Kevin Costner: All That Kevin Allows

When Costner finally made his move, it was to exec-pro-duce and star in an adaptation of Jim Harrison's lean, hungry novella Revenge, about a pair of machos destroying a woman. In so doing, he was pursuing a project that had previously gone badly for him, and one that would go especially badly for him later as well. Costner had earlier been considered--and summarily dismissed--for Revenge by director John Huston, who had been thinking along the lines of such ballsy leading men as Jack Nicholson. (According to Huston biographer Lawrence Grobel, the director assailed producer Ray Stark: "I've been in the business 50-odd years and you are telling me that I've got to work with this little guy?" Reminded by Stark that Costner was "important to Columbia," Huston called the producer "a cocksucker," and departed the project.)

Costner persisted and brought in Michael Blake (remember Stacy's Knights?) to write the screenplay. But at producer Stark's request, Costner forfeited total control over the screenplay in order to attract director Tony Scott. Then things did not go well. Finally, when Scott, Costner, the Stark organization, and Columbia were still bickering over the project only weeks be-fore the movie was to go into production, the actor fled the Sturm und Drang to do another movie about which he had strong convictions.

There were lots of reasons for Costner not to sign on for Shoeless Joe, writer-director Phil Alden Robinson's cornball tale about a guy who hears voices telling him to build a baseball field in the middle of the heartland. It was post-Vietnam, Reagan-era mush, with a Norman Rockwell-inspired sense of nostalgia, about errant sons coming to terms with their daddies. And it was another baseball movie coming right on the heels of Bull Durham. But Costner's instincts were sound. Critic Pauline Kael may have judged the finished product, now titled Field of Dreams, "a crock--a kinder, gentler crock," and chided Costner for succumbing so soon to "American-hero acting in which only good thoughts enter the hero's mind and moonlight bounces off his teeth." Still, Costner, whom producer Larry Gordon believes "doesn't do anything he doesn't fully believe in," put over the new age mysticism/old-hat conservatism with the absolute conviction of, say, Ronald Colman searching for Shangri-La in Lost Horizon. That conviction was largely responsible for making Field of Dreams a surprise hit, and for giving Costner the opportunity to demonstrate his ability to open and sell a film on his own.

It was a good time for a demonstration of Costner's box-office clout, because the misbegotten Revenge was about to suggest the opposite. It would have been best for Costner, perhaps, if Revenge had just faded away--but too many powerful people wanted to see it made, and made with Costner in it. Costner, apparently feeling less than "protected" by the William Morris agency, retained lawyer Eric Weissmann, and left J.J. Harris, who had been one of the architects of his career. Now, mighty Michael Ovitz of CAA would go to the mat for him. No Way Out screenwriter Robert Garland reworked Revenge, presumably to make it more palatable to Costner, but, if there was any improvement it's hard to imagine what it might have been.

In the finished film, Costner came off as bimbo-ized--all mousse and bronzer, backgrounded by wind-stirred sheer curtains and flickery candles--making Revenge his first full-on career calamity. Part of the reason Revenge didn't set Costner's quest for glory back much was that it was little seen and it followed two popular hits. But it was strategically important for Costner to come back from Revenge with a successful film. Two flops in a row threaten anyone's star status in modern Hollywood. So when Costner's next project was announced as a Western(!) that he would star in and direct(!!), the naysayers were out in droves. And the naysayers had logic on their side. First of all, not only were Westerns devoid of box-office appeal, Costner himself had failed spectacularly in the one big attempt to bring the genre back. And second, few actors turn out to be good directors, especially when they're forced to carry the picture as star as well as director.

But with Dances With Wolves, just about everything Costner had learned and many of the crucial relationships he had developed were about to pay off in synergy. Costner had created his production company, Tig (it's his grandmother's nickname|, and produced the movie with his partner, Jim Wilson (of Stacy's Knights days), with his brother Dan acting as the company's investment counselor. The novel and script about a dissident Union officer living among a Sioux tribe were by Stacy's Knights scripter Michael Blake. Mike Medavoy, who had much to do with bringing the actor to a production deal at Orion, championed the project when others declined.

Perhaps the great harsh lesson Costner learned from Revenge was how important it is to use one's power to ensure control. He hired six scholars to sweat the period details, set aside a month for Indian language rehearsals for the actors, demanded final cut to avoid having to butt heads with studio bosses over the movie's length and subtitles, and financed it independently. "I wasn't looking for 'attaboys,' " he has said. "I wasn't looking for 'very good first effort,' or 'shows promise.' I want to go for a home run." When he went over schedule and over budget, and the press rushed to dub the enterprise "Kevin's Gate," Costner put his money where his mouth was. Two-thirds of the way through the movie, Costner voluntarily froze his $5 million salary.

When Dances With Wolves opened, some critics treated Costner like Orson Welles reborn. Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals Group had earlier in the year hailed him as Man of the Year but the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Nation went one better and adopted him in a traditional Hunka ceremony. Newsweek observed that Costner had "fused countercultural sentiments with Bush-era conservatism."

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