If you build it, they will come. And then if you go back there 17 years later when you're not really very famous any more, they will come again, only not so many of them and with about 75% less enthusiasm.

That's what Kevin Costner discovered at the weekend, anyway, as he returned to the Iowa location of his 1989 movie Field Of Dreams to hawk some kind of DVD rental service. As well as a free screening of Field Of Dreams for 5,000 fans, there some mixed news – the bad news was that Kevin Costner decided that a 75-minute concert by him and his band would be exactly what the Field Of Dreams fans wanted, and the good news was that at no point did Kevin Costner have a wank at a masseuse like he supposedly did in Scotland a couple of years ago.

It's surprising what having a film crew can do for a location, isn't it? Since it was heavily featured in The Da Vinci Code, the tiny Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland has become a major tourist attraction, to such an extent that a five-G rollercoaster has now been built around the mythic Apprentice Column, and the proudest moment of Ashford in Kent remains the day that the bloke from 2.4 Children threw a frisbee in a town park onscreen for one second at some point in the early nineties.

And it's this way that movies can change a location forever that apparently inspired DVD rental company Netflix to put on a roadshow where they go to places that films were made and show the film to loads of people from that location, even though they're all probably sick to death of hearing about the sodding thing by now anyway. And on Friday the Netflix roadshow travelled to Dyersville, Iowa where Field Of Dreams was filmed so that a bunch of people could go and watch Field Of Dreams for the gazillionth time, only in a tent.

Field Of Dreams, for those of you who have never seen it, is about the time that Kevin Costner started hearing crazy voices in his head telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere so that the dead people had somewhere to dick around in. And Field Of Dreams is still such a crowd pleaser that people like Jennifer Luckenbill drove for eight hours to see it. Why does she like Field Of Dreams so much?

"I was only 14 when the movie came out, and it was immediately one of my favorites and still is. I can't watch it even today without feeling the way I did the first time. It was the first time I saw my dad cry – and the last time."

Why? It wasn't that bad. Anyway, the big highlight of the Field Of Dreams screening was the appearance of the film's star, Kevin Costner, who turned up as part of his I'm So Unfamous That I'll Even Go And Play Guitar In The Middle Of Nowhere For A Handful Of Coins Please Let Me Make Bodyguard 2 drive. And Kevin Costner did all the things that you'd expect Kevin Costner to do, like self-indulgently play songs and stop young girls getting clubbed to death by baseball bats, as Access Hollywood reports:

For 10-year-old Alexis Turner, the visit included a brush with Kevin Costner, the movie's star who returned Friday for the first time since filming ended… "My dad pointed him out to me. I didn't even know I was standing next to him," said Turner, of Goshen, Ind., who fielded balls while Costner tossed pitches to one young hitter after another. "He told me to 'step back honey,' … when one, a bigger hitter, came to bat," said Turner, in the middle of touring several major league ballparks with her father. "This is easily my most favorite part of the trip."

Maybe this is just the start of a whole new lucrative phase of Kevin Costner's career, as he travels to the locations of all the films he made when he was famous. Hopefully the location of Waterworld will be first on the list. And we've got just the hole-ridden canoe for Costner to go and paddle out to it in.

Read more:

Kevin Costner Rocks Out At Field Of Dreams Reunion – Access Hollywood

[story by Stuart Heritage]