Mick Jackson gave up trying to deal with Kevin Costner: “No one put a gun to another person’s head”
In 1991, Kevin Costner locked Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves director Kevin Reynolds out of the editing suite while he re-cut the picture to his liking. This, naturally, soured the relationship between the two Kevins, who became friends when Reynolds hired the then-unknown Costner for 1985’s Fandango.
If Reynolds had been able to see the future at that time, though, he’d have known that this was simply the opening salvo in Costner’s bid to gain complete creative control over every film he made. You see, on the very next movie put together by Costner and his production company, the director would again be banished from editing, and another torrid tale of actor/director strife would hit the headlines.
This movie was The Bodyguard, and the director in question was Mick Jackson, then known for 1989’s Chattahoochee and 1991’s LA Story. The film was a long-time passion project for writer Lawrence Kasdan, who first penned the script in 1977.
However, in the 15 years it took to get The Bodyguard to the screen, he made a name for himself as the writer of a few small films, such as The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and also directed The Big Chill.
However, Costner’s sense of (self)-importance at the time dwarfed even Kasdan’s. Before embarking upon The Bodyguard, he had solidified his status as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars with Field of Dreams, Robin Hood, and JFK, in addition to proving himself a creative force to be reckoned with by winning the ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’ Oscars for Dances with Wolves. In fact, Costner’s clout was arguably at an all-time high as he began making the movie, and Jackson soon learned that the hard way.
“All four of us worked on this film together,” Costner told Empire magazine in 1992, referring to himself, Jackson, Kasdan, and his producing partner Jim Wilson. “Sometimes Mick’s suggestions were listened to and sometimes they were not. But no one put a gun to another person’s head and said, ‘Do this’.”
On the surface, this seems like a fairly reasonable thing for Costner to say, and he paints the picture of a harmonious creative collaboration. In reality, though, the idea of a director having so little say over his own film is highly unusual, and what Costner describes as a healthy exchange of ideas sounds much more like directing by committee, instead of the movie being helmed by a singular creative vision.
In another section of the Empire interview, Costner waxed lyrical about how easily he could turn his hand to directing, even on a movie where he wasn’t actually employed to do that job. “Everything about filming—the camera, the angles, the pace, the motion, the characters—has always come naturally to me,” he mused, seemingly not seeing the irony that he was talking about a film another man was technically in charge of.
Unfortunately, the longer Jackson worked on The Bodyguard, the more it became clear that he was little more than a warm body in a director’s chair. He shepherded it through production and an exhausting three months of editing, but his cut was deemed lacking when he submitted it to the studio. Costner, Kasdan, and Wilson all waded in to re-cut the film, shaving 15 to 20 minutes off the runtime, with Wilson saying, “The director’s cut was just too long. Kevin, Larry and I have all directed movies, and I was involved in the exact same way on Dances. This is a common thing”.
Disregarding the bitter irony that Costner, of all people, thought one of his movies was too long, this was the final straw for Jackson. He realised he would never win when going up against a star so hellbent on control, so he gave up trying, removed himself from the situation, and went to the ground.
Ironically, when he subsequently refused all promotional duties and interviews upon the film’s release, he was accused of “doing a Reynolds”, but it didn’t matter much either way. The Bodyguard was one of the biggest hits of the year, regardless of whether anyone knew it was directed by Jackson.
