Restored Stephen Baldwin Hits Cannes For His New Oil Spill Documentary

Remember that SNL cold open from the 2008 campaign season, when Sarah Palin told Alec Baldwin to his face that born-again GOP darling Stephen was her favorite Baldwin brother? Odds are she'll be rethinking that distinction now that Stephen has hit the Croisette to push his new documentary project about our insatiable -- and reckless -- thirst for oil.

I'm not sure if this part of the actor's mission for restoration, a point-blank publicity stunt, an earnest call to action, or some canny blend of all three, but there he is: Stephen Baldwin at Cannes, pushing his $1.5 million offshore-drilling documentary The Will to Drill. Baldwin told THR he'd already begun shooting the film, attributing the timing to "serendpitiy" but backing away from the prospect that he would point fingers at BP or any other specific culprit for our dangerous dependency on petroleum. Moreover, he said, he wants to go to bat for the environment: "I want to talk to the world with this film. I want to create the story of the impact that then crescendos into motivating people to be pro-active in their own choices."

Huh, OK. Sounds good. But what's this about his fellow celebrities... and Kevin Costner?

Also tangentially involved, and perhaps the eventual narrator of the pic, is Kevin Costner, who, Baldwin said, has spent some $25 million of his own money to come up with the so-called Costner Oil Separator. In turn, this centrifuge invention, which Costner worked on along with his engineer brother, may be brought to the attention of BP. [...]

Every A-lister went to Haiti to man the phones or whatever in the aftermath of the earthquake there, [Baldwin] pointed out; we just haven't seen them galvanized for this, just five years after Katrina, Baldwin said.

"The exciting ... the important thing is that as a celebrity I can walk into Plaquemines Parish (one of the coastal Louisiana areas most devastated by this accident) and get folks to pay attention, to provide access," he said. "This project is my greatest passion."

Listen, hats off -- it's a noble effort. But if Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Costner are going to make a movie about cleaning up the Gulf Coast, then the only thing I want to see is something called The Haymen, featuring the actors as the guys who've proposed the brilliant, budget-minded, virally circulated solution below. That is money well spent.

· Stephen Baldwin making timely oil doc [THR]