For Costner, it's about possibility

MCCLELLANVILLE — It is not the curtain call that Kevin Costner misses — of those, he gets plenty — but the curtain itself, a century-old tradition lost to the multiplex.

"I miss having an actual curtain drawn in a movie theater. There's something really magical about a curtain opening. Every movie has a chance to be great at that moment. And it's all about what decisions were made, be it the script, did people 'settle,' did they cave in to convention? I'm a sucker for the curtain opening. Anything is possible at that moment."

Costner, who is in the Lowcountry shooting "The New Daughter," has moved headlong through a career that has always been about possibility, about seizing a cinematic opportunity even when conventional wisdom says otherwise.

"I've been flying against the conventional wisdom for a long time," he said, "and simply for one reason: What if everybody's wrong? We're still talking about an emotional experience, not something empirical."

Which is one reason why the actor, director and producer disdains test audience screenings, which often compromise a filmmaker's vision and intent — as if Hemingway had asked his readers to rewrite a manuscript.

"It's been our undoing. We're so convinced now what an audience will sit through and what they won't. But there are a lot of reasons why a movie doesn't come together. Either you started with a bad document, or you weren't careful in the post (production), or the conventions of modern filmmaking tore you down: timing, ratings, over-testing. A lot of times what you actually have are pretty good movies, but they're not great. I have some of those. They're pretty good. Why? Because those movies suffered from conventional wisdom."

Directed by Luis Berdejo, "The New Daughter" marks Costner's first return to the Lowcountry since making "The Big Chill" (1983), a film in which Costner's scenes famously found the cutting room floor — thanks to test screenings.

It is also the first horror film of his career, following a picture in which he played his inaugural "villain," the serial killer of "Mr. Brooks." Though his enthusiasm for the new movie is palpable, Costner believes any number of actors could play his role.

"In some of my movies I think I'm probably the guy. There are some movies that I feel like I 'own.' I don't like scary movies personally, but I did want to be in one. I thought this one read really well, and I like the idea of making a movie like this and trying to see if we can raise the bar on it — at least its IQ — a little bit. I know the screenplay is very good. We have monsters, and right at the end we have to fight them. So, is that where we lose it, or do we make it work? I depend on people hanging with it and being able to make that theatrical jump."

If there is one constant in his films, as actor and director, it is that Costner has made movies for men.

"I do. I always make sure there are great women's parts in them, but when I start off my No. 1 goal is, 'Can a man relate to this movie?' It doesn't mean the character has to be butch. It means if I'm a character in a movie where something breaks down, will a man recognize why Billy Chapel (in "For Love of the Game") weeps in his hotel after he pitches a perfect game and there's no one there for him? Will a guy watching go, 'I get it, man'"?

From "A Perfect World" to "Field of Dreams," Costner has given us an array of men with whom audiences might identify, at least on some level.

"And you can relate to them, whether it's a sociopath or whether there's a thread of humanity in any of them. I believe I have this relationship with the audience and people have a feeling that they think they know me. But it's really not quite the case.

Which is one reason why Costner has spent the past two years performing live gigs with his band, Modern West, often in the communities where he's filming. Costner and Modern West will kick out the jams live at the Music Farm on March 29.

"I've found that if I can perform music for two hours on stage, talking to people, it beats a two-second autograph. And anybody who is really watching goes, 'I feel really different about him.' Now, the hope is that they feel something positive."

Costner's sports-themed films, "Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams" among them, have been a principal propellent in his career. But no less so have been his Westerns, most recently "Open Range." Costner says he harbors a special affinity for them.

"I think they're our Shakespeare, to be honest. And I say that in the sense that Shakespeare can be difficult to understand on the page, but when you see it performed really well, you can understand it. His work lives hundreds of years later and is still vital. I think the reason why you don't see a lot of great Westerns is because they are hard to make. And when people are sloppy with them they do a disservice, because when they're cliched or too bloody they're boring."

Authenticity in a Western, Costner says, swings on the most basic elements.

"'Yep' and 'nope' are not just words. The language of the era had a simplicity to it: 'A man's trust is worth more than a handful of cards.' That's as eloquent as anything written by Shakespeare. And if you believe that, you also believe that it's important for westerns to have those lines. There's an elegance and a poetry in the language, and if you look for it, you'll find it.

"I believe people do appreciate that, although it doesn't always add up to great box office. What it adds up to is maybe a classic. If you can be content with classic and not being No. 1 at the box office, it will probably serve your filmmaking instincts a lot better. In the end what you may have something that we are all looking for, something that endures, that travels through time. You have to have a fundamental belief in your story."

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.