A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : BETWEEN COASTS : Sure, It’s Juicy in Hollywood but How Will It Player in Peoria?

It’s got stars galore in cameo roles but no big stars in leading roles. It’s got a murder storyline anyone could follow, but the crime itself isn’t the point. “The Player” is not a thriller, urban drama or murder-mystery; it’s a nasty satire about Hollywood peppered with enough inside-Hollywood jokes to keep industry audiences laughing. And talking.

Advance screenings have creating an extraordinary “buzz” around the picture. If tickets were sold at these private showings, the movie would be an unqualified hit.

Outside Los Angeles and New York film circles--in the real world of the box office--its appeal is hazier. This factor isn’t lost on the small, aggressive New York distributor, Fine Line Features, that won out over several major studios to buy the North American rights to “The Player” from Avenue Pictures.

“One of the great delights of the movie it that it’s so many things. It’s got sex, violence, mystery, comedy, a happy ending, not to mention the fact that everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood is in it,” said Ira Deutchman, president of Fine Line Features. “One of the biggest problems was how to boil it all down for bite-sized consumption.”

So Fine Line’s marketing strategy to sell it to audiences outside of Hollywood’s sphere was to create an print advertising campaign that skips the cast entirely in favor of a simple image that says “movies” and “death”--something slightly cryptic. That something is a hanging noose made out of celluloid.

“Traditional,” Deutchman said, “was not what we were after.”

He said the film’s director, Robert Altman, has weighed in with his assessment: It works for him.

Fine Line finds itself in the extraordinary position of being able to exploit so much free publicity on “The Player” as to make major studio distributors envious.

The movie opens Friday in only three theaters in Manhattan and five in Los Angeles, with a wider release to 200 screens in major U.S. cities planned for April 24. Considering this relatively modest release in proportion to the amount of media coverage in many publications--including this one, the New York Times, Newsday and Newsweek, plus Robert Altman’s appearance last Monday on “Nightline” after the Oscars--Deutchman said the movie can’t fail. Word of mouth will sell it.

As it is, he said he’s received reports back that paying audiences in L.A. and New York theaters are cheering the movie’s trailer.

“There is a definite fascination with the movie business, the lifestyle, the whole game--and that’s part of the sell,” he said. “The same people seen on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and written about in People magazine are in ‘The Player.’ What the movie does is strip away the gloss to show a Hollywood that is wildly entertaining.”

Others in Hollywood are more skeptical. Avenue Pictures financed and produced “The Player” at a reported cost of about $8 million. A distributor would then have to figure on marketing and distribution costs that could be as high as 1.5 times production costs to get into theaters and create enough awareness to attract more than the art-house crowd.

None of the major studios figured the picture was worth the gamble. Paramount and Columbia were not even in the bidding. (Fine Line also paid considerably less for North American distribution rights than the $7 million rumored in studio corridors, sources said.)

One major studio marketing executive who passed on the picture put it this way: “It has the bonus of a huge cameo cast, well-made, funny for those of us who work in this business, but show me its appeal in Kansas City.

“If it were a little picture that didn’t cost you any money, you can go home. If you’ve got a picture that’s playing in all the major cities but only selling tickets in three of them, you can get killed,” he said, asking anonymity.

In addition, Altman’s box-office cachet “is a little spotty,” said John Krier of Exhibitor Relations.

Altman’s career was at its zenith with “MASH” and “Nashville,” a hit 17 years ago. In recent years, he’s directed mostly commercial duds, albeit some critically favored ones like “A Wedding” and “Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.”

Former Altman assistant and fellow iconoclastic filmmaker Alan Rudolph, the Seattle-based director whose first film, “Welcome to L.A.,” was produced by Altman, said “The Player” stands alone.

“It’ll feed on its own legend. It’s a bull’s-eye, a home run as any movie could ever be about Hollywood. Don’t try and sell it. Say where’s it’s playing and walk away.”

As for Kansas City? It’s Altman’s birthplace.