THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406240088
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Long
The superstar returns to the West this weekend with an epic $60 million saga called ``Wyatt Earp.'' It covers 40 years of American history and has as many dramatic scenes as it does shootouts.
{REST} It runs more than three hours and follows a half-dozen movies that have told the same story. The O.K. Corral conflict was told most recently in ``Tombstone,'' which was a surprise hit last Christmas.
With the odds stacked against him, Costner proudly stands his ground.
`` `Wyatt Earp' is already a success because, simply because it's the picture it is,'' Costner declared during a recent interview in Los Angeles. ``We made the movie we wanted to make. That's what we can be proud of.''
He concedes that ``Wyatt Earp'' is likely to lose the opening weekend shootout with Disney's ``Lion King,'' which runs only 87 minutes and is in twice as many theaters.
``We won't be Number 1 but, when you think about it, `Dances With Wolves' ran for over a year and it never, not once, was Number 1 in the weekly tallies. That's not what making movies should be about. I didn't make this movie so that we could get people in and out of theaters quickly.''
As for the length, Costner said, ``it has to be that long, at least that long, to tell our story - to get the details of the family. It was cut down from a script that would have run six hours and would have had to have been a TV miniseries. I still miss some of those scenes - scenes I really wanted to play. I envisioned the whole thing as having some of the detail and family involvement of `The Godfather' series.''
At 39, Costner has the boyish demeanor of one who is going to have his fun, no matter what. He's made some seemingly foolish choices that still panned out - and made him both a millionaire and a superstar.
For example, conventional wisdom ruled that he shouldn't make two baseball movies in a row. But both ``Bull Durham'' and ``Field of Dreams'' were hits.
And ``Dances With Wolves'' was perceived by the money boys as a certain disaster. It was more than three hours long, and rode the trail when several attempts to revive Westerns had failed. On top of everything else, the movie was partially in American Indian dialect with English subtitles. The film was an international hit and won seven Oscars, including best picture.
``I don't always do what I'm supposed to do,'' Costner said, giggling mischievously. He was a bit heavier, although he vows to lose weight for his next flick, an adventure called ``Waterworld.''
\ A LOOK AT LAWMEN\ Three years ago, Costner discovered the huge script for ``Wyatt Earp'' and took it to director Lawrence Kasdan. ``Most of us,'' Costner said, ``are so busy doing our jobs that it's up to someone else to protect us. It's not our worry to be involved with the law. In Wyatt Earp's era, the law was just being invented. There's something very appealing to a man who would do that - to a man who would protect the law. The tragedy, as it is said somewhere in our script, is that half the people Wyatt saved weren't worth saving. That's the tragedy, in a way, of modern lawmen. They can't choose whom they help. They help everyone equally. They're selfless. I wanted to play that.''
Kasdan ended up re-writing it to a more manageable length. As a scriptwriter, Kasdan has written three of the most popular movies of all time, ``Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' ``The Empire Strikes Back'' and ``Return of the Jedi.'' As a director, his movies have been more modest hits.
He cast the unknown Kevin Costner as Alex, the suicide who becomes the center of ``The Big Chill'' when his friends gather for his funeral. At the last moment, the part was cut from the film altogether. ``It was a low point of my life,'' Costner admitted. ``After years of struggling, I'd finally gotten into a big movie and then to have the part cut out entirely - not just some scenes cut, the WHOLE part. But, somehow, I felt it wasn't the end. Larry told me he would make it up to me.''
He did. Kasdan wrote a part into his sprawling Western ``Silverado'' for Costner. As a strapping, cocky cowboy Costner stole the movie, as well as many female fans.
A California native, Costner graduated from college with a business degree and married early. With a family to support, he still opted to try a risky career in acting. Studying drama at night, he worked at odd jobs in the day. He finally made his screen debut in 1981 in ``Stacy's Knights'' and followed it with a featured role in ``Testament'' starring Jane Alexander on PBS. ``Bull Durham,'' ``Silverado,'' ``The Untouchables'' and ``Field of Dreams'' established him as one of the most popular actors of his generation.
He used his business training to produce ``Dances With Wolves,'' which made him a millionaire. ``As a businessman, my only real rule is that I mean what I say,'' he said. ``In Hollywood, that seems to be unusual. I just go by my instincts.''
Costner was offered a role in ``Tombstone'' in mid-1992, but turned it down, saying ``I have my own `Wyatt Earp' project.'' It was made with Kurt Russell as Wyatt and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. Critics lambasted its length and unstructured style, but it became a surprise hit. Now, there is some worry that audiences may not pay to see the same story again.
Also, there is the worry that ``Wyatt Earp'' is darker, with more drama and less gunplay. The hero is a man hardened and embittered by his lifetime of fighting lawbreakers. ``Life wears away at him,'' Costner said. ``It happens, but movies are at a pretty low point if they don't deal with characters who have low points.''
There also is the rumor that Dennis Quaid's portrayal of the drunken, tubercular Doc Holliday handily steals the movie from Costner. It wouldn't be unusual. Every Wyatt Earp movie has been stolen by the actor who played Doc.
``Dennis is great in the role and I'd match him against anyone who has ever played the part, but Kevin is a great example of movie acting,'' Kasdan said. ``He's compared a lot to Gary Cooper and a lot of people wrote, and said, that Cooper, and John Wayne and Henry Fonda and a lot of those movie stars, weren't really acting. That's hogwash. Great movie acting is underplaying. It has to look as if you're doing nothing. Great acting is getting to the truth of the moment.''
\ TIME FOR A BREAK\ Costner hopes to take a year off after he finishes ``Waterworld,'' which begins filming later this summer. Budgeted at $100 million, it has been said to be the most expensive movie ever made. ``It's budgeted that high because it is set on the water and things are likely to go over budget. You can't predict what will happen on the water. Maybe it will be made for less, but, at the moment, we don't even have a script finished. That is not the most comfortable place to be in.''
He hates the kind of press that attempts to expose something - anything - about his life. ``Hey, I'm human. I have frailties. There are things I don't want in the paper. It all reminds me of a scene in `Wyatt Earp.' Wyatt is in a saloon and this man tries to kill him, but he wins. He announces, afterward, that `This man would have killed me - over nothing.' I feel that way about the tabloid press. Some of them would ruin my life, if they could, over nothing. Then they'd just go to the next story.''
As far as movie stardom goes, Costner blushes when reminded that many women in the civilized world are not embarrassed to admit that they've had fantasies about him.
``I've heard things like that,'' he said. ``Yeah, that's the sex symbol thing. But that's my on-screen life. In real life, I still go home at night and I have to answer, without a script, when my wife asks, `Where have you been?' At that point, I don't have any glib answer written for me by some scriptwriter.''
Is it a tenser moment than any at the O.K. Corral?
``Well, I wouldn't say that,'' Kevin Costner counters. ``I always have an answer. It's just that I'm not as glib as I am in the movies.''
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