“I’m thinking I’m dead”: when Kevin Costner pissed off a New York City icon
One thing you can’t accuse Kevin Costner of is giving up too easily.
For decades now, he has been determined that the entire world will share his love of westerns, most recently spending a fortune on making four three-hour movies to make up something called Horizon: An American Saga, which hardly anyone cares about.
But to give him his due, he does now have something of a minor hit with the Prime Video series The Gray House, set in the American Civil War, even if he only co-produced it with Morgan Freeman. And he had plenty of success working on the Taylor Sheridan hit Yellowstone, the neo-western that spawned spin-offs including 1883, 1923 and Marshals, although he had to leave it after falling out with people on set.
Costner is no shrinking violet, and has had a series of controversies and set-tos with people over a long career, from disagreements with native Indians over his film Dances with Wolves, to fellow actor Stephen Baldwin suing him for millions over a deal concerning oil, to another lawsuit filed by a stunt performer who said she was made to film an impromptu sexual assault scene; not much has been plain-sailing for the Californian.
And he had another argument at the end of the 1990s, too, as he prepared to film the baseball movie For Love of the Game, although to be fair to Costner, it was as a result of someone else being ridiculously precious. The problem he came up against was that he needed to use the New York Yankees stadium to film the movie, but their notoriously fiery owner, George Steinbrenner, nicknamed ‘The Boss’ decided to pull the plug at the last minute.
The reason for his banning the filming at the stadium was that he was upset because in the entirely fictional movie, the Yankees lost the game at the end. Costner recalled his desperate conversation to salvage the situation with Steinbrenner, saying, “Now I’m thinking, I’m dead unless I say something,” and that he had to do a “tap dance” to make light of it, calling the situation “fucked up”.
Fortunately, filming went ahead after he was eventually able to get the owner to change his mind, adding, “I said, ‘It’s a meaningless game, George. And I’m going to treat the Yankees with the respect that you want to treat them with'”.
Whether or not it was worth all the hassle is another story altogether; however, when the sports drama co-starring Kelly Preston and Succession’s Brian Cox was released, it made a loss at the box office, and critics were distinctly underwhelmed. To add an undistinguished cherry on top of an already dull cake, Costner was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry the following year for ‘Worst Actor’, thanks to his work in the movie.
Costner now has a few different projects in the works; despite the fact that the second part of his Horizon: An American Saga series had its world premiere back in 2024, it has yet to be released due to the performance of the first instalment, but that hasn’t put him off, as he is pressing ahead with part three regardless.
He’s also making a film with Jake Gyllenhaal called Honeymoon with Harry about a man whose bride dies two days before the wedding, leading him to go on honeymoon with his would-have-been father-in-law instead.
