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Las Vegas

If there's one thing they know how to do here, it's getting people to put up their money in the hopes that more money will come back to them.

The casinos do it at the blackjack tables, the slot machines and the roulette wheel. And the Hollywood studios who brought their sales pitches to Las Vegas this week for CinemaCon — the annual convention of the National Association of Theater Owners — did it with movie titles.

The studios employed some of the same tools as the casinos: fancy food, ample amounts of alcohol, a lot of razzle-dazzle and showmanship.

Take, as an example, just one reception I attended this week, thrown by the movie distributor Lionsgate.

Within the Rao's Steakhouse in the middle of Caesars Palace (CinemaCon's base of operations), several things were happening at once.

Just inside the patio, people could don VR goggles to immerse themselves in the world of "Power Rangers."

At one side of the restaurant, theater owners lined up for a photo op with comic Rob Riggle, one of the stars of "How to Be a Latin Lover." At the other side, comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife/co-screenwriter, Emily V. Gordon, were doing the same thing to support their romantic comedy "The Big Sick" (which was a hit at its premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival).

At the bar, folks could order a bourbon-based cocktail called "The Hitman's Bodyguard" — which is also the title of an action-comedy, starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, that Lionsgate is releasing in August.

And when people left the party, they were given a door prize: a "My Little Pony" playset, reflecting the studio's October animated release based on the popular franchise.

Events like this, big and small, abounded at CinemaCon, sending theater operators off with full bellies, slight hangovers and enough swag to make them ask themselves, "How am I going to get all this home in my carry-on bag?"

But the prime events for Hollywood showmanship were the studio's showreel presentations in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

On the same stage where Celine Dion, Rod Stewart and Elton John have held residencies, big stars, notable filmmakers and studio executives all stood to talk up their next movies.

And no star stood taller — or did more to beat the drum for his movies — than Dwayne Johnson.

The artist formerly known as The Rock is the star of three major studio releases that were talked up at CinemaCon. And such is Johnson's power that even when he didn't show up to promote a movie, he was still the one people were talking about.

At the week's first studio presentation, for Sony on Monday, Johnson helped close out the show by promoting the studio's big Christmas release: a reboot of "Jumanji."

Johnson took the stage first, saying he was going to show the exhibitors "something very cool, something very big and something you all want." Then, after a beat, the punchline: "So I'm going to get naked." The audience laughed heartily.

Such bawdy humor was even more in evidence the next afternoon, during Paramount's presentation. Johnson made an entrance reminiscent of his World Wrestling days, walking through the aisles after a procession of swimsuit-clad dancers stepped onto the stage.

The movie being sold here is "Baywatch," a raunchy R-rated comedy based on the '80s jiggle-vision series about California lifeguards.

Johnson traded bawdy jokes with co-stars Zac Efron, Kelly Rohrbach, Alexandra Daddario, Priyanka Chopra and Jon Bass. He also, in the spirit of salesmanship, pumped up the crowd with news of an incentive program for advance ticket sales, with the managers of the top-selling theaters winning a trip to the movie's premiere in New York.

Johnson was a no-show on Wednesday for the Universal presentation, as the studio unveiled "The Fate of the Furious," the eighth in the car-crazy action series.

The official line was that he had to head to Miami to start shooting a new season of his HBO sitcom "Ballers." But, as The Hollywood Reporter wrote, Johnson's absence may also be chalked up to a feud between him and franchise star Vin Diesel that started last year during filming of the new movie.

In a way, it makes sense for Johnson to hang back and let Diesel make the pitch for exhibitors. After all, Diesel has played street-racer Dominic Toretto since the original "The Fast and the Furious," while Johnson joined the franchise as FBI agent Luke Hobbs in the fifth installment, "Fast Five."

Then, at the end of Universal's presentation, Diesel made the surprise announcement that the exhibitors would be the first audience to see "The Fate of the Furious" in full, right then and there.

With that announcement, Johnson had the audience right where he wanted them.

Why? Because Johnson is a movie star — a big-chested, massively muscled human action figure. He is cut from the same cloth as John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made up in charisma what they lacked in range.

Diesel, on the other hand, fancies himself a serious actor. (Note the way he gushed about doing scenes with the movie's villain, Charlize Theron.) He can be smoldering and fascinating to watch, but he doesn't pull off the action-hero one-liners with the same gusto that Johnson does.

Dwayne Johnson sells Hollywood product because he is a Hollywood product. And with the experience he has gained as a wrestling star and now as a movie star, he could teach the folks in Vegas a thing or two about putting on a show.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.