A Marketing Game With One Crucial Rule

“Everything you see you cannot believe.” “Everything you feel is no longer real.” “Everything you hear you must learn to fear.” Thus go the publicity blurbs from PolyGram Films touting its new suspense thriller, “The Game,” starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, which opens Friday. But PolyGram is also thinking: If the secret gets out, moviegoers will pout. That’s because the film’s big payoff is wholly dependent on the public not knowing the secret that is revealed at the climax. A casual word from a family member over dinner or a co-worker at the office water cooler can ruin it for moviegoers who haven’t seen “The Game.” Should a reviewer even drop hints that are too specific, seeing the movie would become pointless. That has not escaped PolyGram, which has been careful not to reveal much in its ads or trailers. “We want people to talk about the picture, but not to reveal the ending,” said Bruce Feldman, publicity consultant to PolyGram Films. “From the earliest days, we’ve been strategizing and planning how to use [the secret] in a very productive way.” In the film, Douglas portrays a wealthy businessman whose brother (Penn) presents him with an unusual birthday gift from something called Consumer Recreation Services. Douglas immediately is plunged into a high-stakes game beyond his control. From “Psycho” to “Sleuth,” movies from time to time have been dependent on secret plot twists and endings. In 1992, Miramax Films touted the fact that critics were keeping quiet about a plot twist that occurred one hour into director Neil Jordan’s film, “The Crying Game,” which changed the complexion of the movie. But today, with chat rooms and movie sites galore on the Internet, the secret of “The Game” is sure to get out. PolyGram just hopes it’s a game they won’t lose.

There’s No Denying the Garth Factor Expect to see Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks all over your TV screen during the next two weeks, starting Thursday on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” Yearwood is on the promotional trail in hopes of maintaining the surprisingly brisk first-week sales momentum of her new greatest-hits album, “Songbook: A Collection of Hits.” Where none of the country singer’s previous albums topped the 35,000 mark in first-week sales, the latest collection sold nearly 127,000 copies last week. The inclusion on “Songbook” of a duet with Brooks, titled “In Another’s Eyes,” is being credited as the sales catalyst for the album. “It’s so unbelievable,” Yearwood says. “We expected, with the Garth factor, that it would do well, but I just had no idea it would do this well.” Yearwood and Brooks have been friends for about 10 years, but she still has been touched by Brooks’ unbridled enthusiasm in helping to promote the single and her new album. It’s easy to suspect that Brooks privately may hold another reason for wanting Yearwood’s album to continue to dominate the country charts. He could be demonstrating to his own record label, EMI’s Capitol Nashville, what they’re missing in not having a new Brooks album on the racks. Brooks has refused to deliver his new album to the label until he is satisfied with the direction of the company following recent corporate shake-ups at EMI. Yearwood, however, thinks Brooks’ chief motivation in joining her for more than a half-dozen promotional TV appearances (also including “Entertainment Tonight” and former NFL star Terry Bradshaw’s new syndicated talk show) is simply friendship. “It almost blows me away how generous a guy he is,” Yearwood says, “but it also doesn’t surprise me because I’ve known him for a long time, and I’ve seen him do this kind of thing all the time.”

TBS Hopes to ‘Dumb’ Down Emmys The major networks, which share televising the nighttime Emmy Awards on a rotating basis, have a tacit agreement to take it easy in terms of counter-programming that night--one reason you’ll see repeats Sunday on ABC, NBC and Fox, while CBS broadcasts the Emmys. Still, don’t count TBS among those throwing in the towel, with the cable network scheduling the TV premiere of the Jim Carrey hit “Dumb and Dumber” directly opposite the Emmys. TBS is heavily promoting the movie, including biplane flyovers (with the banner upside down, no less) at this past weekend’s UCLA and USC football games and a $25,000 cash giveaway during the telecast. Time Warner--which owns the movie’s distributor, New Line Cinema, as well as TBS--acquired a package of movies earlier this year that will bypass the major networks and go directly to cable, seeking to boost viewership of the company’s networks. Other movies that will premiere on TBS and TNT include “Michael,” “Space Jam,” “Fargo” and “Mars Attacks!” As for whether running the movie Sunday will hurt Emmy ratings, a Turner spokeswoman said, “We figure we’re going after a totally different audience.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers and Contributors