Precisely thirty-nine minutes and 12 seconds into the very bad, very long, but mostly very bad 3000 Miles to Graceland, Kevin Costner whips out an unmistakably phallic, nickel-plated six-shooter and blows away Christian Slater. The shockingly greasy, oafishly duck-tailed honcho of a cabal of unlikely Elvis impersonators who have just knocked over a casino in Vegas, Costner had taken exception to several thoughtless remarks Slater had made about Costner's fixation on the King.
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When Slater hit the deck, I was convinced that Costner had merely winged the still-boyish actor. I actually watched the film all the way through to the very end, anxiously awaiting Slater's resurrection and revenge. It never occurred; I was devastated. A fan of the actor since I first saw his impressive turns in Heathers and Pump Up the Volume many years ago, and numbering True Romance among my favorite films of all time, I did not want to believe that a performer who had started out with so much promise was now making an early exit from one of Kevin Costner's least successful comeback attempts. Though Slater had been on the slippery slope in recent years, doing supporting roles in such dire outings as Very Bad Things and the ridiculously overrated The Contender, I did not want to believe that he was now getting sent to the showers a third of the way through a film in which the likes of Kurt Russell and David and Courteney Cox Arquette were still taking up valuable screen space. It suggested, once again, that the film industry was not doing things the way I wanted. Much less the way Christian Slater wanted.
When a flashy, likable young performer appears on the silver screen for the first time, even the most cynical film lover feels a frisson in his otherwise insensate neural cortex. Knowing only too well that useless frat boys like Ben Affleck and Jurassic palookas like Sylvester Stallone will be with us for years to come, we take consolation in the fact that some of the people who make their way into the movies actually have gifts we want to see exhibited again and again for the rest of our lives. If nothing else, in a world of bad jobs, bad [marriages and bad hair, it gives us something to look forward Ito. That first glimpse of greatness provides an incomparable rush: "Oh my God, here's an actor who doesn't suck; here's an actress who's not just tits and a 'tude. Next thing you know, we might get a president who's not a scumbag." Think of Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, Harrison Ford in Star Wars. Think of Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza. For that matter, think of Kevin Costner in No Way Out. But under no circumstances think of Kurt Russell in anything.
More often than not, gifted young actors who make a big initial splash hang around for a long time, giving us plenty of good reasons to keep going to see them in more credible, mature roles, finally adopting a respected older-statesman stature like Paul Newman, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Faye Dunaway and Patrick Swayze (only joking). These stars may lose some of their luster, but they remain stars all the same. A fat, decrepit Marlon Brando can still light up the screen in a curiosity like The Freshman. A geriatric Alec Guinness can still single-handedly seize control of a galaxy long ago and far away. And a wrinkled Paul Newman can still teach Jude Law a thing or two about Method acting in a movie like Road to Perdition, simply by showing up.
There is no defined template for the career that does not quite happen. From the very first, there were always questions about Slater's ability to outgrow his sly boyish appearance, his elfin charm. What worked so well for the young pup in Heathers and even Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves did not work so well as he grew into manhood. Like Dorian Gray, Slater never seemed to get any older, never seemed to acquire the leading man gravitas of a Mel Gibson, much less a Gene Hackman. It was impossible to see him as the morally conflicted submarine commander, the ruthless hit man or the jaded private eye. He remains now what he was from the very beginning: the snarky studmuffin with the Jack Nicholson eyebrows and a vaguely Ewokian stature. Personal problems partially derailed his career, and various ill-advised roles certainly did not help, but Slater's biggest obstacle is that he is too old to play boys, and too boyish to play men. This is not to say that he doesn't have the chops; put him in a quirky film like Very Bad Things and he will blow his costars right off the screen. But who wants to watch movies like Very Bad Things?
Another example of the incredibly shrinking career phenomenon is the strange, perplexing case of Andy Garcia. When Garcia first blew into town in The Untouchables, Black Rain, Internal Affairs and The Godfather Part III, he looked like the next Al Pacino. Not the poor man's Al Pacino, as detractors might label him, but the authentic heir to the throne. It didn't happen. Once quoted in GQ as saying that he wasn't sure he wanted to be a big star, Garcia has all but ensured that he isn't. Marooned in forlorn pap like When a Man Loves a Woman, Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead and Desperate Measures, Garcia--a born leading man--has now become paunchy, predictable and often somewhat ridiculous. The brooding fire-eater of the late '80s now looks puffy and soft. His best work recently was as a lech in Ocean's Eleven, playing second fiddle to George Clooney and Brad Pitt, leading men who do not look puffy and soft. This is nice work if you can get it, but it is not the sort of work Garcia originally seemed destined for.
It is still too early to say where Vince Vaughn's career is going to take him, but based on his dreary turns in Clay Pigeons, The Cell, Domestic Disturbance and Gus Van Sant's ill-advised remake of Psycho, I think it's safe to say that his pays as a leading man are over. The versatile Vaughn seems to have landed on his feet after his brief, unrewarding foray into the spotlight, veering back into his natural environment of oddball comedy. As hilarious in Made as he was in Swingers, and the only observable virtue in Old School, Vaughn is the closest thing we have to a Gen-X Bill Murray, which is high praise indeed. He may end up a star yet, but not as a leading man.
Of those to whom much is given, much is expected, and few actresses raised higher expectations than the young Sean Young. When she starred opposite Harrison Ford in the legendary Blade Runner and was paired with Kevin Costner in the spellbinding No Way Out, she seemed to be the next big thing. The first and most beautiful movie star I ever interviewed, Young had both the looks and the talent to go a long, long way. But plagued by a bad reputation, Young found herself purged from the A-list and has spent most of her career languishing in drivel. In my mind she is the cinematic equivalent of Darryl Strawberry, the fabulously gifted New York Mets slugger who, once upon a time, could have done anything he wanted. It's just that, like Sean Young, he never got around to doing it.
When Madeleine Stowe made The Last of the Mohicans, an absolutely perfect motion picture that ranks with the best films made in this country in the past 30 years, I hoped that she and Daniel Day-Lewis would make a dozen films together. It was not to be. Stowe never clicked with the male moviegoing public and vanished into the purgatory of Bad Girls, Blink and China Moon.
Having made the fatal mistake of living beyond her thirties, Stowe found herself dispatched to the sidelines like so many other young actresses with so much unfulfilled and perhaps unfulfillable promise. Today she finds herself in possession of a self-written script that everyone in Hollywood wants to produce, but that no one in Hollywood wants to cast her in. This is not the way I would have liked things to turn out. I say this because I do not believe that all fine wines get better as they get older, but I do believe that most fine actresses do.
In the end, this is all a case of what might have been. In the parallel mental universe that I have constructed as a respite from this one, Vince Vaughn takes a pass on Psycho, Madeleine Stowe gets to be in pictures like The English Patient and The Piano (preferably wearing that girdle she donned in The Two Jakes), and Andy Garcia takes over the Corleone Family in the exquisite The Godfather IV: La Famiglia Strikes Back. In this same parallel universe, Sean Young is forgiven for her indiscretions on the set of Wall Street and off the set of The Boost and gets to play in a string of brilliant thrillers and sci-fi epics. There is ample room in this parallel universe for Kathleen Quinlan, Emily Lloyd, Linda Fiorentino, Forest Whitaker and a host of others. There's just no room for Kurt Russell.
In talking about young stars whose careers have not turned out as well as we--or they--would have liked, I am not talking about those who seemed to have deliberately walked away (Debra Winger), those who overstayed their welcome (Daryl Hannah), those who made truly catastrophic career decisions (Michael Keaton nixing the Batman franchise) or those who seemed to be pure hype jobs in the first place (William Baldwin, Matthew Modine, Julia Ormond.) Nor am I talking about thoroughbreds like Christopher Walken, Scott Glenn and Treat Williams, who once had a shot at superstardom, didn't quite get there, but seem to be doing just fine as solid character actors, often villains, sometimes psychopaths, But I am talking about Jeff Goldblum (upstaged by a haughty Persian tabby in Cats & Dogs) and Geena Davis (the Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for The Accidental Tourist) who both once graced the cover of GQ as the Industry's hottest couple and who now seem to have individually fallen off the face of the earth. In my parallel universe, where Prince never gets old and Brian Jones never dies, there is always plenty of work for both of them. But I don't run things.
In setting down these thoughts, I am not suggesting that bad things always happen to good actors, or vice versa. I am grateful to live in a society where Chris O'Donnell does not get to be the star of The Matrix, where nobody pays to see a movie starring Minnie Driver as a finalist in a beauty contest, where Bridget Fonda eventually goes away. I am happy to live in a society where Antonio Banderas, no matter how many movies he makes, never becomes a box-office legend, and where Mary Stuart Masterson and her annoying tics ultimately ride off into the sunset. Just the same, I wish that I lived in a society where, if Kevin Costner positively, absolutely has to gun down Christian Slater in the first 40 minutes of a movie about homicidal Elvis impersonators, he at least has the good taste to kill Kurt Russell, too.
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