Hard Done By: When stars have to promote their own projects

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Stars doing the dirty work.....asking you to come watch them. | Photo 02

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By 1977 the hit CBS show Kojak was showing some weakness in the ratings. Sure, it was still popular and all but the audience was beginning to drift. Always on the lookout for the next best thing CBS decided to go into the daredevil business and locked up a special featuring Evel Knievel. The plan was that the man would stage a jump at the Chicago Amphitheatre. The jump would feature the world’s largest saltwater tank and contain thirteen man-eating, killer(!) sharks. At the time Jaws was huge and the public was hungry for anything scary and/or shark-related. Recognizing their opportunity to double their  promotion dollar (and their star’s inability to refuse thanks to his ratings) CBS tapped Telly Savalas on the shoulder and made him co-host of the daredevil spectacular.

I’m fairly certain Savalas wasn’t all that impressed at having to play talking head for some lunatic on a bike but what was he to do? As the ratings slip the power shifts and realities intrude. As it happens, the show itself was a disaster. Half the sharks in the pool ended up dying for various reasons, which was just as well because it was said they were so timid that if Knievel had landed in the pool he would have frightened them to death anyway. The tightrope walker was late, the snowmobile jumper crashed and the human bomb miscalculated and shredded his rented tuxedo. Even the main attraction flopped as Knievel injured himself in a practice run and never even tried the jump in the first place. Telly Savalas looked about as uncomfortable as any sane man could.

Nobody said show business was easy.

Now, I actually have a genuine appreciation for these sorts of events. Here’s a major star – great job, great money – obviously forced to come down off the throne and do a little grunt work to keep the suits happy. It’s not pretty, but it’s life. Once upon a time I had a job that was pretty easy too. That didn’t stop me from being forced onto the roof of a 40 foot high warehouse in a terrifying rain and lightning storm with nothing more than a bucket of tar, a stick and instructions to “plug that goddamn hole!”  No job is perfect all the time. And even stars “dedicated foremost to their craft” eventually have to crawl down from their artistic high horses and attempt to sell or promote the projects they appear in.

So that’s why I absolutely loved a recent bit of promo work done by Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds for their new film The Change-Up. The movie itself is wholly unremarkable – it’s a body switch comedy – done to death by everybody from Freaky Friday to Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron to Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin to a dozen others. Not exactly new territory here, but the promo is a wonder all its own.

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Ryan Reynolds & Jason Bateman promoting The Change-Up

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In the piece, Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman enter a film studio dressed in shocking white suits. The set-up is “behind the scenes” and the two are very clearly appearing at the request of their studio to pump awareness for their new film. They play their parts brilliantly and while I am not naive enough to believe the entire piece was unscripted it absolutely must contain a shocking amount of improv. These guys are hilarious together and work magic as they riff on the indignities of being subjected to realities of having to promote their own film. In fact, they do such a good job – and seem to be having so much fun – that it makes me want to see their movie. Honestly, anybody that willing to embrace the so-called dirty-work of film with such gusto is to be appreciated. And it stands in stark contrast to the sort of self-important, pretentious prigs so caught up in themselves that they refuse to so much as discuss their latest film let alone appear on a talk show to promote it. Newsflash! It’s show-business and If you want folks to see your movie why not be nice and ask them to come? Would it kill ya?

There’s never a guarantee of success, and even the biggest star or hero eventually gets humbled by this knock-down world. That’s how life works. So showing a little humility up front is always a good thing. It reminds you that maybe you’re not the center of the universe. Nobody likes doing the crappy parts of their job but whenever they can embrace the crap just as joyfully as the good they invariably learn something new about themselves. And if all they learn is that they want a new job, well that’s okay too.