It was not the movie stars themselves who drive that brand of car, but their fictional characters who are cast with those cars by the producers. The casting of cars goes back to the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, whose producer, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, made a deal to use American Motors vehicles in all the chase scenes in exchange for advertising dollars to promote the movie. The function of such product placement is to subtly associate the car brand with a class of people. Hence the choice of Chrysler Jeeps in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2, Audis in I, Robot and The Transporter 2, General Motors cars in The Matrix Reloaded, and Ford cars on X-Files and 24. Product placement now includes products ranging from Apple computers in Mission: Impossible to Nokia phones in The Saint to almost any brand mentioned on NBC’s The Apprentice. The persistence of a brand in a studio’s movies often signifies nothing more than a package deal. The Weinstein Company, for example, entered into a multi-year marketing alliance with L’Oréal Paris, the world’s largest “beauty”
