Real Edge Magazine

Searching for the Right Stuff

By Dan Dunn

Real Edge November 1999

Thanks Amy C for sending us this wonderful interview

It’s, a crisp mid-winters night, and Kevin Costner is relaxing with friends inside the Ute City Bar & Grill in his adopted home of Aspen, Colorado. The town is blanketed with snow, and skis and snowboards are propped up against the walls outside the bar. An assortment of Denver Broncos paraphernalia adorns the walls in tribute to the home teams second Super Bowl win in as many years.

Snow and winter sports seem to be what everyone is talking about at the Ute on this arctic evening in Aspen. Everyone, that is, except Kevin Costner. The movie star is talking baseball, even though the first pitch of the season is still several months away "It's hard to describe the feeling of standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium with that baseball in your hand," he says, with-excuse the hackneyed verbiage-a big gleam in his eye. "It’s just so..." He stops, shakes his head and smiles.

Fast forward to a stifling late-August day in New York City. The Yankees are in first place, and Costner is once again trying to impart what it's like to stand on the mound inside the House That Ruth Built with that baseball in his hand-pitching a no-hitter, no less. Costner does just that as the fictional Detroit Tiger pitcher Billy Chapel in his most recent film, the blockbuster "For Love of the Game which has joined "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham" on the roster of Costner’s celluloid encomiums to our National Pastime.

"Shooting the film was hard. As physical things go, it was traumatic for my arm says Costner, who did the bulk of the pitching during the shoot (a double was used sparingly). "I knew that at a certain point I could do some damage. I don't feel anything right now but for about two months after filming I could feel stuff just jumping and bumping in there."

The temptation to jokingly, tell Costner to quit crying is strong-after all, as Tom Hanks grumbled in “A League of Their Own”, There’s no crying in baseball" but he soon concedes that the pain was negligible compared to the joy of making "For Love of the Game" Costner claims it was one of the most rewarding experiences he’s had as an actor because it stirred up images of what might have been. As a child, he fantasized about playing professional baseball, but abandoned the dream because he deemed himself too small. In college he experienced a growth spurt, and his diamond aspirations briefly resurfaced.

Fortunately for movie fans, Costner decided to stick with his budding acting career

After graduating from California State University Fullerton, Costner landed small parts in films such as "Night Shift" and "Table for Five”. His first major motion picture role was in "Fandango”. He played gunslingers in the Lawrence Kasdan films "Wvatt Earp" and "Silverado" but it was the western "Dances With Wolves” which Costner produced, directed and starred in, that earned him Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards and the position he still occupies atop Hollywood’s A-list.

The funny thing is, I directed 'Dances With Wolves” myself because I couldn't get anybody else to direct it. The conventional thinking at the time from everybody I showed it to was that the movie was too long”, says Costner "They wanted to take Out the Civil War scene and take it right to the old prairie." Costner was convinced the Civil War scene was pivotal to the story. He stuck to his guns so to speak, financing the film in large part with his life savings, and making the film he wanted people to see. The gamble paid off, yet Costner was subsequently branded by some in the industry as being a puppeteer.

“The biggest misconception about me is that I'm controlling. My point of view is that you have to be in control of what you think. I feel like I can be pushed around about 99 yards-I think I'm a good collaborator," he says, "The difference is, I have about one yard that's mine, and that’s where I can't be pushed around. You cannot make me think what I don't think.

"I don't let people push the movie around, and since they don't have a better word for that, they call it controlling"

Whether precipitated by Costner or not, control over the finished product was a contentious issue behind the scenes of "For Love of the Game” Costner, who as an A-lister had secured “final cut" (or final approval) on the film, wanted an “R” rating. The studio (Universal) wanted PG-13, arguing that there would be a dearth of youth- accessible films opening the same weekend as "For Love”. In the end, the studio won out, and some “objectionable" language was cut from the picture. Says Costner, "I didn't fight them ultimately by saying 'You can't do it’, but I did say they were wrong to do it. Ultimately l would not have maneuvered the movie the way, it is at this moment.” He’s quick to add that he's satisfied the film as it now stands, but at he's frustrated with what he perceives to be an alarmingly short-sighted approach to movie-making. "[Catering] to the whims and fancies of an opening weekend-that's just ridiculous, and I think it’s a bad precedent."

Like his character in the film-a future Hall of Fame pitcher trying to define his place in the world in the midst of personal conflict and career triumph-Costner is at a crossroads. He's achieved fame and fortune beyond his wildest imagination, yet he's uneasy with the realization that the game has changed. Movie making isn't so much about winning rave reviews and audiences hearts anymore, it's about opening big-raking in box office. That bottom line mentality is a direct contradiction to Costner's movie-making philosophy.

"I've always believed when that curtain was opening up that something great could happen. Then, between that time and the end of the movie, either good decisions have been made or bad ones, and it's either great or not great. But, I swear, when it goes like this (he makes a curtain opening hand gesture) I think something great could really happen. I have seen movies that have made me smile from beginning to end" Greed isn't the only problem in Hollywood these days, according to Costner. There's also a lack of good material: "It's difficult to find good roles because they're not easy, to write. Writing a screenplay is really hard. Making a good movie is hard. So you don't see a lot of good movies because they're hard to do. It's an art form"

As big a star as he is, Costner is not immune to failure. More than once, he's starred in critical and commercial flops-“Waterworld” and "The Postman" being the most notorious examples. His sports films, however, all have fared well, and for that, too, he gives a nod to the storytellers. "When a writer taps into the beauty of the game, it's magical, and writers have done it in certain instances. I didn't know what the mythical quality about baseball was until a writer showed me,” Costner says. "That's what I love about great writers: They show us a different wav to say ‘I love you’. When they do it in an original way, it just breathes fresh air into what we feel as people." But just when it seems Costner is feeling good about show business again, he launches another grenade, and some of the writers gathered round the star get stung by shrapnel. "I feel inadequate sometimes, especially when I'm in a situation like this where there are people like you asking me questions," he says, "I don't know that we're worthy of all the attention, but there’s a demand for it, so you do it and I do it. Probably the least satisfying thing is to talk about is something you already know or you already feel.... In my own life, I don't have conversations like this. In my own life, I'm always moving forward or learning about my friends and what they're into doing. This is so narcissistic. You're just talking about yourself and about how you feel about things that don't really matter."

Despite his disdain for the surreal process that yields features such as this one, we manage to convince Costner that his feelings do matter. We were able to get him to open up about all sorts things, including his and his family's reading habits ("I'm not as well-read as I would like to be, but my children read a lot."), the joy of being Kevin ("I don't envy anybody else's life. I wish certain things hadn't happened to me, but I cherish my life") and the cannibalism and apparent lack of good groundskeepers in Major League Baseball ("Baseball is eating itself alive right now It's so unhealthy, because the playing field is not level.")

One thing’s certain: "For Love of the Game" won't be Costner's last sports film. He's too big a fan. And not just of homegrown athletics. He says he once considered making a film about the British sport cricket, that is, until he realized it's more complicated than trigonometry.

“I’ve tried to watch cricket a hundred times, and I don't understand it. I've watched it in altered states, too, to see if that works best, but I still can't figure it out," Costner says laughing.

"I was talking to [John] Cleese about this awhile back and he said, ‘Oh, yes, and these games can go on for two or three days. 'After watching cricket and not getting it for a period of 10 years, when John said that, I just lost it. As if this game isn't fouled up enough. A game that goes on for two or three days ought to be a Titanic clash, but these guys are in long white pants and little vest shirts. Three days to finish this game' C'mon.'

Kinda sounds like "Dances With Wolves"!