Studios are sneaks with previews

Dear Mr. Smithee: Can you tell me when and why previews became trailers?

A preview means to see before, to show or view in advance. This is a perfectly good and descriptive word for the short looks at upcoming films.

A trailer is a non-automotive vehicle usually pulled behind something. This word makes no sense in describing the short "preview" of an upcoming film.

This makes me crazy!

BETTY WINN, Watkinsville, Ga.

Dear Make Some Lemonade: You know what makes me crazy?

How some theaters don't turn down the house lights during trailers. And how some moviegoers incessantly blab about their putrid troubles all during the trailers. And how I don't like to watch trailers anyway because I want to enter the opening of a film like a newborn to the world.

In days of yore, your precious preview was a postview. Scenes of upcoming films were screened after a full movie had played. That's where the tag "trailer" emerged. The first trailer apparently appeared in November 1913.

It didn't take Hollywood geniuses long to discover that audiences would get up and leave once the movie was done. No one was really watching the trailers.

So they invented the incessant "preview," which is a trailer that is no longer shown after a full movie but before it.

ALAN

P.S. You get a DVD of the trailer for "Burn After Reading" and a healthy can of Booty Sweat commemorating "Tropic Thunder."

Here are a few excerpts:

From Steven Killen of St. Paul: A great entrance that can't be overlooked is from "Star Wars" when Darth Vader first appears amid the smoke of blaster fire when the Imperial cruiser takes the rebel ship. The long, flowing cape, the black helmet and armor, the sound of his iron lung and, of course, the voice of James Earl Jones make it memorable.

From Marvin Potter of Delray Beach, Fla.: How do you rate Orson Welles in "The Third Man"? If not the best it has to be among the best.

From Alice Wernimont Bodnar of St. Paul: Certainly Omar Sharif's ranks up there, but how to explain no mention of Katharine Hepburn's voice-from-the-heavens elevator entrance in "Suddenly Last Summer"?

My humble response: Those are all great, too. And I thought of each of them. But I didn't include them in my list then and won't do so now. I like mine better.

Ask the invisible man Dear Mr. Smithee: I heard a story on NPR about the development of some new invisibility technology, and it put me in mind of an old movie I saw once. I can't remember the title or the plot, but I do remember a woman in an invisible bikini.

My father insists that this see-through swimwear is featured in an episode of Scooby-Doo, and my brother says I'm totally making it up.

What say you, Oh Powerful and All-Knowing Cineaste?

EMILY-ROSE GUILLEBEAU, ATHENS, GA.

Dear All Seeing: I have written about this movie before. But I so appreciate giving respectful individuals the opportunity to properly put their family members into place that I will gladly repeat myself.

Imagine my dismay at discovering that not only was the bikini a peek-a-boo see-through, but so was the flesh of the ghostly lass that would otherwise be peeked at.

Darn that Hollywood.

ALAN