“There he goes again.”
That’s what Kevin Costner said in a congenial tone when he was told his old friend and “JFK” director Oliver Stone was hoping to release a biopic on President George W. Bush in October, right into the fire of the presidential election.
There was a time when Costner, producer and star of “Swing Vote,” wanted his political comedy about a sub-regular Joe named Bud who has the deciding vote in a presidential election to arrive deeper into this campaign season.
But the studio execs felt otherwise. “They thought the closer we got to the elections the more people would be tired, (that) there would be voter fatigue,” he says. A good thing.
“Swing Vote,” opening today, is an entertaining civics lesson parents can feel good about taking their vacationing kids to see.
Or vice versa if the kid-parent relationship is anything like Bud Johnson and tween daughter Molly’s.
Molly is her father’s keeper. She’s one of those gifted kids who argue for some third way kids become themselves, something beyond nature or nurture.
Adults may wince at the way the child has to be the parent to the man. Mistaking New Mexico’s secretary of state for a child services worker, Bud bleats through a beer-soaked blur, “She’s my only good thing.”
A broken-hearted classroom scene shows why Madeline Carroll won the role of the pragmatic defender of democratic values who goes one fateful, fradulent step further than merely registering her apathetic dad.
A lot transpires between Bud and his daughter. And their achy, loving rapport required trust between the actors. In separate interviews, Carroll and Costner recount how that trust came to pass.
Her story highlights the barbecues Costner hosted during the rehearsal period, how nice the star is. Costner’s anecdote hints at the tough love of a professional actor who’s spent time behind a camera.
“I told her I gotta depend on you the way you depend on me,” he recalls. During rehearsals, his line would come up. He wouldn’t say it.
Instead, he says, “I’d be doing other things. I could see her getting really itchy.” Carroll would break down and say her line and Costner would ask her why. Well, she didn’t think he knew his lines.
“I’d say I know my lines. I was just doing some other stuff. You just keep living. If I don’t know my line, I’ll always admit that to you. That’s the trust we need. If you don’t know your line, I’m just gonna keep acting. Doesn’t mean I have to say anything. She’s so smart she understood immediately what that meant.”
Buoyed by a supporting cast that includes Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper as Republican incumbent and rival, Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane as their campaign operatives, as well as cameos by NASCAR racer Richard Petty and country musician Willie Nelson, the nonpartisan affair floats on political jests and power plays likely to have folks throwing around “Capra-esque.” But it’s worth remembering the best of Frank Capra’s films were comedically spry and morally shaded.
Enter Mare Winningham, whose brief turn as Bud’s ex and Molly’s AWOL mom takes “Swing Vote” (co-written by director Joshua Michael Stern and Jason Richman) beyond “Capra corn.”
“I have to say I kind of jammed Mare down the throat of the director,” Costner says with a chuckle. “I said, ‘You’re going to have one day to have someone come in and give a different tone to our movie. This is a great American actor. You’re going to thank me later.’
“When Mare delivers that line, ‘I’m not well,’ you go, ‘Omigod,’ ” he says.
The filmmaking hyphenate is always game to celebrate favorite screen moments.
A few years back, “Open Range,” which Costner directed, inspired a conversation about Charles Bronson in “The Magnificent Seven.”
“Swing Vote” leads him to a riff on “Meet John Doe.” The 1941 Capra film starred Barbara Stan- wyck as a newspaper columnist and then box-office titan Gary Cooper as the tramp who pretends to be an unemployed, suicidal “Doe” of a letter she penned.
“I thought Barbara Stanwyck was a babe. What a broad. She has this scene and it’s really indicative of why the Gary Coopers of the world survived. They wouldn’t act without the Walter Brennans or Ward Bonds, the guys that did the dance so they could underplay, underplay, underplay,” Costner says.
“She is literally holding onto Cooper’s leg. What a level of commitment. She forces him to act.”
Whenever Costner watches this scene, he marvels. “I look at that,” he says, “and I want to turn around even when no one’s in the room and say, ‘Did you just see that? Did you see that?’ “
