This Bud's for You

Kevin Costner On Swing Vote

Oscar-winning director, producer, actor, and movie-star extraordinaire, Kevin Costner is also the epitome of affability. We sat down at Atlanta’s Four Seasons Hotel to discuss his latest film as producer and star, Swing Vote. It’s a comedy-drama that satirizes the electoral process and a national media gone haywire, by way of the troubled relationship between an apathetic, redneck, single father named Bud Johnson (Costner) and his precocious, politically conscious “tween” daughter, Molly (the talented, feisty and adorable Madeline Carroll). Through a weird quirk in the balloting machinery, the outcome of a presidential election boils down to just one vote: that of Costner’s character (a narrative conceit made all too believable in the wake of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004).

When were you in Atlanta last?

I think I was here for Open Range, actually. It’s beautiful, the skyline, the neighborhoods, the universities. We’d heard a lot about your aquarium, too, so we zipped over there and saw that. It was beautiful; it’s like the power of one man’s imagination and ambition, and suddenly a lot of people get together and see something they might not ever, ever see. I’ve always enjoyed being in the South, and you can see that my character fits in here, perfectly.

How do you approach a character like Bud Johnson, who strikes me as being both a very well-drawn, individualized character and a kind of symbolic, Everyman type?

Well, clearly we know what Bud isn’t: he’s not a PTA dad, and he’s not a soccer father. He doesn’t have all the ambition in the world. There are things that we like about him, and there are things that make us not like Bud so much. We don’t like for anyone to break a little girl’s heart, and he’s probably done that a little too much with Molly. She’s had to depend on him too much. My approach was not to change that, not to make myself more likeable. Ultimately at the end of the movie, when we meet Mare Winningham [who plays Molly’s mother], we realize that at least Bud gave Molly an option to be under his roof, and he never talked bad about her. So, would he take his daughter out of school to go fishing? He just would. Does he ask his daughter to start the truck when he wants maybe one last cast? That’s Bud. Not everybody in the world has the ambition to do well; there are a lot of people who are fringe, and that’s where Bud is.

About the mother, that’s one of the more surprising aspects of the story. We come to realize that Molly really is better off with Bud.

Yeah, under that roof. I think all of us get surprised when we learn the truth about some things. We can look down on the poorer houses in our neighborhood and assume that those kids are not being attended to. We make up our mind about how the yard is kept up; but sometimes if you dug a little deeper you’d be almost chagrined to admit, “I was wrong about this;” and if you knew about the situation, you’d feel a lot differently. Maybe this person was heroic in the war and is just troubled right now and doing the best he can. You almost want to slap yourself for making those judgments, but we do that in America. We live in a sound-byte era where we make distinctions really quickly and stories are skin-deep.

What does it say when the movie’s main character, a guy who is representing the “average American,” has lost his ambition and is drifting a little bit?

Well, Bud says it all. He says, “This is unfortunate; I’m an average man who’s going to choose between two exceptional men.” That was the only speech in the movie that was ever changed. It used to be a little bit “rah-rah,” with a lot of, “We could do this, we could do that.” But Bud really has to look at himself. He has disappointed his daughter and his community, but Bud heroically takes it all on, and he finds a way in his own language to uniquely speak for us all. When Bud says that maybe he’s the enemy, that’s a very big thought. When Bud describes that we need a giant in our lives politically, I think he speaks for the elitist, for the intellectual, and for everyman. Surprisingly, you get a lump in your throat, and you didn’t realize that Bud could put it there.

Did you do any singing on the set?

Oh yeah; the band was always there. We were always under the awning writing songs. We wrote “Back Yard” and three other songs that are in the movie. I do have a life outside of “action” and “cut.” I was almost going to play here in Atlanta, but for some reason we didn’t play.

During the screening, when certain political issues came up, it was interesting to hear the audience applauding. Do you expect the film to have any specific political impact?

I hope people go see it. It’s not a public service announcement, and it was never meant like that. It’s a piece of entertainment that is a comedy at its core, dealing with the relationship between a father and a fifth-grader, set against the backdrop of one of the great privileges in the history of the world that this country provides: the ability to vote. Our country is founded on it, but we’ve gotten lazy with it. And we’ve found a way in a piece of comedic entertainment, “Capra-esque” if you will, to underscore it. We didn’t want to demonize either party, but we wanted to clearly point out that two powerful people running for the biggest job on the planet might be willing to change their views and talk themselves into the reasons why.

One of the strengths of the movie is how even-handed it is. How difficult was it to maintain that balance? You mentioned Bud’s speech, for example.

Yeah, I told the guys that we might be writing that speech right up to the end, because I felt it was so important that it never come off as preachy. There’s a humility there. He’s more concerned about his daughter being mad at him. And we realize that what was once funny isn’t so funny anymore.

It’s really appropriate that we don’t find out who gets Bud’s vote in the end. Was that always the plan?

Yes. I think to have selected one of them would have been off center. It would have changed everything. And the fact that he closed the curtain is important; you can close the curtain when you vote. You don’t have to be so public always with everything. You can, but we know that politics are a hotbed. It can affect the way people treat you at the office, or whatever. I think that the simple closing of the curtain was right.

The film also offers a clever satire on the media and the creation of celebrity. How do you feel about that tendency?

Well, the media has lost its center. That doesn’t mean that journalists have. Many journalists are very serious people, but you have publishers behind you, saying, “You ask him that question about his first marriage; you fucking ask him.” Do we need to know about Christie Brinkley? Do we really? But somebody is insisting on it. That’s why I think Kelsey Grammar’s line, as the president, is very grounded: “What do you want me to do, give him a bag of money?” And it’s not a joke; it’s not a comedic moment. He just asks the question point-blank; and the fact that a moment like that can exist in a comedy is just great. Or when the TV reporter asks her producer, “What do you want me to do? Do I need to run over this little girl?” “Yeah, if you don’t, somebody else will.” That’s a truth. We know that’s what we’re living in. These TV shows are just setting people like myself up. If I decide who I’m gonna vote for and publicly declare it, one side will like it, and the other side will wonder if I have a brain in my head. And if you’re not on their side, then suddenly you’re not a patriot. We really have a fundamental problem in our discourse in America.

This isn’t the first politically themed movie that you’ve been in, and yet you’ve managed to avoid alienating half of the people in America. How do you walk that line? In your relationship with the media, how do you avoid stepping into those traps?

I answer questions that I think are not soundbytes. If you really want to talk to me, then we’ll talk. But if you catch me walking by and ask what I think about what Jesse Jackson said, then I’m not going to give you a soundbyte. If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it. I can usually tell when you’re looking for a soundbyte. You know, I did JFK, and as a participant in that movie I made it as truthful as I could. If I thought things weren’t truthful, I would point them out and discuss them with the filmmaker and come to an agreement.  When we made Thirteen Days, was it a big number one hit? No, but I’m really proud to have made that movie and theatrically portray that very pivotal moment in our country’s history [the Cuban Missile Crisis]. Should I maybe have done Bull Durham 3 instead? I have to make choices in my life, and that’s a choice. I don’t cater. What I’ve tried to do with Swing Vote is make a movie that I think is real: it’s comedic, it has heart. I don’t try to capture the largest audience demographic. If it works, it works. I want people to like me on my own terms.

What other projects are you developing right now?

I’m probably going to direct three or four movies after this. I’ve got a cowboy movie, a World War Two movie, a really sexy, urban, violent movie, and maybe a love story. I cherry pick what I’m going to direct. I like cowboy movies, but I also love comedy. I love making movies; that’s why you see me doing different genres. I just made a little horror movie, which I’m hoping will be good. We tried really hard, and there’s creatures in the end. I don’t like to make a movie that I know obviously works. I like to surprise myself and an audience. I’m not even a fan of horror movies; I don’t like being uncomfortable in a movie, but I decided to make one. Go figure.

– Rodney Hill teaches film at Georgia Gwinnett College