KEVIN COSTNER

FILM INTERVIEW KEVIN COSTNER The Hollywood Road Less Traveled

E’S WON AN OSCAR FOR BEST Director and Best Picture. That Best Picture, Dances With Wolves, is on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list. He’s been in classic pictures like Field of Dreams (the only movie where it’s okay for guys to cry at the end) and The Untouchables as well as little-seen gems like A Perfect World and Open Range. But Kevin Costner seems to get an undue heap of scorn because his films tend to not set the box office on fire and he was in a movie where he drank his own urine (although granted, the urine was poured in a filtration device).

Costner is once again eschewing what might be popular for the film he wants to make in Mr. Brooks, a thriller where he plays serial killer who struggles with his addiction to killing. I spoke with Costner about the film as well as his over twenty years of experience as an actor, producer, and director in Hollywood. H BY MATT GOLDBERG

Do you think you’ve been unfairly maligned in popular culture for your misses rather than celebrated for your hits? (Laughs) Yeah. That’s very well put. I’ve never had that big featherbed to just jump in and do a sequel or repeat a movie and “Let’s get back on that gravy train!” I’ve never really been afraid of that. I feel like there are people who are really champions for me and there voices are clear and maybe they’ve been quiet for a while. Look, I’m very content with what I do and I know forensi cally what’s wrong with the misses. I know who’s responsible for those. I know where they get wrapped around my neck. But you know, you look at your western-heroarchetype and like them, “you never blame and you never explain.” Having directed two westerns, why do you think we don’t see very many of them compared to other genre films?

They’re not thought to have a big foreign upside and when people make a movie now, they don’t make it because they think it’s good; they make a movie that they think is going to translate around the world and if they don’t see the economic upside then they don’t feel like it’s worth making. I don’t feel like that and I live in the real world and I can see there’s not a big upside but I don’t think that renders a movie useless or not an economic opportunity. And the other problem is they’re hard to make. They’re hard to translate to modern audiences. There’s a hundred thousand bad westerns because they’re all ultimately reduced to “black-hat/white hat” [for those that need an explanation, in westerns, the good guy traditionally wore a white hat and the bad guy tradition ally wore a black hat] which they all have to do anyway but what is so obvious about those movies is that they can get boring really quickly. I think they’re more delicate than just black-hat/white-hat. Having to make films to appeal to a global audience, do you think that leads to a greater homogenization of the films that are out there? I really don’t. I think what leads to that is focus groups and marketing. I think a movie that’s really good and has honest behavior in it and an honest story; I think that does translate around the world. While there may be cultural differences, we feel a lot of the same things. When we touch on things that really touch on human behavior, then I think movies have a chance to work all over the world and that includes westerns. When they don’t and they’re flattened out to a demographic, to not offend, or made to go faster because they automatically have to be two hours long, then a great story or a great script can suffer. It needs another seventeen minutes to make everything complete and understandable and therefore entertaining and that just seems to fall on deaf ears. [ Studios] want the biggest possible audience possible and if a focus group tells them they don’t like a scene, then they’ll fix it or take it out and I think that can be very bad for a movie. The things you don’t like end up may making you like a movie more. A character you don’t like? You need him because it gives a sense of balance. A lot of times if it’s a lead character and he does something we don’t like, oh, then that fucking thing isn’t even gonna see the light of day! Is that what you’ve found the most frustrating working in Hollywood this long? Look, I love my industry. I don’t even mind the studios. I really don’t. But I’ve always been at odds with focus groups and marketing people who cut your movie. I’ll never not feel that. It’s not that opinions aren’t valued; I just think it robs the view ing experience. You have studios that only make sequels, period, because they’ve done the math. I don’t want to do the math. I don’t even want to know what the movie’s about. I want to go in and see an original experience and I think that’s where Mr. Brooks succeeds wildly. It’s just highly original. How did you get involved with Mr. Brooks?

Well that was sent to me by my friend Kevin Reynolds saying that two guys he knew had this script and I was doing The Upside of Anger and I was able to read it when I finished that movie and I just thought “Hmm…if I do this movie, I’m really going to have to be persistent and have a final cut on this particular movie,” because I knew the nuances were really strong but they would be the first thing to get cut out of the movie so I can’t make this movie and have that shit cut out because then there’d be no sense in making the movie. How did playing off William Hurt, who represents an

I FEEL LIKE THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY CHAMPIONS FOR ME AND THERE VOICES ARE CLEAR AND

MAYBE THEY’VE BEEN QUIET FOR A WHILE. LOOK, I’M VERY CONTENT WITH WHAT I DO AND I KNOW FORENSICALLY WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE MISSES.

aspect of your character’s personality, affect your acting choices?

We began where all actors should begin: when we were secure in our script. We weren’t going to override authorship. This is how I produce, I say “ This is the movie. Do you want to do it?” The second thing is we started to rehearse because that’s where you really nuance things I start to find out stuff instead of just showing up on the day and just going “nyah, nyah, nyah”; I’m a preparation guy.

Do you have any future plans to direct another film? Yeah, I’m going to direct another western and I’m producing and financing my next movie which is a comedy called Swing Vote and we’re going to shoot it in New Mexico and it’s about the election. It’s a comedy and it’s very Capraesque. It’s very different than Brooks, which I’m glad. I’ll go do that and after that I’ll hopefully go direct this western script I have.

What appeals to you about doing a Capraesque film in such a politically divisive age?

What appeals to me is I just liked its sense of humor. It’s not changing the Earth, just certain observation which are insightful and kind of funny. There’s a chance to laugh and a chance to think and you just do it all subtly. Just let it all work together. It’s a piece of entertainment that’s original in its approach.

Directing a western for a third time, what are you hoping to explore this time out? I think this one has a lot more characters going on and it’s about friendship and one guy who’s a little bit luckier than another guy. One guy gets out of things without having to fight and the other guy, everything in his life is bloody. It’s like the dif ference between meeting a girl fifteen seconds before your friend meets her. It changes everything because that’s the way it’s gonna be. It’s gonna take a lot of familiar themes and put them into a very origi nal work.