Rewards can come in many different forms, like money, medals, admiration or letting Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher make godawful-sounding film about you. And, you're right, only an idiot wouldn't pick the last one given the choice.
Kevin Costner – who hasn't been famous for about a decade, and Ashton Kutcher – who hasn't been famous ever, have teamed up to make The Guardian, a film about how clever and brave Kevin Costner the Coast Guard is. And – in a genius stroke of marketing, er, genius – Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher are promoting The Guardian by going round telling a bunch of Coast Guards how brilliant they are, in the hope that they will become so dazzled by the praise that they will be temporarily hypnotised enough to be coerced into actually paying to see this rubbishy-looking film.
Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher seem to have a lot of time on their hands these days – Kevin Costner is happy to bum around playing music to people who just want to watch Field Of Dreams and fighting his hairdresser about computers, while Ashton Kutcher has really done nothing more than wear ridiculous hats to his own wedding. Now, imagine the sort of frenzied box office action that would follow if Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher could only team up to make a film about a couple of stereotypically flawed professionals who overcome their demons and get splashed by the sea a bit.
What's that? They have? Next month sees the release of The Guardian, a film about the US coast guard starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher that's named after a newspaper read by media students with ideas above their station everywhere. The Guardian seems like standard stuff – a troubled young Coast Guard and an embittered older Coast Guard find love on the high seas – but's it's being promoted in an awful clever fashion.
For Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher are going around talking up The Guardian to just about the only people who'd be even remotely interested in watching it – members of the US Coast Guard. As part of a planned multistate tour, Kevin Costner told a group Coast Guards at Almeda, California that actors:
“are not nearly as impressive in person as we seem to be on film. We get to portray these men and women who are often tougher than we are, men and women who are often smarter than we are, and in the case of ‘The Guardian,’ we are talking about men and women with the personal courage to put themselves in danger in a way I don’t know I would.”
Costner then when on to explain, in explicitly wistful detail, how being in the Coast Guard also grants you a certain amount of anonymity, meaning there's less of a firestorm when you get accused of wanking at a Scottish masseuse. OK, he didn't actually say that, but you could see in his eyes that he wanted to. Possibly. And then Ashton Kutcher – a man whose previous film highlight was sucking off a nazi in The Butterfly Effect – piped up to say this:
“When I first read the script, I thought it was all made up because I didn’t think anyone got to be that cool.”
That's right Ashton, you bizarrely lucky millionaire TV and movie star with one of the world's most desirable woman for a wife. Risking your life every day because some twattish richboy crashed his yacht is cool. Where do we sign up?
Read more:
Costner, Kutcher pay Coast Guard tribute – MSNBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
P. A. Stinson says
Yeh, I see what you mean. And only Navy pilots went to see TOP GUN.
Bill D'Angelo says
Take this movie seriously! I’ve only read about this upcoming movie as I was once an airdale in the USCG and can’t wait to see how authentic it really is. I understand from talking with my other flyguy friends this movie is loosely based on 2 cousins that used to fly rescue with us. One a Larry Farmer and the other a Kenny Farmer. Kenny was involved in a fatal crash in Alaska that killed most of his flight crew. He went on flying and was one of the highest decorated flyguys in the USCG but got out after his first 4 year stint (probably thought he’d had enough of risking destiny!). His cousin Larry stayed in for 30 yrs and became a famed instructor of lifesaving at the USCG aviation training center.
Bill