A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : SELLING SWEAT : Wesley & Woody. Michael & Sharon. Who’s Taking Whom to the Hoop Here?

The stats are piling up. Basketball trails just behind sex in popularity--at the movies. Director Ron Shelton’s “White Men Can’t Jump,” the hip, urban street-basketball comedy, is holding its own against the thriller “Basic Instinct” in head-to-head competition at the box office.

But is it a fluke or a fake-out? Consensus so far: a fake-out. “There’s a lot of basic instinct (sex) in ‘White Men Can’t Jump,’ so you get two-in-one,” said the obviously biased Marques Johnson, past NBA great-turned-actor who appears in “White Men” conning co-stars Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes on L.A.’s basketball courts.

One thing’s for sure, it took a media blitzkrieg to launch “Basic Instinct.” The Michael Douglas-Sharon Stone film has grossed $61 million so far, and had the advantage of the controversy over its alleged homophobic story. But “White Men,” which opened a week later, got no such boost and has grossed $40 million to date. Last weekend, “White Men” made just $400,000 less than “Basic Instinct.”

Simplicity sells. It was the sweaty semi-serious mugs of Wesley and Woody staring from billboards and bus stops and in newspapers and magazines that forged an image into the minds of moviegoers. The boys were everywhere.

“The picture (of Wesley and Woody) puts the movie in the streets, where it came from, where it was shot and what it’s about,” said Shelton, who also wrote “White Men Can’t Jump.” “The image of two guys, one black, one white--its language is very American. Everyone gets it. The poster was at the heart of the marketing campaign.”

Demographics are at the heart of it too. CinemaScore, a marketing research group that conducts exit polls when movies first open, found that the first ticket-buyers were, with some exception, nearly everyone that matters. The only group cool to the picture was women 35 and older; otherwise, it was right on target with teen-agers, young adults under 25 (that critical ticket-buying age), adults 25-35 (the ones more likely to stay home and rent a video), whites, blacks, fans of Wesley Snipes, fans of Woody Harrelson from “Cheers” and, of course, armchair jocks and those who actually play. “It didn’t hurt that they had a great trailer. The trailer is god,” said Ed Mintz of CinemaScore.

John Krier of Exhibitor Relations equates the film’s crossover appeal with many Eddie Murphy comedies. “Exhibitors say it’s the whole combination--comedy, the nature of the story, the right chemistry. What’s more, it’s a black/white story without the violence. That helps when you consider booking a movie at your theater,” he said. “White Men” grossed $14.7 million in its opening weekend, the third-highest opening of the year after “Basic Instinct” and “Wayne’s World.” “Fox did a good job,” Krier said. “Will it hold? I’m not so sure. Word-of-mouth can make a difference.”

Fox, as in 20th Century Fox, the studio that made the movie, is getting credit from a number of camps, which gets back to the fake-out vs. fluke theory. “Mostly, we took the campaign right to the people,” said Tom Sherak, executive vice president of Fox. That means direct media buys in 18 major metropolitan markets from here to New York; commercial TV, cable, print, posters--the works. The campaign started early, in January, to coincide with the NBA all-star game (Magic Johnson’s last televised game). The movie wasn’t finished, but the trailer was. By the NCAA playoffs, Fox took full-court advantage and bought enough commercial time that it became the exception rather than the rule not to see the movie’s trailer at least once a game. “You couldn’t have asked for a better tie-in,” said CinemaScore’s Mintz.

And, with a soundtrack featuring cuts from Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Queen Latifah, the O’Jays and others, could a music video be far behind? The title track, “White Men Can’t Jump” by the group Riff, is now playing on MTV. Harrelson made the rounds as a guest on “Today,” “Tonight” and “Late Night” but neither he, nor anyone else in the movie, saturated the media the way the cast and filmmakers of “Basic Instinct” did.

“The talk shows, in general, aren’t appealing to the right crowd for this movie anyway,” said Mintz. “The viewers are too old.” A smattering of stories did appear in major publications, including a profile of Ron Shelton in these pages, but the poster remained higher in people’s minds. (The photograph, incidentally, was shot by sports photographer Neil Leifer.)

Wooing the press was, by most indications, of lesser importance. There was no press junket, which is unusual for a major studio release of this size. That’s when reporters are flown in to conduct supervised interviews with the stars and the filmmakers. A Fox spokesman said one couldn’t be coordinated since Snipes was in Florida shooting another movie.

The press screening for critics and others of the Hollywood contingent was to be held only two days before the film opened on 1,900 screens--until Shelton intervened. “‘I fought and begged for earlier screenings. The critics liked ‘Bull Durham’ (Shelton’s last hit) and they were calling, wanting to see it,” he said.

Sherak conceded that Shelton’s instincts were right. Fox then agreed to show the movie earlier to critics who asked. “We thought the reviews would be OK, but nothing like what we got,” he said.