‘Armageddon’ Opening a Hot Ticket

Miniature plastic planets had been placed on Lucite pedestals in the middle of each table where the guests would dine. The acoustics in the temporary state-of-the-art theater had been checked and rechecked, and the stage where Aerosmith would perform had been strewn with jagged Styrofoam chunks to look like the surface of an asteroid.

Here, at Monday night’s world premiere of Touchstone Pictures’ “Armageddon,” the folks at Disney seemed to have thought of everything. Party crashers? They’d foiled them. Mosquitoes? They’d poisoned them. Earplugs were even available for anyone who wanted to hear Steven Tyler, Aerosmith’s lead singer, scream, “Walk this way” without going deaf.

But Disney’s 300-person army of event coordinators couldn’t stop the 97-degree heat, which hung over this swampy wetland like the moist, fiery breath of an angry dog. Which is how the 570 invited guests came to learn something that publicists and makeup artists have strived for decades to keep secret: Even movie stars sweat.

A movie’s world premiere is more than just a party--it is a potential publicity bonanza, with scores of TV crews and photographers looking to capture glamorous images that can do as much to attract moviegoers as the most finely honed marketing campaign. Ideally, it is not a place where anyone’s shirt should be plastered unflatteringly to the small of his back.

But it couldn’t be helped. Sure, Ben Affleck started off looking cool when he first stepped onto the red carpet with the fresh-faced Gwyneth Paltrow and his mother, Chris, on either arm. But as the Academy Award-winning writer-star of “Good Will Hunting” inched down the gauntlet of TV crews, photographers and reporters, the humidity descended.

“Do you mind?” he asked a Telemundo reporter who was trying to interview him, dabbing at his forehead with a limp paper towel as the cameras rolled.

Billy Bob Thornton fared no better, which was cause for some alarm because the once-bearish actor, who won an Oscar for his screenplay about a hulking half-wit in “Sling Blade,” now is so skinny that he didn’t look as if he had any sweat to spare. Dressed all in black, from his backward baseball cap to his sleeveless T-shirt to his tiny jeans and cowboy boots, the tattooed Thornton managed to make Laura Dern, his frail date, look well-fed.

(“He’s a healthy thin,” Michelle Bega, Thornton’s publicist, said when asked if Thornton was OK. “I’ve never seen anybody eat healthier. Fruits. Vegetables. Absolutely, he’s not sick.”)

The movie’s Liv Tyler--looking ravishing in short-cropped hair and a full-length, off-the-shoulder Richard Tyler gown--glowed. Cuba Gooding Jr., who is not in “Armageddon” but attended the premiere because he plays hockey with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, merely perspired. The only star who escaped completely unshiny was the last to arrive--and the most hopefully anticipated. Bruce Willis had said he would not attend after word came last week that he and his wife, actress Demi Moore, are divorcing. But just as the screening was about to start, he bounded down the red carpet, looking casual in a polo shirt and jeans and shunning all interviews.

“He called last night at 2:30 a.m.,” said Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth, who looked mighty relieved to see his biggest star posing for photos. Roth said he didn’t know what had changed Willis’ mind or how the action hero had come. “He’s got his own plane. I don’t ask.”

“Run and find [director] Michael Bay!” somebody yelled as Willis’ arrival prompted a whole new round of group photographs of the film’s cast and crew. Meanwhile, the un-famous guests, who had been herded into the chilly air-conditioned theater 40 minutes earlier, would have to wait a little longer for the movie to begin.

“There’s a British expression,” said Bumble Ward, Bay’s publicist, summing up the ridiculous scene. “ ‘It’s such a palaver.’ ” Even if you’d never before heard that expression used to describe idle flattery, it was easy to guess what she meant.

Finally, the movie played, and the audience cheered as a bunch of oil riggers flew into space to, in the words of one character in the film, “kick a little asteroid butt.”

Afterward, in the cool dining room, there were more surreal moments--as when Brig. Gen. F. Randy Starbuck, the commander of the Cape Canaveral Air Station, shook the hand of William Fichtner, who plays an astronaut in the movie, and told the actor: “Thank you for saving the world!”

But by far the best moment, publicity-wise, had to be when Liv’s dad, Steven Tyler, interrupted his eight-song set in order to place an “Armageddon” cap sideways on his shaggy head.

“My daughter’s in it, OK?” he said half-apologetically to the audience. And then he uttered his appraisal of the film--a testimonial so raw in its enthusiasm that even the marketing wizards at Disney would have a tough time working it into the movie’s ad campaign

“It’s the [expletive] best action movie I’ve ever seen,” he said.