American Film

Kevin Costner

The Untouchables' New Ness

By PETER BISKIND

June 1987

Until The Untouchables, thirty-two year-old Kevin Costner often languished on the cutting-room floor. In 1983,lawrence Kasdan shot a flashback sequence of his Big Chillers in their university days with Costner playing the beloved suicide victim Alex, but all the scenes were axed. Costner is probably best known as the impetuous Jake in Silverado, stealing scenes from Kevin Kline and Scott Glenn. He then starred in two 1985 films-John Badhams American Flyers and Kevin Reynolds’ Fandango-but neither found a large audience. In addition to portraying Ness in The Untouchables Cosnter plays the lead in Roger Donaldson’s No Way Out. A political thriller scheduled to be released in August.

Question: How do you play Eliot Ness-such a well-known character from television-in the film the film?

Kevin Costner: I think Eliot Ness, quite honestly, is going to be an unsympathetic character in the first quarter of the film. But I don't have a problem playing a character who is stupid or naive; it's not like my ego got in the way. And then David Mamet brings Eliot on real strong. He also gets very violent. But physicality is a real big part of any acting and I was prepared. I feel comfortable with a gun in my hand. I feel comfortable going after bad guys.

I don’t think it's a Dirty Harry [treatment]. That was the one difficult thing about the movie-deciding what the tone should be, because we didn't want to make a comic strip of it.

Question: What was working with De Palma like?

Costner: Brian always had an ear for me. Never when I asked Brian something would he be irritated. Never would I ask him and he wouldn’t have an answer. In the film, I have a little girl and I’m putting her to bed and I wanted to try to develop a routine with her. You know a daddy routine: a kiss and then a butterfly kiss and then an Eskimo kiss, because we're going to have a scene where we're torn from each other's arms and I'm separated from my family. So I start to do it and he other actors say, "What are you doing?" But Brian totally understood. Whether he agreed with me or not, he didn’t shit all over what I had to say. Maybe he didn't even like it. But he embraced it.

Question: You've worked with some of the hottest of the younger Hollywood directors: Spielberg, Kasdan-

Costner: It's really great to work with those guys you know what you have going in. I mean, nobody says, “Well, the third act doesn’t work, but we’re going to fix that”. These guys, before they hire you, know when something works and when it doesn't. With Steven’s movie, the little "Amazing Stories," we didn't change a line.

I'm a real stickler about the material. I get up in the middle of the night and I make a note about seeing something, like, "I don't want to have my jacket on here. Why don’t I want to have my jacket on here?” For Untouchables, I started making newspaper clippings and had the prop guy put them on a board to show my progress as Ness- "Ness Busts Out”, “War of Worlds Begins, Ness and Capone," "Ness Will Never Make It."

I really like to work with the best people possible, but I'm never, ever, going to work on something just because I want to work with somebody. I have to work with them when the script's right. I would do five Westerns in a row if they were the five best scripts.

Question: What kinds of scripts are you offered now?

Costner: People send you scripts based on what they think about you. And you have a whole different opinion of yourself. I mean, I'm white and I'm about six feet tall and I guess datable or something ...

Question: They offer you romantic leads?

Costner: Yeah. And I would be foolish to not do those kind of roles. Because I don't want to change my spots. But those aren't the only things that appeal to me. And I find that more often than not, those roles are usually not surrounded by other great roles. And that’s a warning sign to me, because I think it's difficult to be good onscreen unless the other people around you are good.

I'm looking for roles of a lifetime. I put a lot of weight on picking the right movies. I need to do less of that; I sit and think about career decisions a little too much. Because I know people who do junk movies all the time, and the thing you know, they're in another good movie. Young actors, old actors, whatever. And it doesn't Seem to affect them. I don’t want to emulate them, but I'm always wondering, "Why the hell am I so worried about things all the time?" I worry about not being great. It bothers me if I'm not going be really good.

Question: Are there any roles you've turned down that you've regretted?

Costner: I had a chance, I think, to be in Platoon. Not that it was offered to me, but they were making inquiries. And I think that's maybe one of the mistakes I've made. My brother was a marine in Vietnam, and he's had such a problem with Vietnam movies that have shown vets as wigged-out guys. He’s very proud that he came back and made a life for himself, that he went to college and has a family. And when I read Platoon, the murder theme just jumped out at me so much that I thought: I can’t do this to him. But maybe, in retrospect, I should have tried to be in the movie. In fact, Platoon was real and it was right. It ended up being about more than just murder.

Question: Will you be developing your own material in the future?

Costner: Yes. The filing is, movies crop up. There’s the winter movies, the spring movies, the fall movies. I'm not always impressed with the movies that happen to be coming out. And if they're not there, then you either have to jump into one (and I know what it's like to be on a movie for four months that's not going right), or sit it out (and I know what it's like to sit it out). And so the only option-and you don't have to be a genius to figure it out-is to just begin to develop materials that reflect your sensibility. And be able, then, to slot them in.