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IN the
romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas, Ashton
Kutcher and Cameron Diaz get lucky in Las Vegas, but
rapidly discover that neither luck nor animal attraction
is enough to make a marriage work. Marriage, in fact, is
not what Kutcher’s charismatic Jack Fuller has in mind
at all when he heads to
Sin City
with his buddy “Hater” (Rob Corddry). Just fired from
his job making closets, he wants to party, get away from
it all and let loose. Joy McNally (Diaz) is also in Las
Vegas with her pal Tipper (Lake Bell) to escape her
troubles. This driven Wall Street commodities trader has
been humiliated by her fiancé, who has ended the
relationship and embarrassed her in front of her
friends.
Sparks
fly between Joy and Jack, who rashly get hitched during
a crazy, inebriated night of fun and passion. In the
morning, however, they are left nursing hangovers, along
with big regrets. All set to leave Vegas and head back
home to New York, Joy is idly playing a slot machine.
Jack uses one of Joy’s quarters, puts it in the machine
and amazingly hits the jackpot...to the tune of $3
million. Understandably, neither is prepared to let the
other one keep the cash.
Great
chemistry is the key to this comedy, directed by Tom
Vaughan (Which is now in Philippine theaters from 20th
Century Fox—Ed.). Diaz and Kutcher are hilarious as they
battle it out, seeking ways to trip each other up, keep
the cash and leave what happened in Vegas, firmly in
Vegas!
Kutcher
was born in a small town in
Iowa,
grew up on a farm and studied biochemical engineering,
working as a cereal dust sweeper in a factory and doing
other blue-collar jobs to help support the family and
finance his education. He was “discovered” and began
working as a Calvin Klein model before starring in
That ’70s Show. He created and produced the hit show
Punk’d on MTV. His movies include Just
Married, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Butterfly Effect,
Guess Who, Down to You, Reindeer Games, A Lot Like Love,
Bobby and The Guardian. A successful
producer, he has his own production company, Katalyst
Films, which is responsible for several reality TV
shows. His next film is Personal Effects with
Michelle Pfeiffer. The actor is involved with extensive
charity work. Kutcher, 30, is married to actress Demi
Moore. They live in Los Angeles with her three
daughters.
LIKE
CARY AND KATE? Kutcher and Diaz wage a war of the sexes
and sparks fly in the raucous romantic comedy What
Happens in Vegas.
Matinee-idol handsome, with enormous charisma, as well
as comic and dramatic talent, it is easy to see why
Ashton Kutcher has been compared with Cary Grant.
Wearing jeans, a pinstriped denim blazer and T-shirt,
the actor sat down in New York (over a large vanilla
latte) to talk about What Happens in Vegas, his
own views on relationships, his marriage and his career.
What is
the appeal of What Happens in Vegas and your
character?
I think
it is all about the different attitudes of men and women
toward marriage. Girls are raised socially to get
married, to find that special someone, a soul mate.
Social conditioning raises them to get married, right?
And social conditioning raises guys to get laid. So we
are already starting out on two entirely different
planes in terms of what we are naturally looking for in
our lives. So here you have Joy (Cameron), a woman who
wants to get married. We see that clearly in her first
scene. And then you have my character, a guy who just
wants to get laid, and you see that established clearly
in my first scene in the film. Meanwhile, both of our
worlds are spinning out of control. She gets dumped; I
lose my job. And we meet in Las Vegas.
What do
you think makes this situation so funny?
When you
have two people with flaws and put them together, one
character’s strength reveals the other person’s flaws,
and I think that is what makes it interesting and funny.
Jack and Joy are flip sides of the same coin. Both are
relationship-challenged. Jack is pretty relaxed about it
all, while Joy’s more uptight. Romantically, they’ve
both been looking for the wrong things in life, which is
probably what draws them to each other to begin with,
even if they are really, really drunk at the time they
meet. My character’s ability to just go for it and live
on the wild side, have fun and go for the sex and the
partying contrasts with Joy’s ability to focus on her
career and plan her life. And I think two people like
that naturally fit in a relationship, although it may
not look like it.
How much
do you have in common with Jack? You actually chose to
get married at quite a young age.
I think
I was very much this character myself. I was very close
to Jack before I got married. I had no desire to be in a
relationship, whatsoever—not at all. I had sworn myself
off relationships, in fact. Let me put it this way; I
was creating as much of a ruckus as I possibly could.
When we first met, I was here in New York, partying and playing, I was hosting Saturday Night Live and I
was saying to myself: “I am going to party, I’m going to
sleep with this girl and that girl and just have a good
time”...and then I met my wife. And it was like: “I
cannot be with this person.” It was actually very
similar to the movie in some ways because as soon as you
make that decision not to have a relationship, you will
find one. That is what happens.
So is it
fate, do you think, when couples like Jack and Joy—or
you and Demi—end up together?
I do
think so. It is impossible to find a relationship if you
are looking for one. Yet as soon as you let go of the
need or desire for a relationship, it’ll show up in your
face, just like that. It is interesting.
What was
it like working with Cameron?
It was
fantastic. I would go home at night and look forward to
going to work again, because I’d know I was going to see
her the next day. She makes the process fun for everyone
from the start of the day to the end of the day; she
loves making movies and that made it really exciting for
me. And it also changed my outlook on life in terms of
my joy and appreciation of what it is we do for a
living. We just had fun together and got to hang out and
got on really well.
People
have compared you with
Cary Grant as a
funny leading man. Is comedy natural for you?
I don’t
think comedies are natural for me. I feel I have to work
so much harder at comedy than drama. I don’t know what
to say about that comparison except that it’s great,
thank you! But I have studied Cary Grant and his movies.
Bringing Up Baby (with Katharine Hepburn) is
probably the most fantastic example of Cary Grant in a
romantic comedy. I also love The Philadelphia Story
(also with Katharine Hepburn); I have watched a lot of
his movies. I think he was much better than I am at
comedy.
You play
a carpenter who makes closets for a living. Women are
often attracted to carpenters, aren’t they? They are
always sexy. For example, there was Kurt Russell in
Overboard with Goldie Hawn.
Yes, I
love Overboard and that’s true about carpenters.
(Laughs)
But I
believe it’s a genuine talent in your case...you have
real carpentry experience, don’t you?
I did a
quite a bit of carpentry when I was younger. My dad’s a
carpenter; my stepdad’s a carpenter. I helped my stepdad
build the house that I grew up in after I was 13 and I
have a company with my dad right now, building and
remodeling houses in Los Angeles.
What is
it about carpentry that is so sexy?
I don’t
really know what it is; it is not that glamorous. I did
some carpentry recently, when I was preparing for the
role. I found a closet-making company in New York and I went and worked for them and installed closets for a couple of
days in people’s houses. I showed up at one guy’s house
and said, “I’m here to install your closet.” He said,
“Cool.” He asked for a photo afterward and now has
“Closets By Ashton.”
Did the
experience of growing up poor and doing laboring jobs as
a teenager help you appreciate life now, do you think?
Definitely, I don’t think you appreciate anything until
you earn it. I think understanding how difficult is to
earn the minimum wage is important. When I was working,
it was $4.65 for an hour of work and I did a lot of
blue-collar jobs: washing dishes in a kitchen, some
masonry work. I was a butcher for a while; I worked in a
grocery store and in a bank. I started working when I
was about 12; I have always had a job. I do really
appreciate what I have now but I also appreciate the
people who work for my company, who are making $50,000
or $60,000 a year. I appreciate what they have to do to
get by on that salary. I appreciate the effort and work
they put in. I appreciate the crew on my films. In my
job, I go home at night exhausted, shooting 14-hour
days. But the guy who is carrying around sandbags all
day is far more tired than I am. I don’t think anybody
should be allowed to grow up without doing some physical
blue-collar labor at some point. Look, it’s really easy
to ride on a private plane and have no idea how much
that costs. Once you understand that a flight from New
York to Los Angeles and back to New York costs the
average annual income of an American, suddenly you start
to be very grateful for the lifestyle that you are
living.
Jack and
Joy quickly learn when they return from Las Vegas to New York that they have to work very hard at marriage, that it is not easy. What
is the key to your own happy marriage?
I am not
a slob like Jack, but I think we are all capable of
being that guy or Cameron’s character. For Demi and me,
what makes marriage work is circuitry in the
relationship. You start with the notion that women set
out to get married and men set out to have sex, and that
eventually most people do get married and say: “Okay, we
achieved the goal.” That is like getting a job for the
first time and saying: “I got a job, I don’t have to
work anymore.” But you are not going to keep the job
very long if you stop working. What we realize in our
marriage is that being in a partnership with one another
takes work. So when communication breaks down or when
there is a problem or an issue, instead of creating
space between each other and having those days when we
play “the blame game” or don’t talk to each other, we
talk and we work at it. We find another way to give to
each other because when you give to somebody else and
trust them, just the very act of giving helps. Giving
means talking and spending time together, actively
sharing our lives together. Just sitting in the same
room with someone is not sharing. Living in the same
house and having kids isn’t sharing. We do our spiritual
study together. We find ways to give more to others,
too.
How do
you do that?
We give
to our girls and to our friends. We also do charity
work. We are going out to Rikers Island Prison here in
New York to attend a nondenominational spiritual course
or seminar for young people. The course gives kids the
tools to solve problems on their own so they can fulfill
their potential. We will go and hang out with them and
speak. That’s a way we feel we can give and contribute
but we do that together as a couple.
Why are
you so committed to helping young people with problems?
Because
I have been there myself. As a kid, I broke into my high
school. I was working really hard at the time, doing one
of my blue-collar jobs and I just wanted to get some
money fast. For a minute I just thought that the easy
way out was the best way out. It’s a simple decision, a
simple oversight that kids can make. One of the things
I speak about when I go to courses run by SFK
(Spirituality For Kids), which is a nondenominational,
nonprofit organization, is that I was just like them. I
was the guy that sat in jail, the guy that walked around
town with my baseball cap down because I was ashamed of
myself. Now, the whole world has accepted me as a
successful person. Some people may not like the work I
do but that doesn’t matter because in some ways, I have
become a role model as an actor and as a professional,
hardworking person. Kids are often told, “You are a bad
person, you are a bad boy” and they start to believe
that, but there is no such thing as a bad person. There
are just people who make bad decisions. And when you
stop making bad decisions, you can turn into a really
successful, well-adjusted happy person. Remember the
next time you think of one of those people in jail as
bad, they are really just like Ashton because the truth
is that I was that guy—absolutely 100 percent—but I
turned my life around. |
