The movie Kevin Costner sabotaged for the sake of 10 seconds: “It’s not fair for him to hijack a $50 million asset”
While there’s something commendable about how Kevin Costner has always been willing to bet on himself, it comes across as a little more spiteful when he does it to a movie he wasn’t directing.
When Costner is acting, producing, and wielding the megaphone, he’s entitled to make the creative decisions however he sees fit because he’s the project’s number one creative driving force. On the other side of the coin, sabotaging one of his starring roles where he was only employed as an on-camera performer is a bit of a dick move.
The star really wanted to play Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October but declined the offer because he wanted to make Dances with Wolves instead. When his epic western won seven Academy Awards, including two for Costner in the ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ categories, he was vindicated and then some.
Lightning didn’t strike twice when he rejected the part of James Marshall that had been written specifically for him in Air Force One to focus on Waterworld and The Postman instead, with the latter an egregious misfire that effectively derailed his mainstream career and showed what could happen when one person’s ego is left to run amok on an expensive picture.
Then again, Costner certainly knew his way around the sports flick. Prior to headlining Sam Raimi’s For Love of the Game, he’d played his part in steering Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and Tin Cup to success. He knew the genre like the back of his hand, but when Universal decided to cut ten seconds of footage to avoid being slapped with an R-rating by the MPAA, the leading man threw his toys out of the pram.
“It’s never been about the content,” Costner raged, per the Los Angeles Times. “You feel a studio would want to release the best version of the movie, not the one they think appeals to the biggest common denominator. Universal wasn’t even willing to try. They said it wouldn’t do any good. The love of movies, I believe, is waning.”
Bear in mind that he said all of this before it had even been released in September 1999, which would hardly encourage those on the fence to see Costner’s long-awaited return to baseball-centric cinema. Refusing to take the criticism lying down, studio co-chair Stacey Snider fired back.
“Kevin’s not the director, and it’s not fair for him to hijack a $50 million asset,” she said. “I realise the is very much about principle for Kevin, but principle doesn’t mean that you never compromise. Our feeling is that we have backed the filmmaker, and his name is Sam Raimi, not Kevin Costner.”
Would For Love of the Game have fared better if it had been ten seconds longer and R-rated? It’s highly debatable, especially since Costner notched a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Actor’, a distinction that no amount of deleted scenes could have prevented him from avoiding, considering he was the focal point, and it ran for 138 minutes anyway.
It also bombed at the box office after failing to recoup its budget, and it stands to reason that it would have earned even less had it alienated a huge part of its target audience by maintaining an R-rating.
