The Bodyguard

Mick Jackson directs a script Lawrence Kasdan wrote around 1975 with Steve McQueen and Diana Ross in mind, which Kasdan has said grew out of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. It was turned down repeatedly before John Calley, then running Warner Bros., bought it in 1977 for $20,000, and it then sat on the shelf for roughly fifteen years. Kevin Costner read it in 1985, produced it, and insisted the singer be played by an actual singer: an actress faking a great voice, he argued, looks as false as someone faking a good baseball swing. It was Whitney Houston’s first film. The closing number was to be a Jimmy Ruffin song; when that went elsewhere, Costner proposed the Dolly Parton composition and pushed for the opening to be sung unaccompanied. The soundtrack was named Album of the Year at the 36th Grammy Awards. The film itself drew two Academy Award nominations, both for original song, and lost both to Aladdin. Seven Golden Raspberry nominations followed, with no wins; one listed Costner’s crew cut as a worst new star. A good fit if you count it as a gain when the plot stops dead for a complete musical number. Not for viewers who want the investigation into the threatening letters to carry the film; the camera returns to the romance at every opening.