening weekend.

If your campaign fails, it often spells doom for your film. Long before it opened, Hollywood insiders were predicting that “Hudson Hawk” was in trouble--largely from how poorly the trailer was playing with theatergoers. “I’ll bet you right now that TriStar has trouble opening that movie,” a rival studio executive confided in April. “The trailer is a disaster--it sends out too many mixed signals.”

What’s a true sign of how much impact a trailer campaign has? Upset about the gang violence that accompanied the release of “Boyz N the Hood” last month, black community activists didn’t blame the movie, which offered an uplifting message. They criticized the film’s most widely shown trailer, which emphasized the film’s portrayal of gang violence.

It’s no wonder studios lavish huge sums of money and long hours of research on trailer campaigns--the message the trailer sends often has the biggest impact on a moviegoer’s decision to see a film.

“What makes a trailer so important is that it’s the first time a paying audience is exposed to your film in the venue where it’s going to play--it’s on the screen and in the dark, bigger than life,” says producer Rob Cohen. “So you’re trying to present your film the way you’d present yourself at the front door on a blind date. You want to put your best foot forward.”

When it comes to putting their foot forward, movie studios will do virtually anything:

* Not content with simply having John Williams score “Hook,” TriStar--and Steven Spielberg--persuaded the Oscar-winning composer to score the upcoming film’s teaser trailer too.

* Carolco and TriStar Pictures, insiders say, spent between $400,000 and $800,000 to make its alluring high-tech teaser-trailer for the summer’s mega-hit, “Terminator 2.”

* Warner Bros. spent about $300,000 for its “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” teaser trailer, largely on its striking special-effects arrow shot.

* 20th Century Fox hired Orson Welles to narrate its trailer the 1984 “Revenge of the Nerds.”

* MGM/UA put Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren into a gym a month before “Rocky IV” started shooting just to get footage of the stars boxing for the film’s teaser trailer.

* Since Universal shot both its “Back to the Future” sequels at the same time, when the studio released “Back to the Future II,” it ended the film with a classic bit of marketing chutzpah-- a trailer for “Back to the Future III.”

* When Paramount didn’t have any footage from its 1986 “The Golden Child,” it filmed Eddie Murphy riding a yak through a blinding snowstorm (staged at Mammoth ski resort and shot by award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond). When Murphy approached the camera, he announced: “If I’m the Chosen One, how come I’m freezing while you’re sitting in a warm movie theater? Chosen one, my behind! Why couldn’t someone choose me to go to the Bahamas?”

That trailer had people talking about the movie six months before its release, ensuring its box-office success. “It was a great piece of advertising,” says Dawn Steel, the former president of production at Paramount who is now an independent producer. “We sold the movie by not showing it.”

The success of “The Golden Child’s” trailer campaign, even in the face of abysmal reviews, wasn’t lost on a new generation of studio marketing executives. Let the critics say what they want about your picture. Just hope moviegoers don’t spread any bad word-of-mouth about your new trailer.

Just ask TriStar Pictures. When the studio’s “Hudson Hawk” trailer started playing in theaters earlier this year, audiences were buzzing about the movie, which starred Bruce Willis as a cappuccino-loving cat burglar.

Only it wasn’t necessarily a good buzz.

After seeing the trailer, many theatergoers were confused. Some of the scenes offered laughs and gags. But others showed thrills and explosions. So what was “Hudson Hawk?” A comedy caper? Or an action-adventure?

Apparently TriStar got the message--its trailer wasn’t working. In late April, the studio sent theaters a new trailer. Most of the gags were gone. The “Pink Panther”-style shots of Willis had disappeared.

The explosions, chase scenes and Willis’ death-defying dives all stayed. The second “Hudson Hawk” trailer seemed to have a new message--this was an action-adventure film.

But by then, filled more with confusion than anticipation, moviegoers were already making a critical decision--they weren’t going to rush off to see “Hudson Hawk.”

More recently, TriStar yanked its first teaser trailer for the upcoming “Bugsy,” a Barry Levinson film starring Warren Beatty, after the trailer bombed with theatergoers. The trailer made Beatty, who plays gangster Bugsy Siegel, look like an elderly cartoon character, constantly repeating the refrain: “Call me Ben, not Bugsy!”

When it became clear the trailer was playing poorly, the studio hurriedly released a revised trailer, which emphasized the film’s stylish period look, its razor-edged dialogue and Bugsy’s heated romance with Virginia Hill, played by Annette Bening. How important did the filmmakers view this attempt to redefine the film’s image? Director Levinson edited the new trailer himself.

“A bad trailer can hurt much more than a good trailer can help,” says 20th Century Fox Films chief Joe Roth, who began his career cutting TV trailers. “When I see a bad trailer, you’ll never get me back, no matter how many TV ad buys you make. As a moviegoer, I’ve already made up mind. You just can’t recover from that.”

In an industry where success or failure is gauged by the size of your opening weekend grosses, nothing is better at stimulating awareness--and enthusiasm--for a film than a good trailer. “The key reason ‘Home Alone’ opened so well was its trailer, which was brilliant in setting up the comedy and family situation,” Steel says. “I remember sitting in the audience when that trailer played and everyone was roaring with laughter. You could tell right away--that picture was going to be a hit.”

The vast majority of viewers are first exposed to a new film through TV advertising. However, TV ads, which are often edited-down 15 or 30-second versions of the original trailer, are the most expensive aspect of a marketing campaign. Studio execs estimate the cost of buying TV airtime takes up at least 50 or 60% of the average $12 million marketing budget.

Trailers shown in theaters may only reach 10 to 15% of a film’s potential audience, but it’s easily the most important segment--actual moviegoers. Better still, theaters show them for free. And even though studios now pay trailer companies anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000 to produce a film and TV trailer campaign, the money is well spent.

Hollywood filmmakers regularly stop by theaters to see how their trailers are playing. In recent months, exhibitors have spotted such top industry execs and talent as Oliver Stone, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Pollock, Joel Silver, Steven Spielberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I go to the movies every week and I always get there in time to see the trailers,” says Katzenberg, chairman of Disney Films. “I thought the trailer for ‘Backdraft’ was so good that I went back and asked our people to find out who did it. If you had any doubts that ‘Robin Hood’ is going to do well this summer, all you had to do was go to a theater and see the way that trailer lights up an audience.”

Though most studios test their trailers with research groups, some prefer to try out early copies of a trailer in local theaters, before paying customers.

“We’ll have our people listen to the audience reaction and informally ask for their responses,” says Bob Levin, president of marketing for Buena Vista Pictures, which releases Disney’s films. “It’s real-world information gathering. It’s a lot different than working with numbers and saying, ‘Oh, we only got a 33, so we won’t do the trailer.’ ”

It’s no wonder these studio executives keep such a close eye on how their new trailers perform. A flat or poorly focused trailer can spur a potentially fatal burst of negative buzz.

Just ask veteran producer David Foster, who produced “The Thing,” a 1982 John Carpenter film that flopped at the box office. When the film was about to open, Foster went to see the movie’s trailer at the Avco General Cinema in Westwood.

“It was a disaster,” he recalls. “People were booing and hissing. My heart sank right down to my toes. I nearly plotzed. In fact, I did plotz. I knew it was going to kill us.”

Officially known as “coming attractions,” trailers have been around for decades. In fact, they got their industry nickname because when they were first screened in the 1930s, they were often shown after the film concluded. “They’ve gotten much more sophisticated,” says MGM marketing chief Greg Morrison. “At first, trailers were like a book report, spiced up with flaming words and a stentorian narration. They were simply a synopsis of what was coming.

“But in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, they were transformed from an informational tool to an advertising tool. The studios realized you could shape the trailer to produce a very attractive product--and systematically weed out segments of the film you didn’t want to show.”

In advertising, first impressions cut the deepest. Most moviegoers get their earliest exposure to a new film through its teaser trailer, which studios will play in the theaters four to six months before the film’s release--often while the movie is still in production.

If a teaser doesn’t work, alert studio executives will yank it immediately--no matter how much it cost. Paramount did a striking special-shoot trailer for “Regarding Henry,” but when the teaser didn’t go over with audiences, the studio pulled it. Fox shot an elaborate teaser for “The Abyss,” using all original footage--and pulled it one week after it hit the theaters.

“We thought it was great, but when we put it out there, it moved nobody--except us,” says 20th Century Fox executive vice president Tom Sherak. “We were expecting a lot of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs.’ And when you don’t get them, you know you’ve done something wrong.”

Months before Disney released “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” a flock of Disney top brass--and director Robert Zemeckis--screened an experimental “Rabbit” teaser in a local theater. “I was standing with (Robert) in back of these two 16-year-old kids,” Levin recalls. “And one of them leaned over and said, ‘It looks like another ‘Howard the Duck’ to me.’ That was all we needed. No one had to see any numbers. That trailer never saw the light of day.”

The numbers do make a difference. Most studios test trailers as rigorously as they do feature films, showing them to recruited market-research audiences before they preview them in a real theater. “The problem with testing is that you’re getting results based on what people have seen on a TV screen--a little box,” Sherak says. “So we monitor how they play in the theaters constantly. Everyone at the studio goes, from the mail room on up--and we ask everyone what played well.”

Still, trailer firm executives say testing has a huge impact on their final product. “You can love a trailer and the studio can love a trailer,” says one trailer firm executive. “But if the numbers say it doesn’t play well with men, you’ll go back and edit in every car crash, fist fight and explosion you can find.

“Of course, if it doesn’t test with women, you might say, ‘Maybe we should find that shot of Tom Cruise where he looks incredibly handsome and romantic. Let’s throw it in too.’ ”

Studios will do anything to add some juice to a trailer. Remember that rousing music that resounds through the trailer to “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”? It’s a terrific, infectious score--but it’s from “Willow,” not “Robin Hood.”

“When we did the initial trailer, no one had composed any music for the feature, so we had to improvise,” says Joel Wayne, senior vice president of worldwide advertising at Warners Films. “Tony Seiniger, who was doing the trailer, came up with the idea for (using music from) ‘Willow,’ which created the perfect adventure atmosphere--and really sold the images we had from the film.”

If Warners had made “Willow,” Wayne could have taken the music from the studio’s library for free. Since “Willow” is owned by MGM and George Lucas, Warners had to license the music--for about $10,000--to use it in the trailer. (But don’t expect to hear many Warners film scores in rival studio’s trailers--Wayne admits the studio is stingy about licensing its music to competitors.)

Studios also believe audiences are more likely to see a film if its trailer’s music prompts memories of a past box-office hit. So when Warners scored its trailer for “Tango & Cash,” it used knock-off music from “Lethal Weapon.”

“The choice of music in a trailer is crucial,” Wayne says. “When we made ‘Tango & Cash,’ we wanted music that would capture the spirit of the action movie genre, so we went to our biggest action picture, figuring audiences might say, ‘Oh, that’s going to be like ‘Lethal Weapon.’ It’s always helpful when the moviegoer associates your new movie with a hit.”

When it comes to linking a film with a recent box-office smash, no one can match Paramount Picture’s teaser trailer campaign for “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” which spoofed familiar images from the studio’s 1990 hit, “Ghost.” The trailer took advantage of an unusual family tie-in: “Ghost” had been directed by Jerry Zucker, whose brother, David Zucker, was at the helm of “Naked Gun 2 1/2.”

Audiences saw “Naked” co-stars Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley mimicking “Ghost’s” romantic pottery-wheel scene, with the tagline: “From the brother of the director of ‘Ghost.’ ” Though the teaser was filmed on a shoestring budget--Jerry Zucker loaned his brother, David, the actual “Ghost” jukebox for the shoot--it was a textbook marketing coup.

Paramount printed 5,000 teasers, attaching many of them on the front of “The Godfather III,” the studio’s big Christmas release, ensuring that millions of moviegoers saw the teaser. By getting laughs in the theater, it established “Naked Gun 2 1/2’s” credentials as a comedy. And by slyly associating “Naked Gun 2 1/2” with a box-office smash like “Ghost,” it gave the upcoming film the aura of impending success (a key consideration with today’s moviegoers, who often see movies because they’re the week’s biggest grossing film).

Even better, the teaser’s success caused a huge media splash. Entertainment Tonight and other TV shows aired the trailer as part of news stories while USA Today, People and other print outlets (including Calendar) ran features and column items on the trailer, exposing the film to millions of potential moviegoers who hadn’t seen the actual trailer.

To complete the marketing circle, when Paramount released “Ghost” on home video late this spring, guess what was on the head of the tape--a “Naked Gun” trailer.

“It’s had a huge impact,” says Mike Camp, Paramount’s senior vice president of creative advertising. “When we ran ‘Naked Gun 2 1/2’ at test screenings and the footage from the trailer came on, the audience went crazy.”

Like anything else in Hollywood that’s a success, the “Naked Gun 2 1/2” teaser started a trend. When the film had been in the theaters for a few weeks this summer and Paramount wanted to freshen up its marketing campaign, the studio unleashed a new spoof. For a TV trailer spot, Leslie Nielsen dressed up as Arnold Schwarzenegger for a “Terminator 2 1/2” parody.

Now 20th Century Fox is running a similar gag TV trailer. It features “Hot Shots” co-star Lloyd Bridges, nude and pregnant, posing on the cover of a magazine, mimicking Demi Moore’s celebrated appearance in “Vanity Fair.” The teaser neatly captures the goofy, comic spirit of the film. Holding his hands over his bare breasts, Bridges coos: “I’ve never felt more beautiful.”

The teaser trailer can do more than establish audience awareness--or create good vibes--for a project. It can send very specific messages. To promote its big Christmas release, Bette Midler’s “For the Boys,” 20th Century Fox is currently playing a music-video style teaser that shows a montage of scenes from the film, accompanied by Midler crooning the Beatles classic, “In My Life.” The studio clearly hopes the song’s vivid lyrics will lend an emotional charge to the film’s images, but it serves an even more immediate marketing purpose--it informs moviegoers that Midler will actually sing in the movie.

“We’ve done this before,” says Fox’s Sherak. “We did a teaser for ‘Silkwood’ with Meryl Streep singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ and it really sent a powerful message to moviegoers about the film. With this teaser, we wanted audiences to sense this is the real Bette--it’s a vintage Bette Midler part.”

Teasers can also be used to broaden the potential audience for a film. The teaser for “Total Recall,” which appeared six months before the film, offered a series of stylized, abstract images of a disembodied Arnold Schwarzenegger, swooping through outer space.

Rather than use footage from the film, which was still in production, Tristar and its trailer firm, Seiniger Advertising, sculpted a new vision of the actor, casting him as a high-tech science-fiction hero. “It was pure advertising,” Tony Seiniger says. “When your trailer is coming out that far ahead of the movie, you’re involved in total image-making.”

Imagine Entertainment pulled off a similar, if somewhat more controversial coup with its trailer for “Kindergarten Cop,” another Schwarzenegger starring vehicle. By showing scenes of its star in his familiar action pose and romping with nursery-school tots Imagine hoped to attract both family audiences and battle-hardened Schwarzenegger action buffs.

The trailer accomplished its mission. It attracted enormous opening-weekend audiences. But it also prompted a backlash by critics who found much of the film too violent for youthful audiences. Other reviewers, like The Times’ Michael Wilmington, complained that the best part of the movie was its 15-second TV spots. “Watching the trailer probably made audiences want to see the movie,” he wrote. “And watching the movie may make them want to see the trailer.”

With studios jockeying for position during virtually every summer weekend, teaser trailers also send a message to rival execs that a studio is readying its heavy artillery. “It’s definitely a great way to announce to your competition that you’re going after a specific date,” says Fox’s Roth. “It’s a studio’s way of saying, ‘We’re coming--and on this date. So watch out!’ ”

“Star Trek VI” isn’t due for four months, but Paramount’s recent teaser trailer has already laid claim to a key opening weekend. The “Trek” trailer concludes with the bold announcement: “Stardate: Dec. 13, 1991.”

Fox used that technique last year with “Die Hard 2,” announcing the film’s July 4 release date in its teaser long before the movie’s arrival. “It’s like planting your flag,” says Sherak. “If (rival Universal Pictures studio chief) Tom Pollock goes to the theater and sees people going crazy over your teaser, he’s going to think twice about going after that date with one of his films.”

Of course, putting a trailer out that early means the studio only has access to minimal footage--if any--from the film’s production schedule. Paramount wanted a teaser trailer for “Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade,” but didn’t have actual film clips. So Spielberg gave the studio behind-the-scenes footage of him directing Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.

Universal marketing chief David Sameth says “Kindergarten Cop” director Ivan Reitman adjusted his schedule so the studio would have trailer material as early as possible. “This is a big, competitive business now,” Sameth says. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting until a month after shooting finishes to look at a rough assembly of the film. We’ll often look at the script before the film even starts shooting to develop copy concepts and ideas for our teaser trailer.”

Filmmakers no longer jealously guard their footage from prying studio eyes. Anthony Goldschmidt, president of Intralink, a top trailer company, recalls “Jacob’s Ladder” director Adrian Lyne providing his firm with outtakes when they were cutting his trailer. “It was a real collaboration,” says Goldschmidt. “Adrian would say, ‘I think I have that shot from a different angle which might make a better cut for you.’ He gave us shots we’d never seen.”

In the past, filmmakers--especially comedy directors--had been reluctant to give away their best jokes in the trailer. But no more. Now comedy trailers showcase the best jokes in the movie--sometimes the only jokes in the movie. A recent example: “King Ralph,” whose gag-filled trailer (and TV ads) clearly helped sell the movie. Still, many critics say it hurt the film by giving away its best jokes, especially the picture’s comic set-up, which shows the electrocution of the entire British royal family.

“Absolutely wrong,” says “King Ralph” producer Jack Brodsky. “If anything, the trailer helped that scene play better in the movie. When people went to see the movie, they started to laugh at the first shot of the royal family. It didn’t spoil the joke--it heightened it.”

But other filmmakers worry that if you repeatedly air your best jokes in the trailer, the humor wears thin. “You have to be careful about showing everything in the trailer,” Cohen says. “Some jokes work better as a surprise, and if you lose the surprise, you lose a lot of the humor. But you have two different philosophies at work. The studio marketing execs just want to get the public into the theater. The film makers want to get them too, but satisfy them enough that they’ll go out and tell more people to see the movie.”

It’s no coincidence that if you saw TriStar’s “Terminator 2” this summer, you watched a teaser trailer for “Hook,” the studio’s key Christmas release. Studios try to match a new trailer with a complementary feature film. To ensure that exhibitors play their trailer, studios physically attach it to the head of each print of a new feature.

Disney had its “Rocketeer” trailer on the front of “What About Bob?” Warners attached a “Doc Hollywood” trailer to “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Universal put “Mobsters” on its summer hit, “Backdraft.” Paramount’s “Naked Gun 2 1/2” came with a trailer advertising the studio’s follow-up comedy, “Lame Ducks.”

Since most exhibitors will play only four or five new trailers in front of a major feature film, competition is fierce for each coming- attraction slot. In one recent week, exhibitors said they had 53 trailers in circulation, competing for fewer than half-a-dozen slots.

What’s a studio marketing exec to do? “We have Ph.D’s in begging,” Sherak says. “We go to the exhibitors and say, ‘Please! Ple-e-e-e-ase! Play our trailer! And if you have a good relationship with the exhibitor, maybe you can get your trailer played.”

If begging doesn’t work, some studios try other inducements, offering theater managers prizes and giveaways in return for playing their trailers. “It’s a jungle out there,” says MGM-Pathe marketing chief Morrison. “When we had ‘Spaceballs,’ we gave out T-shirts to the projectionists if they could prove they’d run our trailers.”

Eager to get its “Terminator 2” trailer up on a lot of screens, TriStar craftily upped the ante this year. “We had a ‘Terminator II’ contest with monthly incentive programs where you could win various prizes, including paperweights, T-shirts, crew jackets and gift certificates, which led up to the grand prize, an invitation to the ‘Terminator’ world premiere,” explains Buffy Shutt, TriStar’s marketing president. “The theater managers and projectionists would score points by reporting in how many trailers they’d played.”

Do those extra incentives sometimes give Tristar trailers an edge? “If you’re a theater manager with 18 new trailers sitting in front of you--and if you play Tristar’s, you’ll get $100,” said one theater chain executive. “You tell me--what are you going to do?”

Film producer Sam Arkoff once pronounced: “If you can’t make a good picture, you can at least make a shorter picture.” The same dictum applies to trailers. AMC Theaters vice president Greg Rutkowski says the ideal trailer should be about 90 seconds. Another exhibitor says: “You can only show five trailers before your audience gets restless. Some of the studios are making trailers are way too long.”

Perhaps the longest trailer in recent memory was Paramount’s teaser for “The Godfather III,” which clocked in at four minutes, bolstered by lots of footage from the first two Godfather films. The biggest criticism of long trailers: They tell the whole story of the film. Many critics point the finger at Disney Studios, which has a habit of giving huge chunks of plot information in its trailers.

As one rival studio exec put it: “Disney’s trailers fill in every blank. First they say what you’re about to see. Then they show it. Then they tell you again what you’ve seen. They tell you everything! By the time the trailer’s over, you feel as if you’ve seen the movie.”

Not so, says Disney’s Bob Levin. “In most cases, giving people information, whether it’s story or character, is one of the most valuable ways you can influence the moviegoers’ decision-making process. Since we don’t make a lot of sequels or films with major stars, our most powerful marketing element is the story. That’s what made us decide to make the picture in the first place. So when we make the trailer, we sell the story.”

However, trailers do far more than sell movies today. They’ve become such a vital cog in marketing campaigns that trailer concepts are discussed and debated even before film production begins. With production and marketing costs spiraling upward every year, it begs the question--if studios don’t think they can sell the story, will they even bother to make it?

“To work in Hollywood today, you have to keep a direct eye on the marketability of what you’re shooting,” says producer Rob Cohen. “So when you’re out on the set, the trailer is always in the back of your mind. There are days when you’re doing an action scene and you’ll go: ‘Double pack the charges. Let’s give ‘em a thrill. This one’s for the trailer!’ ”

TRAILER TALK

Attachment: When a trailer is physically attached to the head of a new feature film a studio is sending to theaters. According to MPAA rules, an attached trailer can be no longer than two minutes long.

Button: A quick joke or upbeat kicker at the end of a trailer, often shown after the credits have rolled.

Cut Down: A 15- or 30-second TV commercial version of the main theatrical trailer.

Chrome (or Clutter): The hype or glut of publicity surrounding new films. As in: “You want your trailer to be splashy enough to cut through all the chrome out there.”

Green Band: A MPAA-approved trailer that can be shown to all audiences.

Piggyback: (See Attachment)

Red Band: An R-rated trailer.

Segmenting: The process of editing different TV spots that can be aimed at specific demographic audiences.

Special Shoot: New footage, usually of the stars of a movie, which has been filmed exclusively for use in a trailer.

Teaser Trailer: The first trailer sent out to movie theaters, often six or eight months before the film is scheduled to open, which builds initial awareness for a film.

Upcutting: A specialized trailer-editing process where an action sequence or lines of dialogue are compressed so they will fit into a shorter time frame.

A Joke From the Dream Factory

Even Hollywood’s trailer experts know two-minute extravaganzas sometimes raise false expectations. One joke that’s making the rounds:

After a man has died and is buried, he’s greeted by St. Peter, who says, “You know, heaven is really crowded these days. How would you like to go to hell?”

The guy says, “What am I, crazy? Why would I want to go to hell?”

St. Peter responds: “Really, you’ll love it. It’s great. Here--watch this cassette.”

The tape is crammed with all this incredible footage of orgies with gorgeous women, vaults stuffed full of $1,000 bills and huge houses with pools, wine cellars and beautiful back yards.

So the man says, “Wow! That’s incredible. I’ll go.”

Of course, when he arrives in hell, it doesn’t look like that at all. It’s full of burning flames and scorched earth. Furious, the man grabs a phone and calls St. Peter.

“You lied to me,” he shouts. “It’s awful down here. Everything’s on fire. What happened?”

And St. Peter claps his hands to his forehead and says, “Oh no! I completely forgot. I showed you the trailer!”