When Borat bum-rushed the White House last week, the lives of fictional and nonfictional characters clashed in a way that recalled Vice President Dan Quayle criticizing Murphy Brown's out-of-wedlock childbirth. Die-hard geeks, however, may have also been reminded of some other, similarly innovative publicity stunts used to promote movies. In honor of our media-savvy Kazakhstan party-crasher, we look back on 10 other buzz-building ideas that rival Sacha Baron Cohen's.

"House of Wax" They say that no publicity is bad publicity. Still, when a celebrity is as famous for being an object of scorn as an idol of adoration, that infamy can lead to diminished receipts at the box office — unless the whole point of seeing the star's movie is to watch her suffer. That was the idea behind über-producer Joel Silver's decision to market and sell T-shirts that read "See Paris Die on May 6" to promote his 2005 horror film "House of Wax." Starring Elisha Cuthbert, "House of Wax" features the grisly murder of Paris Hilton's character roughly halfway through the film, a plot point Silver and other filmmakers made no attempts at keeping secret. "See Paris Die" apparel and posters appeared all around Los Angeles, including many of the swanky Beverly Hills boutiques that someone like Hilton would frequent.

"Independence Day" One of the most hyped pre-release films of all time, no expense was spared to help this alien-invasion flick take in the beaucoup bucks it eventually yielded on opening weekend. In one elaborate stunt, the studio worked with the state of Nevada to rename Route 375 the Extra-Terrestrial Highway, because it leads to UFO conspiracy site Area 51. Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, the state governor and thousands of eccentric E.T. believers descended upon a tiny patch of desert known as Rachel, burying a time capsule with props from the movie. The governor also unveiled a road sign listing the speed limit as Warp 7 — so if you're ever passing through Rachel, Nevada, don't worry about the speedometer.

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"The Million Dollar Mystery" Would you sit through a really, really bad movie if it could make you a millionaire? In 1987, Dino De Laurentiis' production company teamed with Glad trash bags to make this rip-off of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and recruited Glad spokesman Tom Bosley to hide cash-stuffed trash bags around the globe. At the end of the flick, only three of the four money bags had been found — leaving the viewer to piece together clues from the movie and locate the real-life million-dollar Glad Handle-Tie trash bag. The dough was eventually discovered inside the Statue of Liberty's nose by a lady from California, and the movie was such a bomb that Mr. Cunningham's reward ended up costing the filmmakers more than they made during the "Million Dollar Mystery" theatrical run.

"Clerks II" New Jersey-born filmmaker Kevin Smith fancies himself a man of the people, so it seemed only natural that the sequel to his 1994 debut would give a shout-out to ... well ... all of them. For "Clerks II," Smith and the Weinstein Company promised fans that the first 10,000 people to become MySpace friends with the movie's official page would get their names in the theatrical credits. The promotion proved so popular that the contest was closed within two hours. Sure enough, those who saw the flick caught the normal end credits, followed by a few seconds of black, and then thousands of nobodies that flew by lightning-fast onscreen. Afterward, we can only assume that 10,000 pairs of parents laid guilt trips on their kids for being involved with a flick that portrays man-on-donkey sex.

"Weekend at Bernie's" How do you get people to come see a limp comedy about a stiff? You give away the tickets for free! The studio behind the movie made the gutsy decision to schedule complimentary buzz-building screenings all over the country, and it actually succeeded in turning on audiences to the mindless trifle that would eventually become shorthand for Hollywood's lack of creativity. After freeloaders were weaned on the free-flick teat, paying customers replaced them and gave "Bernie" plenty of successful weekends, leading to a successful theatrical run and a 1993 sequel. In retrospect, it was also a clever way to keep those original audiences from asking for their money back.

"Office Space" "Mmm, yeah, we're going to have to go ahead and put you in a glass box." Lumbergh may not have made the call, but some poor schmuck was undoubtedly dealt a terrible case of the Mondays when the studio behind this future cult classic placed him inside a 12-by-12 plexiglass cubicle to promote the flick. Stuck atop an abandoned building in New York's Times Square for a week, the wannabe David Blaine slaved away at a desk and chatted on his telephone while sympathetic employees in nearby office buildings held up signs of support. It wasn't all bad, however: Krispy Kreme delivered a complimentary box of donuts, and Howard Stern sent over a massage therapist. We can only hope that the studio let the poor guy wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans on Friday.

The films of William Castle The king of movie gimmicks, producer/director Castle (1914-1977) would do anything to get a butt into a seat. The old-school showman installed inflatable skeletons to fly over the audience during a tense moment in "House on Haunted Hill" ('59), offered "fright break" money-back guarantees to cowards who couldn't handle his horror flicks, and installed seat belts so people wouldn't fall off the edge of their seats during "I Saw What You Did" ('65). His most bizarre stunt, however, promoted a flick called "The Tingler" ('59): Castle wired movie-theater seats so that audience members would feel an electric shock as they watched the movie.

"Mac and Me" Dismissed as an "E.T." rip-off at the time, this long-forgotten 1988 film was actually a pioneer for much of the cross-promotion and product-placement techniques that audiences are now more willing to tolerate. Long before Simon Cowell drank out of a Coke cup or Tom Hanks delivered for FedEx, wheelchair-bound youngster Eric Cruise began a friendship with a cuddly little alien named after the world's largest hamburger chain. Co-financed by companies like Coke (which the aliens drank to survive) and McDonald's — one of the characters worked there and never took her uniform off, even at home — the flick launched with huge fanfare from its corporate partners. Shockingly, audiences didn't respond to the musical number that finds Mac dancing with Ronald McDonald, and corporate America was sent back to the drawing board to search for more organic ways to sneak their logos into movies.

"The Blair Witch Project" Arguably the greatest duping in the history of Hollywood, "Blair Witch" tricked most of America into believing that it was going to watch a snuff film. Instead, audiences were greeted with a shaky, largely black-and-white flick as phony as any "Police Academy" sequel. Listing the main actors as "missing, presumed dead," the producers of the $35,000 flick helped engineer an Internet campaign that vaguely stated that documentary footage shot by three student filmmakers had been discovered. After the movie generated an astounding $35 million worth of morbid opening-weekend onlookers, the supposedly dead "student filmmakers" suddenly popped up on Jay Leno's couch. Today such "Is it real?" movie campaigns have become commonplace.

The Academy Awards Nearly 80 years later, the first great Hollywood publicity stunt remains the most visible. Begun in 1928 to promote current films as much as honoring the industry's best, the Oscars ceremony has become a publicity juggernaut unto itself, with over 1 billion estimated worldwide viewers each year. That translates to a lot of dollars spent at the multiplex. With the exception of "Crash" — already out of theaters by the time its award was announced earlier this year — the last Best Picture winner not to gross more than $75 million at the domestic box office was "The Last Emperor" in 1987. But don't feel too bad: While "Emperor" only made $43 million during its initial run, a full $31 million (or 73 percent of its total) was made after the movie's Oscar nomination. Filmmaking heavyweights know that, in more ways than one, getting one of those little statues is guaranteed gold — and that's a Hollywood concept that even Borat could easily understand.

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