Boiled down or at least apparently, there’s one basic reason why Peter Kiefer has written a Kevin Costner takedown piece for The Hollywood Reporter (the article has two titles — “How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood” and “How Kevin Costner Lost The Plot”).
It posted today (10.8) because Costner’s epic-sized Horizon project has been a big bust, and all big-swing failures must be punished.
Mitigating quote from Rick Nicita, Costner’s agent from 2002 to 2008: “The word difficult gets used a lot. It can mean someone who won’t come out of their trailer, or someone who doesn’t know their lines, or is rude. [But] that’s not Kevin. He wanted what he wanted and knew what he wanted and if he didn’t get it…well, he was never a great compromiser. It’s a firm belief in himself and a confidence that to some can play as arrogance.
“Nothing that’s happened surprises me because Kevin firmly believes in himself. He thinks he can will things into happening because he could, and he did. I don’t think that’s changed.
“What happened is the circumstances no longer allow for that. I’ve never known him to play the angles — it’s all fast balls down the middle. It’s just that the strike zone has gotten smaller. But I would never write him off.”
