The Costner Problem

Marley was kind enough to send me his master's thesis on the mythology of RFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I've been laughing uproariously at for days now. His view of these events is somewhat different from my own - for instance, I don't recall ever reading about George W. Bush as a 16 year-old involved at all, much less swinging into the room on a rope through a window like Tarzan and saving the day by suggesting the idea of a blockade before secretly slipping off to Russia and personally beating Kruschev's fat ass while inventing the "USA! USA! USA!" chant that would become even more popular almost two decades later at Lake Placid (also, according to Marley, he played the drum solo on Wipeout the previous summer) Nor have I ever read about Obama being in the room peeing his pants and weeping "we have to appease!!! let's appease them!!! and then can we please move onto socializing the country!?!?!?!?!!" while in his "COMMIES DO IT WITH NO CLASS" onesie.

But hey, it's not my paper, I'm not in his class, perhaps he's privy to info I just haven't gotten my paws on yet.

Throughout our discussion, the movie Thirteen Days has come up, AND the movie itself has been in heavy rotation on cable lately (for instance, I'm watching it right now), and I'm reminded, once again, of how Costner pretty much ruins the whole goddam thing:

Sexmastime from 2 years ago:

Costner's accent. For fuck's sake. Now, I never cared about him mangling the British accent in Robin Hood; hell, that's the way we assume everyone did talk then/there, so he had to at least try to pull it off, even if he may have failed miserably. But in this flick he's playing Kennedy advisor Kenny O'Donnell. Kenny O'Donnell...does anyone have any idea how Kenny O'Donnell talked in real life? Is his speech pattern/accent Cosell-esque; ie ingrained in us so much that an actor would have to try to imitate it? Anyone whipping out their Ken O'Donnell imitations at dinner parties? For fuck's sake Kevin you're not playing one of the Kennedys; I can fucking promise you there's not a single person watching the movie that is thinking "hey, waaaaaaaiit a minute...THAT'S not how Kenny O'Donnell talked! This is bullshit!!"

Could've just talked normally, nobody would've cared. Fucking distracting.

I'm not a Costner hater, but I'm starting to realize that unless there's a ball in his hands, he's a shitty actor. A lot of actors are bad with props, Costner is awful without them. He's great in Bull Durham, awful in Robin Hood. Field of Dreams and Tin Cup were corny and silly, but he was pretty good because most of the time he either had a bat, a ball or a club in his hands. He was okay in JFK, although histrionic, because someone had the know-all to slip a pipe into his hands for half the movie. Dances with Wolves he's saved because he's mostly around Indians who don't speak English, and wolves. A Perfect World? Hands on the steering wheel or a gun.  And on and on and on. Strange cat.