movie business. Shortly afterwards, we met again, the Paramount Guys (PGs) and moi. Here is what they said: Yes, we like the script. Yes, we think it’s a movie. But it is also going to be a very very expensive movie. So we will make it only if we can get one of these three stars to play Patterson, the main character:
Costner
Cruise
Gibson
Well, those happen to be wonderful performers, and all three were good casting for the role. Serious about their careers and their choices of material. And huge stars.
The problem is, you just don’t get people like that for pictures like this (neither O’Toole nor Scheider nor Dreyfuss nor Shaw were huge stars) because stars know they inevitably are going to be dwarfed by the desert or munched by the monster. In the case of The Ghost and the Darkness, I knew that none of Paramount’s holy trinity would sit around while the lions stole the movie. So while I said “Terrific” to the studio about their casting choices, I’ve been at this a while and I have a certain sense for failure when it is coming down the track at me. I knew, old hand that I am, that none of the three would do it. The movie was dead in the water.
A week later, Kevin Costner said yes.
One of the points to keep in mind when talking about movie stars is this: not only do we change, they change. So today when people disparage the lovely Miss Roberts and wonder why she isn’t that smiling star of Pretty Woman, the answer is pretty easy: that child is gone.Julia Roberts was twenty-two then, we knew nothing much about her, and we all fell in love. Well, she’s in her thirties now, we know everything about her, some of it a bit disquieting. Our ardor has cooled.
The Kevin Costner of today, we know about: the divorce, the Waterworld budget, the fact that no one breathing saw The Postman, all that good stuff. But we’re still in 1990, remember, and Dances with Wolves is about to explode across the world, catapulting Costner into an orbit few stars ever attain. Remember how we rooted for him, putting his careeron the line to do an, ugh, western? A three-hour, ugh, western at that. And not just to star but, for the first time, to direct?
Well, he gambled and won and we didn’t just love him, we carried him through our village shoulder-high. He had become, in front of our eyes, the newGary Cooper. We could not find sufficient superlatives.
So as I flew out to the next meeting with the PGs, I knew that after half a dozen years, the gods were smiling.
“We know what we said last week,” the PGs began. “We know we said we would only do it with Costner or Gibson or Cruise. And we are thrilled that Kevin wants to do it so badly. That only proves what we felt about the value of the material. And since Costner agreed so quickly, we now know what we have to do.”
And then a pause.
Not just any pause. This baby hovering on the horizon was one of the longer lulls of my young life. I knew I was about to die, but I could not guess the method, poison or sword.
Then the PG spoke that most dreaded of all terms: “ special relationship. ”
There is something you must understand about studio executives (and these guys were absolutely standard: bright, decent, hardworking—and shortly to be fired for helping run the company off a cliff). Studio executives love stars. Because these are the executive’s two eternal verities:
1. they all know they are going to get fired, but
2. they also know that if they can just sign enough stars to enough flicks, they will delay their beheading.
Perfectly understandable behavior. I’d do it too. Where it gets dangerous is here: it is not enough that they love stars; in their continually fevered brains, they want to believe that the stars also love them. And so over the decades I have heard that “Sly and I have a special relationship” and “Dusty and I have a special relationship” and Arnold and I and Clint and I and Marlon and I and Paul and I and Steve and I
Costner
Cruise
Gibson
Well, those happen to be wonderful performers, and all three were good casting for the role. Serious about their careers and their choices of material. And huge stars.
The problem is, you just don’t get people like that for pictures like this (neither O’Toole nor Scheider nor Dreyfuss nor Shaw were huge stars) because stars know they inevitably are going to be dwarfed by the desert or munched by the monster. In the case of The Ghost and the Darkness, I knew that none of Paramount’s holy trinity would sit around while the lions stole the movie. So while I said “Terrific” to the studio about their casting choices, I’ve been at this a while and I have a certain sense for failure when it is coming down the track at me. I knew, old hand that I am, that none of the three would do it. The movie was dead in the water.
A week later, Kevin Costner said yes.
One of the points to keep in mind when talking about movie stars is this: not only do we change, they change. So today when people disparage the lovely Miss Roberts and wonder why she isn’t that smiling star of Pretty Woman, the answer is pretty easy: that child is gone.Julia Roberts was twenty-two then, we knew nothing much about her, and we all fell in love. Well, she’s in her thirties now, we know everything about her, some of it a bit disquieting. Our ardor has cooled.
The Kevin Costner of today, we know about: the divorce, the Waterworld budget, the fact that no one breathing saw The Postman, all that good stuff. But we’re still in 1990, remember, and Dances with Wolves is about to explode across the world, catapulting Costner into an orbit few stars ever attain. Remember how we rooted for him, putting his careeron the line to do an, ugh, western? A three-hour, ugh, western at that. And not just to star but, for the first time, to direct?
Well, he gambled and won and we didn’t just love him, we carried him through our village shoulder-high. He had become, in front of our eyes, the newGary Cooper. We could not find sufficient superlatives.
So as I flew out to the next meeting with the PGs, I knew that after half a dozen years, the gods were smiling.
“We know what we said last week,” the PGs began. “We know we said we would only do it with Costner or Gibson or Cruise. And we are thrilled that Kevin wants to do it so badly. That only proves what we felt about the value of the material. And since Costner agreed so quickly, we now know what we have to do.”
And then a pause.
Not just any pause. This baby hovering on the horizon was one of the longer lulls of my young life. I knew I was about to die, but I could not guess the method, poison or sword.
Then the PG spoke that most dreaded of all terms: “ special relationship. ”
There is something you must understand about studio executives (and these guys were absolutely standard: bright, decent, hardworking—and shortly to be fired for helping run the company off a cliff). Studio executives love stars. Because these are the executive’s two eternal verities:
1. they all know they are going to get fired, but
2. they also know that if they can just sign enough stars to enough flicks, they will delay their beheading.
Perfectly understandable behavior. I’d do it too. Where it gets dangerous is here: it is not enough that they love stars; in their continually fevered brains, they want to believe that the stars also love them. And so over the decades I have heard that “Sly and I have a special relationship” and “Dusty and I have a special relationship” and Arnold and I and Clint and I and Marlon and I and Paul and I and Steve and I
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