MOVIES : It’s a Wrap (But Not Plain) : From Budweiser to BMW to Butterfinger, brand names are popping up more and more on screen, and it’s usually not by chance. It’s big business.

Within the wheelings and dealings of Hollywood filmmaking--where top talent is paid millions of dollars to star in movies with budgets in the tens of millions--a humble bottle of soda and a simple candy bar wouldn’t seem to warrant much attention. But if the pop and chocolate in question are going to be swigged and munched quite deliberately by one of those top stars in one of those major features--brand-name labels visible to all--then the sweet little snacks do indeed become big business. Specifically, the business of product placement.

The idea of placing real-world products in the fictional realms of moviedom isn’t a new one--Joan Crawford was seen belting Jack Daniel’s back in 1945’s “Mildred Pierce.” But over the last decade, Corporate America’s desire for powerful, positive public relations and filmmakers’ desire for realism and, occasionally, monetary support have come together to make product placement an irrevocable fact of movie-making life.

This summer, Meryl Streep casually sipped at a bottle of 7 Up in “The Bridges of Madison County,” and the plot twist that set up the elephant airlift in “Operation Dumbo Drop” centered on the wrapper from a Nestle’s Crunch bar. A bottle of Budweiser assisted Kevin Bacon in making a romantic conquest in an early scene in “Apollo 13.” And perhaps the least controversial aspect of the much-beleaguered “Waterworld” was that the villains’ fleet of Kawasaki Jet Skis were capable of some spectacular stunts.

Currently, filmgoers can observe Michelle Pfeiffer snacking on a Butterfinger candy bar in “Dangerous Minds,” and it will be hard to miss the frequently chomped Oreo cookies in the just-opened children’s film “Magic in the Water.” American Airlines will get a piece of the action around Sylvester Stallone in “Assassins,” and Dunkin Donuts will offer some sugary comfort in Cindy Crawford’s cinematic debut, “Fair Game.” Breyers ice cream makes an appearance in “How to Make an American Quilt.”

Ralph Fiennes will tool around the Los Angeles of 1999 in a 1995 Mercedes S-500 coupe in “Strange Days,” and, for “Get Shorty,” Oldsmobile’s Silhouette--touted to John Travolta as “the Cadillac of minivans”--will provide one of the film’s running gags.

“It comes up in the majority of films made,” says Tony Hoffman of New Line Cinema. As vice president of production resources, it is Hoffman’s job to find out what products the studio’s producers and directors might be able to use, and then negotiate with companies that might be willing to supply those products. “You really can’t make a feature film today--unless it’s on a one-room set--where you’re not exposed to everyday life in which you see labeled goods. In a big film from a major studio, you’re just not going to see someone drinking from a bottle that just says ‘Beer’ on it.”

But film audiences don’t want to spend too much movie time watching beer labels on screen; there’s a not-so-fine line between establishing reality and pitching a hard-sell. And in some films, the presence of any consumer goods would be an unwelcome intrusion. New Line’s “Mortal Kombat” has dominated the box office for the past two weeks without benefit of a single close-up of familiar chips, candy, soda or beer.

“ ‘Mortal Kombat’ had no product placement because it takes place on an imaginary island,” Hoffman says. “And we are not going to force product placement in a story like that, because it would only insult the audience and detract from the film, which in turn doesn’t do much for the product. For placement to work, it has to fit the story. And if there’s no opportunity for placement because of the nature and setting of the film, we’re not going to try to force anything on the filmmakers.”

Corporate eyes were opened to the lucrative possibilities of product placement back in 1982, when E. T.’s memorable encounter with Reese’s Pieces led to a 66% increase in the candy’s sales shortly after the film’s release. The lesson was sharpened by the knowledge that M&M; / Mars Inc. had turned down the chance for M & Ms to be the featured candy.

When sales of Ray-Ban Wayfarers tripled after Tom Cruise sported a pair in 1983’s “Risky Business,” companies began seeking out agencies that could help them get their products on the big screen.

“Corporate America has gone from saying ‘Don’t bother calling us’ to ‘Tell us what the next “Ninja Turtles” is going to be,’ ” says Norm Marshall, president of Norm Marshall and Associates, one of the L. A. area’s largest placement agencies.

Marshall’s company is hired on a retainer basis by such major corporations as American Airlines, BMW and Kawasaki to read through hundreds of scripts a year, scout possibilities for placement and negotiate the deals with filmmakers.

Fees ranging from a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars are sometimes paid by companies that wish to see their products in a particular film. But most placements are now an exchange of courtesies, where the filmmakers achieve a savings in costs--via free products or services--while a company receives national or international exposure. The deals can become larger and more complicated when they are part of a cross-promotional tie-in. For instance, “The Flintstones” featured a prehistoric McDonald’s as one of its gags. McDonald’s in turn launched a campaign to promote the film.

Marshall says that, contrary to some lingering suspicions in the public mind, companies don’t simply buy their way into films by dashing off enormous checks.

“There aren’t the amounts of money involved that people suspect,” he explains. “Occasionally some large fees are paid, but generally it’s a quid pro quo business. Filmmakers need props and products and vehicles, and all kinds of things that would be very expensive to rent or buy. The corporations have all those things, and they’re willing to deliver them in exchange for some long-term image-building.”

Corporations are very particular about the nature of those quid pro quos, however. A product’s exposure in a film can vary greatly, from its active use by a main character, to a mention by name or to a fleeting appearance on a billboard in the background of a scene. And in each case, corporations are hoping that their products will be seen in the best possible light.

“Corporations tend to shy away from having their products used as killing tools,” Hoffman says. “And you won’t get away with having someone eating a labeled food and becoming poisoned. We did manage to work Barq’s root beer into a Freddy Krueger film, though. The company didn’t have any objections--as long as Freddy didn’t use the can to stab anybody.”

“Many brands are trying to build a relationship of trust and respect with their customers,” says Gary Mezzatesta, president of the placement agency UPP Entertainment Marketing. “That becomes a consideration in placement. You don’t want to detract from what a company has already built up. Usually that means that characters who are anti-Establishment or who display anti-American values are avoided--although sometimes those kind of characters are perfect for particular types of products.”

At the other end of the placement spectrum, corporations and filmmakers are learning that a product shouldn’t be viewed in too heavenly a light. If a logo or a label is lingered over too affectionately, audiences can feel affronted, and any potential goodwill toward a product--and often toward the film itself--is squandered.

“We’re not talking about actual advertising,” Mezzatesta says. “Ultimately the creative process has to be more important than the products, and it would be bad news if that wasn’t the case. Product placement should be a fairly minor consideration for filmmakers. When it jumps out at an audience, it gets assailed by critics, it displeases the public, and it’s not good for the brand; so what’s the point?”

Some of the stickiest placements tend to involve alcohol and tobacco products. Beer and liquor companies don’t want to be part of a film that depicts under-age drinking, or drinking and driving. Tobacco companies, already under heavy fire for some of their advertising practices, are even more reticent about placing their products in films that might lead to further public backlash.

Even if the tobacco companies are willing to make their products available, there are those in the placement industry who won’t deal with them. “Personally, I’m a smoker,” Hoffman says, “but I will stay away from using cigarette placements. Most of the tobacco companies don’t want any part of it anymore anyway, because they hear too much negative feedback. You still see smoking in films, but I ask directors not to show the package. That’s our way of doing a small public service.”

Tobacco companies can be quite willing to make their products available to the right film, however. In the aptly titled “Smoke,” the central set of the film, a Brooklyn cigar shop, was constructed from scratch and needed to be fully stocked. “We didn’t budget for cigar-shop supplies, so I had to get it all for free,” says Loretta Farb of Miramax, who worked on the film as art department coordinator. “I didn’t have much choice but to do a good job of product placement. As soon as the executives of a couple of the largest cigar distributors found out that the picture was going to portray cigar-smoking in a positive light, they were in. There were very few questions about the details of the script.”

Farb was faced with some potential difficulties because “Smoke” was released by the Disney-owned Miramax, and Disney’s policy is not to promote alcohol or tobacco products in its films. But because Disney resources were not utilized and no fees were paid or accepted to get the products in the movie, “Smoke” was in the clear.

Product placement has become important enough in the film business that it is now supported by a professional trade group, ERMA--for Entertainment Resources Marketing Assn. The 4-year-old, L.A.-based organization draws its membership from both agencies and the studios, and has even established a code of ethics that extols the virtues of honesty, integrity and fairness.

“The word that comes up a lot in our work is seamless ,” says the association’s president, Dean Ayers. “That’s the way the placements have to function to be successful. We’ve found that most people do prefer to see a can of Pepsi or some other familiar brand rather than one that says ‘Soda.’ But nobody wants to pay to see a commercial.”

As an example of a very successful placement, Ayers cites one of the opening scenes of “Apollo 13.” “When Kevin Bacon’s character is at the party to watch Apollo 11, he’s holding a Budweiser bottle and is explaining the docking process to a woman, using quite a bit of sexual innuendo. It’s a perfect scene because he’s laughing, she’s laughing, the audience is laughing, and just the right amount of attention is brought to the bottle.”

But even when a placement is subtly rendered, and is part of a highly successful film, it may not work the way a corporation would like. In “The Silence of the Lambs,” included among the decrepit decor of the murderer’s house were some wrappers and cups from Arby’s. Says Ayers: “In one of our focus groups, some people were very outspoken about how they would never eat at that restaurant because every time they saw the logo they thought of the killer. I think we could count that as a bad placement.”

Sometimes what looks like an unflattering use of a product turns out to be a winner. When Norm Marshall read the script for “Waterworld,” he thought it would be inappropriate for Kawasaki’s Jet Skis, first because the vehicles would be dressed up so that no logo was visible, and second because the jet skis were the vehicles of the villains. But when he heard that the “Waterworld” production company was going to buy used ones, he put together a deal in which Kawasaki sold them a brand-new fleet of machines and sent a technician over to Hawaii to service them throughout the entire shoot. “It worked out great for us. Even though the bad guys are on our product, the machines themselves do some amazing things.”

Not all of Marshall’s clients are as concerned with the moral subtext of their product placements. “We have a client who makes light bars for police cars,” he says, “and they just want their light bars on top of police cars in movies, whether it’s for a riot scene or a parade.”

Product placement isn’t much of a factor in network television, primarily because the FCC’s anti-payola statutes make it a federal crime to receive a fee for the in-show exposure of a product, with game shows being the exception. Glimpses of products do sometimes work their way into a show, but not because any explicit deal has been made with a corporation.

“When you see the occasional identifiable commercial logo on a show like ‘Seinfeld,’ it’s only there because the producers want to achieve a certain degree of verisimilitude,” says NBC’s Rick Gitter, vice president of Advertising Standards and Program Compliance. “The ‘Seinfeld’ people feel that’s very important to their show, and we’re comfortable that it’s consistent with our policy, which is very strongly against product placement.”

In the world of smaller, independent films, product placement has been somewhat cautiously accepted as a tool that can make all the difference in getting a film completed. “Independent directors and producers are working hard to get the bills paid,” says Barry Shils, who has worked in both capacities and has most recently directed the documentary “Wigstock,” in which Naya spring water and Out magazine were among the products prominently seen.

“‘We appreciate all the freebies we can get, although we also tend to be very concerned that product placements aren’t too blatant. I was actually kicking myself while I was editing ‘Wigstock’ because here was a film of an event that had sponsors, and it would have been entirely appropriate to include those sponsors in the film. But I just didn’t do it.”

While producing the Nicolas Cage dark comedy “The Vampire’s Kiss,” Shils did make some crafty use of placement. Not only did he include shots of a Xerox machine, he gave a line of dialogue to a Xerox representative. “Copying is a tremendous expense when you’re making a film,” he says. “The company was glad to see the machine in the movie, the guy was thrilled to be in the movie, and we did all our copying for free.”

While directing 1993’s “Motorama,” he created a dream world full of invented products, but one bar scene included shots of several real soft drinks. “We were shooting out in the desert and we needed something to drink, so I made the deal to shoot the scenes that way in exchange for free sodas. My crew was underpaid, but they had an unlimited supply of liquid.”

Marshall says that the companies his agency represents are often quite willing to set up deals with smaller films, in hopes that they will be part of a breakthrough success. “I’m a firm believer that the kind of success we’re after can come from anywhere. We worked with ‘Mystic Pizza,’ which a lot of people thought would go straight to video, but it became a hit. We were working with Miller beer, and there’s a scene where Julia Roberts holds up a six-pack of Miller. You certainly couldn’t buy her to do that for a company today.”

Shils also says that he hasn’t been above toying with a script in order to take advantage of placements. “I worked as a line producer on several films for director Larry Cohen, and we were always rewriting scenes to take place in airports. You’d have the main character walk past a major airline desk, and maybe that would get the cast flown home for free.”

But those rewrites can also come at the company’s request. Marshall was involved in some delicate script negotiations during the making of “Home Alone 2.” “Initially, the script had the kid being given the wrong ticket, which gets him to New York instead of Florida,” he explains. “Needless to say, American Airlines wasn’t too excited about the idea of handing out wrong tickets. We came up with a compromise where he runs down the gangway that splits for two flights. He bumps into the attendant, tickets go flying, and he gets directed to the New York flight instead of the Florida one. That’s what they shot, and everybody was happy.”

The toughest and largest deal Marshall has engineered has been his most recent--he managed to get super-spy James Bond out of his trademark Aston Martin and into a brand-new BMW Z3 in the forthcoming “GoldenEye.”

“It’s a bit of a stretch,” he admits. “And it took a lot of meetings. That Aston Martin is such an ingrained part of Bond. But there had already been some talk of updating the character, and I think the new car is going to work well in the context of the film.”

“The Aston Martin will be in the new film,” points out Karen Sortito, senior vice president of promotions and sponsorship at MGM / UA. “And the switch to the BMW is handled in a very clever and entertaining way. This was a real first in promotions, because I don’t think there’s ever been this much mutual support between a film and a car company. BMW was very enthusiastic about getting involved, and all their initial advertising for this new model will tie in with the film. But the creative team behind the film was part of this decision, too, right from the beginning. If they hadn’t wanted the deal to happen, it wouldn’t have happened.”

With Corporate America hungry for more screen time, with creative types willing to deal, and with those in the product placement business ever vigilant for new opportunities, is there any chance that super-suave James Bond may someday apply his classic “shaken not stirred” cocktail instructions to a glass of 7 Up?

“I don’t think so,” Marshall says with a laugh. “We do what we can, but we can’t have everything.”