A look inside Hollywood and the movies : THE PLUG’S THE THING : At Least Arnold Doesn’t Mention His <i> Other</i> Eatery

Talk about shameless.

A new zenith--some might say nadir--has been reached with Universal’s cross-promotion of “Jurassic Park” and Columbia’s “Last Action Hero.”

The technique, as observed from watching scenes in each of these lavish, heavily publicized productions, is to make visual fun of hyping tie-ins related to their movies while at the same time drawing attention to them.

In Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” the camera pans shelves of “Jurassic Park” merchandise for sale at the park store--row upon row of lunchboxes, caps, etc., sporting the film’s highly recognizable logo. Gee, like anyone’s missed seeing some of the very same stuff--and more--for sale in real life at countless retail outlets everywhere.

For Columbia’s “Last Action Hero” Arnold Schwarzenegger, visual gags alone are not enough. The usually non-talkative star relies very heavily on dialogue to hype one of his other non-movie ventures--aided and abetted by his wife, Maria Shriver.

The set-up goes like this: Shriver, playing herself, accompanies her husband to the premiere of his new movie as the fictional screen hero Jack Slater and nags him on the way down the red carpet that she doesn’t like how he’s always plugging his restaurant chain, Planet Hollywood, to the media. To intended comic relief, he does it anyway . . . that is, until she pulls him away from the television cameras and admonishes him again. (That’s two mentions in two minutes.)

For the Hollywood in-crowd, the joke is extended even further. Schwarzenegger goes to a video store and sees on a movie poster that not he, but Sylvester Stallone, is the Terminator. Later, in a scene involving a daredevil crash he attempts head-on into a villain’s car, he is reminded by his 12-year-old sidekick that survival is possible considering how the villains always came back in “Die Hard” movies.

That’s one nod to Stallone and one nod to Bruce Willis and a third plug for Planet Hollywood. The three action-actors are partners in the restaurant biz.