Let's be honest: Fred Ward and Lea Thompson have probably been to more lavish movie premieres -- maybe for, oh, I dunno, The Right Stuff (for Ward, so great as Gus Grissom) or Back to the Future (Thompson, of course). But Tuesday night's shindig at the Studio Movie Grill on Royal Lane ought to be an appropriately raucous and appreciative affair nonetheless, as Ward and Thompson stroll the red carpet for their latest effort, the locally financed and entirely Dallas-made Exit Speed, which boasts a plot that sounds like some odd amalgam of Lifeboat, Speed, Con Air and The Gauntlet -- on meth! Just the kind of thing Ward's boss, Griffin Mill, might have loved way back when.

No doubt the whole crew'll be there on Tuesday, with Thompson and Ward and producer Sally Helppie, president of Dallas-based Sabbatical Pictures. But you're invited as well, for nothing more than the price of a regular movie ticket: It's right there on the SMG's Web site, between Death Race and Mamma Mia!. --Robert Wilonsky