Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

The return of arbitrary but fun value judgments

Lest anyone fear that this humble blog is going to turn into All Science Wars All the Time, I have another Puzzling Problem for you all. I call it the Untouchable Bull Durham Problem.

I happened to catch Bull Durham on cable the other night. It stands up remarkably well; I even think it’s a slightly better movie than Slap Shot (and that’s saying something, especially on this blog!) in its depiction of minor-league trials and tribulations, and it’s no mystery why both movies are celebrated for their classic scenes and lines. But here’s the problem: together with The Untouchables, the movie launched Kevin Costner’s career as a leading man.

Worse still, Kevin Costner is quite good in both films, even if you read his performances backwards from epic-comic disasters like Waterworld and The Postman. Indeed, the shark-jumping began remarkably quickly for Mr. Costner, with Field of Dreams; this was followed by Dances with Wolves, the longest film ever made, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which the always crafty and delightful Alan Rickman is compelled to face off against Costner’s smirking, mumbling Robin (a.k.a. Worst Robin Ever). I needn’t rehearse the rest of the atrocities—JFK, The Bodyguard, Tin Cup, For Love of Making Yet Another Goddamn Baseball Movie—for you to get the point. So, then, here’s the dilemma.

First, there is the interpretive problem of how it remains possible to enjoy Bull Durham and The Untouchables (and Costner’s performances in each!) even though they are ultimately responsible for the existence of all of the movies named above. For it is possible—I just don’t understand how.

Second, there is the question of whether the Untouchable Bull Durham Problem can be generalized—to other films and actors, and perhaps even to other media. For example, Every Picture Tells a Story is really a damn fine record. And Rod Stewart even produced it himself. But is it worth the decades of horror it unleashed? Likewise, Lyrical Ballads rock. And the Preface kicks some serious butt up and down the block. But it led to decades of Rod Stewart-esque dreck from Wordsworth. And I’m not even talking about the cranky, unreadable late stuff, when Wordsworth was writing sonnet sequences calling for more frequent executions of criminals and fulminating against the rise in the poet laureate property tax. I don’t even like “Intimations of Immortality,” to be honest. “To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” Feh, what a saccharine, self-satisfied couplet, what a lousy melody on “thoughts that do often lie.” As with Costner, I think the shark-jumping started pretty early.

Further suggestions are more than welcome. Have a fine weekend, everyone.

Posted by on 12/09 at 02:47 PM

Not only was the fine first season of MASH responsible for such atrocities as “The MacLane Stephenson Show” and “Trapper John, MD” (which didn’t have the guy who played Trapper, although some other loser series that I can’t even remember did have him), it spawned the dreadful 3rd, 4th ,5th , 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th seasons of MASH. If that wasn’t enough, it also gave us the placental “AfterMASH”.

Posted by on 12/09 at 04:09 PM
Amen to your Wordsworth remarks. One could add Joanie Mitchell’s first album and many other similar examples. But W is more interesting. LB’s and the first (’98) version of the Prelude are very strong, and the ‘05 Prelude may be the best combination of youthful power and mature reflection in his work. By comparison the later Prelude is flaccid and with very few exceptions the later poetry is just bad. Youth vs age? the depredations of organized religion? reactions to the next generation? Who knows. I am not willing to lose te early writing because of all of the dreck it made possible. I wouldn;t be willing to lose it even if it made the later dreck a necessary consequence (a statetement that I do not think is true). For a fine example of a better outcome see Brahms’ reworking of his early piano trio into what is now known as his Op 8 (and DF Tovey’s essay on this is an enlighenting an example of musical analysis as any that I have ever run across).

Posted by on 12/09 at 04:09 PM
What a pleasure to discover this fine blog. My commentary is thus:

The problem that besets all these artists is the “Whoops, now I believe my own hype” syndrome. Or, as Mr. De Mille said in SUNSET BOULEVARD, “a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.”

For some reason the oidious Richard Gere has been cropping up in my conversations lately, and he is a prime example. Terrifyingly believable as the killer in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” the inexplicable success of “American Gigilo” made Armani the holy guru of the hour and paved the way for the Birth of the Yuppie. Now he’s a humorless Buddhist--what a contradiction!--who carries his priceless ego around like a cross.

Posted by Erich Kuersten on 12/09 at 04:15 PM
Oh… and two words: Robin Williams

Posted by Erich Kuersten on 12/09 at 04:17 PM
Maybe it’s the element of collaboration. After all, on Every Picture Tells a Story Stewart had Ronnie Wood backing him (and Never a Dull Moment is pretty good, too); Wordsworth had Coleridge at his side (or had him as an imagined auditor) for the good stuff; and need we mention the brilliant Lou Reed/John Cale Velvets albums versus the unstoppable, constant dreck of Lou Reed solo? It’s pretty easy to make a good movie when you’re surrounded w/ Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbin (BD) or Robert DeNiro & Sean Connery (Untouchables)—oh yeah, not to mention a David Mamet screenplay.

Posted by Mark Scroggins on 12/09 at 04:28 PM
If her career continues down its current path for another two or three decades, would we have to add Liz Phair to the list?

Posted by on 12/09 at 04:42 PM
Re: Trapper John (Wayne Rogers)

although some other loser series that I can’t even remember did have him

You’re probably thinking of “House Calls”, in which he co-starred with Lynn Redgrave.

I’m afraid this problem is really beyond my capability to solve or even make sense of. I love Bull Durham so much that I don’t even think of Costner’s other movies.

Posted by on 12/09 at 04:44 PM
Your Bull Durham Problem is elegantly stated, Michael, so much so that I regret I must demolish it with an ugly fact.

To wit: Kevin Costner delivered the finest performance of his career in The Big Chill.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/09 at 04:45 PM
I grok the Bull Durham Problem but “Tin Cup” an atrocity? Surely, you jest. Everybody looked good in that movie, even Don Johnson.

Posted by on 12/09 at 04:47 PM
A more recent example of this phenomenon might be seen in the work of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both producing very good performances in their debut Good Will Hunting. We can tell whose work had more weight in writing the script when following the subsequent careers of both actors: Matt Damon stars in consistently good films (even if his acting can be a bit flat), while Ben Affleck has consistently sucked and, thankfully, his last 2 or 3 movies went totally down the toilet, and fast.

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:01 PM
I think it was Bruce Hornsby who pointed out that a musician has his whole life to write the first album but only a year or less to write the next one. This might explain at least part of the puzzle.

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:11 PM
I know every cinegeek from Cincinnati to Sante Fe has to hop onto blogs and chatrooms to toot their obscurist horn, so I’ll make this brief.

I, regrettably, fell for Costner’s charms as the unpredictable and puckish gunman in Silverado. Granted, I was young, didn’t know any better etc., but he was good.

That said, “Kevin Costner” is now my word for not-attractive-enough-for-how-boring-he-is when a friend thinks someone’s cute.

-- Evan

Posted by Peek on 12/09 at 05:14 PM
Cuba Gooding, Jr. as an actor, and John Singleton (Singletary?) as director, were good in Boyz N The Hood. I think that was the pinnacle of each’s artistic career. (I didn’t like the You Had Me At Hello/Show Me the Money Movie)

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:15 PM
A little off the point, but I couldn’t let it go uncommented on: Tim Robbins could not have pitched for my little sister’s softball team. Having him as the ace of the staff destroys the verisimilutude of the film and renders it nearly unwatchable.

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:29 PM
What makes The Untouchable Bull Durham so, um, untouchable is not Costner but the brilliant script of Ron Shelton and the dead-on performances of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. Costner succeeds because it would be impossible to fail with such strong material. Even Sophia Coppola might sound good giving the “Well I believe in the soul...” speech.

Still, there are moments even in Bull Durham where Costner’s suckiness beginst to shine through. Best example: the scene when Crash attempts to comfort Nuke on the bus after Nuke has had the nightmare about being on the mound wearing garters but no pants. Costner’s dialogue is stilted and he seems to lack anything resembling actual human emotion.

This scene, of course, goes unnoticed because of so much of the good stuff, some of which Costner himself gets to take credit for, I believe. To wit, the improvised exchange with the bat boy:

Bat Boy: Get a hit, Crash.
Crash: Shut up.

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:30 PM
I want to shoehorn Ken Russell in here someplace, but I can’t think of any movie of his that might be good in which we can anticipate the coming shitstorm of kitsch that was Lisztomania, Gothic, or Salome’s Last Dance.

Posted by on 12/09 at 05:41 PM
Malcom McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”, and then eight or nine years later in “Time after Time”. There may be a few other decent films in there, but so many of the films he has chosen to be in are painful to watch, though I may have missed a good one in there, considering his body of work. Who knows?

Posted by on 12/09 at 06:46 PM
Mark Scroggins writes:

Maybe it’s the element of collaboration. After all, on Every Picture Tells a Story Stewart had Ronnie Wood backing him (and Never a Dull Moment is pretty good, too) ...

All the Faces albums are worth hearing.

Posted by alkali on 12/09 at 06:54 PM
re: Malcolm McDowell…

I have a soft spot for “Oh Lucky Man!” (1973) and (to a lesser extent) “If...” (1968), but by the time of the third film in Lindsay Anderson’s trilogy, “Britannia Hospital” (1982), some combination of Anderson’s and McDowell’s suckiness seems to overcome what was once positive about their always odd collaborations.

Posted by on 12/09 at 06:56 PM
Thanks Ralph—I love Tin Cup. I golf very rarely, hence extremely badly, and have been known to yell, “Give me another ball!” Costner style on many holes.

I’ll grant you all the rest, Michael, although I’ll admit to being a sucker for Field of Dreams every once in a while.

Posted by on 12/09 at 07:08 PM
A literary example: Joseph Heller.

Catch-22 is a brilliant novel. Everything else ranges from mediocre to pure dreck.

Posted by on 12/09 at 07:25 PM
technically rod stewart “jumped the shark” after the faces (rod stewart, ron wood, kenny jones, ronnie lane, ian mclagan)… if you haven’t heard those faces records and you like rock-n-roll, you are in for a treat...(start with ooh la la for the blistering “borstal boys")

Posted by a-train on 12/09 at 07:50 PM
What a fun topic. We should differ from people who got it right just once at the begining and people like Joni Mitchell who burned out after a decade. I will add a few more, James Taylor, after Sweet Baby James why didn’t he try another career? Salinger and Catcher in the Rye. His own 40 year silence has made us want to read work if it was available we would not be that crazy about. Ryan O’Neal and Barry Lyndon.

Posted by on 12/09 at 09:08 PM
Long-time reader/admirer, first time “contributer”.

First let me say, Kevin Costner sucks as an actor. He probably always has.

I too saw Bull Durham over this past weekend for the millionth time. As I was covertly wiping the tears away as the credits rolled (When Annie says “I can do that too!” I always lose it - that is if I’ve managed to keep it together until then.), I said to my beloved, in reference to Costner, “Talk about a guy building a career on nothing!” I can’t think of any performance of his that I would even call good. In his early career he was fortunate to have been handed really good roles and managed to parlay them into pretty decent box office success. Amazing to think that for at least a few weeks there in the early nineties he was the guy that could “open” a flick.

But… even if we stipulate that Costner is and always has been a rather ordinary hack, I can’t leave this:

Indeed, the shark-jumping began remarkably quickly for Mr. Costner, with Field of Dreams; this was followed by Dances with Wolves…

sitting on the table.

Field of Dreams wasn’t pithy and hilarious like Bull Durham, but it did contain this:

...People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

And Moonlight “Doc” Graham to boot.

I can admit that Dances with Wolves was a bit mawkish and definitely too lengthy, but I loved it at the time and still can’t resist sitting through it if I discover it on cable.

I know No Way Out was pre-alleged shark jumping, but that was a pretty decent flick, too - not due to any contribution by Mr. Costner, true.

If you want to say Costner’s movies started jumping the shark with Dances with Wolves, this philistine will let you.

Posted by azale on 12/09 at 09:09 PM
Stanley Kubrick. Brilliant through Strangelove, sucky and overrated ever since.

Posted by Steven on 12/09 at 09:54 PM
Mel Gibson was pretty good early in things like Mad Max, Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously. Lately, well, you all know what he’s been up to lately.

And the answer is no. Those early successes in no way atone for what was unleashed.

Posted by on 12/09 at 10:02 PM
Wordsworth: don’t know the Preface. Like the Prelude, though.

Posted by on 12/09 at 10:32 PM
Um, I just want to point out that the question posed by the Untouchable Bull Durham Problem is not the determination of when a person’s career jumped the shark. That is known in science-studies circles as the Jumping the Shark Problem, and is a peripheral issue here. The question is, rather, what cultural artifact gave rise to a largely hideous career and yet remains enjoyable nonetheless.

Just so people don’t make any category errors here. And what’s more, Steven, you’re wrong about 2001. Don’t even try to bring any 2001-deflating skepticism around this geekily 2001-obsessed blog.

Now, back to Costner: I see a slippery slope being built here. Charming first-time commenter azale (24) wants me to give in on Field of Dreams, and Ralph (7) wants me to give it up for Tin Cup, a movie in which Costner tries to reprise the aw-shucks-shambling athlete schtick for the eighth time. You can see where this is going, folks—fifteen or twenty more comments, and people will be asking me to appreciate Waterworld‘s visuals. Well, I won’t back down. If we start saying positive or even ambivalent things about The Bodyguard, the terrorists win.

Posted by Michael on 12/09 at 10:41 PM
First off, Costner was not the reason to watch those movies. Sarandon was epic in Bull Durham. As for Untouchables, hello?! Sean Connery, Robert DeNiro? They wipe the floor with Costner. Observe…

“They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you’re going to get Capone!”

“I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his hamster DEAD!”

“I wanna hurt him.”

Even granting the point that Costner was magic in those movies, Michael, when the head cheerleader at your high school offered herself to you, you turned her down because you couldn’t imagine spending the rest of your life with her, didn’t you? You’re not marrying Kevin Costner, for chrissake. Enjoy what you enjoy about him while it’s there to enjoy.

Posted by on 12/09 at 11:19 PM
Oh boy is David Reed right about the Brahms B major Piano Trio, Op. 8 (revised thirty-five years later.) When my trio performed it--the revised version--I did a little intro in which I said that piece exemplified the principle that artistic maturity consists in knowing what to take out--it’s about one-fourth shorter than the original. Now I have to find the Tovey article… thanks, David.

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 12/09 at 11:20 PM
Hmm… Cultural artifact.

What about the sophomore curse? Or something close to that. I’ve always lumped Costner and Gere into one archetype actor. And how much of the sophomore curse comes from the actor/band/etc. and how much comes from the expectation of the consumer?

Maybe we are confusing the actor with the role? I’m sure Costner’s people saw a gravy train in a type of character and Costner was just along for the ride.

Can we look at this from another perspective? What actor/band started in suckiness and redeemed him or herself?

Alex Chilton rode the rollercoaster from Box Tops (blah) to Big Star (omigod) to solo artist (what the?).

I’m trying to think of an actor or actress, and no one comes to mind. Maybe it doesn’t happen (the visual medium?).

Posted by on 12/09 at 11:55 PM
Okay, let’s see.

Kerouac’s On the Road, I guess, foresaw his descent into blind alcoholism and the desperate churning out of incoherence between paperback covers, but lawdy lawdy, wasn’t it a great ride?

Then Dylan’s early work stands 50 years later as worth all the strange and superficial mediocrity of the later years.

Let’s see, hard to say if the Stones early stuff forgives the wrinkled, flagrant commercialism that marks the rest of the tour. Definitely not, the rest of the aging rocker reprisals. Except maybe Pink Floyd at Live-8, but then they did the right thing by breaking up in the early 80’s.

And Elvis. Sad case. Jumped the shark early on. But worth it.

Nick Cave after Raising Arizona. NOT WORTH IT. Willie Nelson, after Red Headed Stranger? Yes.

On and on.

Posted by on 12/10 at 01:09 AM
I don’t know… how about Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde and Shampoo’s kind of o.k. ... but by Reds!, I kind of wanted to chew my own legs off rather than have to sit through the whole thing (which, contrary to the suggestion raised by Michael, is in fact, longer than Dances with Wolves, though only by seconds...); certainly, his continuous phoning it in (Bugsy, Bulworth… blechhh… so bad… it might lead him to believe we need ANOTHER affectless awful actor to run for office in California… blecchhh and bleccchhh… Dick Tracy (good name)… )

(I’d suggest Matthew Broderick after Ferris Bueller, but some might disagree...)

Or… Juliet Lewis… no, wait… she never did anything remotely enjoyable or entertaining to begin with… no. no. How about…

John Travolta? I mean, the guy who made us want to puke blood rather than watch Battlefield Earth! or Primary Colors was somewhat amusing playing Vinnie Barbarino and Tony Manero… not that either role even remotely justified the later abominations…

And Saturday Night Live gave us 4, 5, really good years of cutting edge, funny s***… and decades of juvenile bordering on the puerile crap…

Posted by the talking dog on 12/10 at 01:10 AM
"[W]hat cultural artifact gave rise to a largely hideous career and yet remains enjoyable nonetheless”

Paul McCartney as a Beatle.
Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Lucille Ball in “I Love Lucy”
Jackie Gleason in “The Honeymooners”

Posted by on 12/10 at 01:39 AM
I think the answer to the Bull Durham problem is that that movie is essentially very, very simple and unambitious film. And the Untouchables, well, the point is that he’s a goody-goody.

Not quite the same problem, b/c I believe the role came later in his career, but I have always loved Richard Dreyfuss in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and hated him in everything else he’s ever done.

Posted by bitchphd on 12/10 at 02:45 AM
James Taylor--"sucks" might be too strong a word, but there’s Sweet Baby James, then there’s everything else.

Practically everyone connected with “Hill Street Blues” except Dennis Franz. Steven Bochco managed to distill all the elements that eventually ruined Hill St. and inject them ever more quickly into the rest of his work. Which would bring us to:

David Caruso.

And I can’t vouch for this personally, since I don’t remember it, but I did have friends in college with pretty good taste who were fans of Peter Frampton before he came alive.

Posted by on 12/10 at 08:23 AM
Right next to Wordswortth we have his buddy Coleridge. He wrote a poem about losing it—“Dejection: An Ode”—and then lost it, at least as a poet.

In jazz, one line on Louis Armstrong is that it was over by 1930. I don’t think that’s quite fair; he did a lot of fine playing (and singing) after that. But the real innovation happened before 1930.

In science, for a long time the word on Einstein was that he had a few good years and then frittered away the rest of career looking for a grand unified theory. Now that searching for GUTs has become legit, there may have been some reassessment.

What did Watson and Crick do after DNA? Watson became an administrator and Crick went into neuroscience, where he was one among 10s in the top tier.

Now, in science one could say: “Yeah, but that’s about ideas and ideas are a one-time thing. Once you’ve had the Big One, what more is there? It’s too much to expect two or three Big One’s from one researcher.” Well, there’s John von Neumann: the digital computer, game theory, weather modeling, cellular automata, and other stuff. Not bad for one man.

Things happen, we change. Maybe creativity requires an appropriate balance of neuro-mental forces. If that balance should shift—perhaps through the exercise of that very creativity—then the creativity suffers. That’s not an explanation, more like a guess in search of conceptual substance.

As for Costner, maybe it’s what others have already suggested, he was surrounded by considerable talent in those two movies and he rose to the occasion.

In the mid-1950s Louis Armstrong recorded some albums with the Dukes of Dixieland—one of many (mostly white) groups formed during the post-war college craze for Dixieland. He plays and sings his @ss off and the Dukes rise to the occasion. In an ensemble setting one first-rate talent can goose the rest so they perform above their standard level.

Posted by bill benzon on 12/10 at 09:55 AM
And Elvis. Sad case. Jumped the shark early on. But worth it.

phredd, check out the ‘68 comeback.

Posted by a-train on 12/10 at 10:32 AM
Wow! I am such a nerd.

I liked Waterworld, and Time After Time.

Kevin Costner is one of those guys I used to like, but now just want to say, “Shut Up!”

Kind of OT, and to show what a bizarre person I am, I’ve always had a theory of Silverado (which I love):

Kevin Cline and Scott Glen both only carry one revolver.

Kevin Costner (playing Scott Glen’s younger brother, who’d rather make out than fight), carries two revolvers.

Danny Glover carries two rifles.

It so obviously goes to penis size and sex drive.

I told my husband that when we were dating (wow! almost 12 years ago!), and he said I was just horny.

Maybe so.

Posted by Ms. Not Together on 12/10 at 11:05 AM
I love Bull Durham as well. (And I live right up the street from the ballpark, not to mention the fact that my street appears in several shots in the movie. Durham, North Carolina, really is that cute in places.)

But I think of the problem as this: I love Bull Durham because I love the Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins/Kevin Costner triangle. I don’t think of that movie as a Costner vehicle, but rather as a stage for Sarandon to choreograph scenes with other strong actors.

I think that also explains why I think of the movie not as a baseball movie but an English Majors movie. I guess I wanna be Annie. Go figure.

Posted by Tyler on 12/10 at 11:24 AM
The question is, rather, what cultural artifact gave rise to a largely hideous career and yet remains enjoyable nonetheless.

Huh. That’s not how I heard the q. I heard it as ‘what cultural artifact is enjoyable but evidences most or all of the unendurable awfulness that will characterize that culture producer’s later output?’

This q, at any rate, is a way to get around the boring ‘jumping the shark’ answer; e.g., does Travolta in Sat. Night Fever--which is a pretty good movie w/ a pretty good performance and fantastic dancing--suggest the Travolta of Battlefield Earth or Phenomenon? I don’t think so. But the self-satisfied and restrained Kevin Costner of the Untouchables surely suggests the Costner of Field of Dreams or the Postman.*

And yet the first one is watchable, the other two, not at all. So here’s another version of the q, ‘what cultural artifact is enjoyable because of qualities that in the later output of that cultural producer are unendurable?’ This version is what I had in mind when I raised the specter of Ken Russell, since I want to believe he was once good for all the things that would be just awful in Gothic, etc.

--
* And somehow we have to get around answers that focus on later performances/productions that are just debased versions of what made them great, i.e., the Robert De Niro of Meet the Parents/Fockers and The Fan and etc. where he’s doing some version of Taxi Driver. Since I have to do some country ham wrangling, I can’t work this exam question out any better right now.

Posted by on 12/10 at 11:32 AM
Thanks, Michael, for defending 2001, but regarding Steven’s Kubrick dig, I’m more concerned about the blatant disregard for Full Metal Jacket, a brilliantly misanthropic film:

I AM GUNNERY SERGEANT HARTMANN YOUR SENRIOR DRILL INSTRUCTOR. FROM NOW ON YOU WILL SPEAK ONLY WHEN SPOKEN TO, AND THE FIRST AND LAST WORDS OUT OF YOUR FILTHY SEWERS WILL BE ‘SIR.’

C’mon. That’s just good stuff. I’d also like to quickly defend one (and only one) of Lou Reed’s post-Velvet albums: New York. Amazing.

Finally, so that I’m actually contributing to the discourse and not just sniping at others’ suggestions: George Lucas. After Star Wars the whole thing went down the crapper. Yes, yes, I too like The Empire Strikes Back a whole lot, but when viewed in order of production, the six films start well and end in an unwatchable vat of suckiness.

Posted by on 12/10 at 11:43 AM
a-train,

I’ve considered the Elvis ‘68 Comeback (duly, I hope). One, someone who does a Comeback Show on NBC by definition has jumped the shark. Two, yes, great show, especially after the Viva Las Vegas years, but making groundbreaking music? Debatable.

Three, the man wore capes. And sequined jumpsuits.

Posted by on 12/10 at 11:51 AM
Huh. That’s not how I heard the q. I heard it as ‘what cultural artifact is enjoyable but evidences most or all of the unendurable awfulness that will characterize that culture producer’s later output?’

Dammit, Karl. That was going to be next week’s question. Personally, I don’t experience Costner in Bull Durham as unendurably awful. And I see the self-satisfied Costner in The Untouchables only because I read that performance backward from the rest of his career, as I was sayin’.

But you’re right about the Costner-Travolta distinction. Good one. The Travolta Problem, however, is complicated by the dance scene with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, which falls under a subheading of “later performances/ productions that are just debased versions of what made them great,” namely, “ironic, self-aware later performances/ productions that are just debased versions of what made them great, and are therefore at once debased and enjoyable.” I don’t think DeNiro in Meet the Fockers or Analyze This really meets that (admittedly elusive) standard.

Also, Tim, I did consider the script of Bull Durham. As in Slap Shot, it’s a very smart, very crisp piece of work, and I had to control the experiment for Strength of Script. Still, Costner isn’t just mouthing the words. His delivery of the critical “difference between .250 and .300 hitters” speech is really quite all right. For example.

Tyler: Sarandon pulls off Annie just perfectly. And let’s not forget that Bull Durham hoisted her up onto the A-list where she belongs. But that’s a whole nother question—movies that rejuvenated worthy careers. All I can say for now is that Bull Durham is unique with respect to its critical position in the Sarandon-Coster Trajectory Problem.

Posted by on 12/10 at 12:14 PM
Michael: word.
--
While wrangling my ham (words that pass my lips more often than they should), something else occurred to me: what about culture producers whose early work is awful for precisely the same qualities that makes their later work enjoyable?

I have only one example, but it’s a good one: Velvet Underground-era Nico makes me want to give up on living, but her solo work makes me happy and sad simultaneously and not only because it makes the gf’s skin crawl.

Thread hijacking will stop now.

Posted by on 12/10 at 12:52 PM
I heard it as ‘what cultural artifact is enjoyable but evidences most or all of the unendurable awfulness that will characterize that culture producer’s later output?’

a.k.a. the “The Grass Is Singing” problem.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/10 at 01:25 PM
James Jones. “From Here To Eternity” is a landmark. You could make a case for “Some Came Running”, but only if you are being generous, and thereafter every single thing he wrote was a re-working of all of the things that made his great stuff flawed, with none of the great stuff.

Posted by Bill Altreuter on 12/10 at 01:40 PM
Boy, this is a hard one. After some thinking, all I could come up with for an example of a proto Kevin Costner Effect is Glenn Ford. I can still enjoy watching “Gilda” with him and Rita Hayworth even knowing his later performances, such as the one in “The Teahouse of the August Moon.”

Pauline Kael described the performance thus: “Glenn Ford grimaces, twitches glavanically, and stutters foolishly. It’s the kind of role and the kind of performance that can make you hate an actor.”

As for Joni Mitchell (spell her name correctly if you’re going to be dissing her, people), ALL of her music from all of her musical periods is holding up splendidly and just getting better with the years, much to my amazement. By the way, Michael, your “If we start saying positive or even ambivalent things about The Bodyguard, the terrorists win” is my favorite line in a long time.

Posted by sfmike on 12/10 at 03:18 PM
By the way, Michael, your “If we start saying positive or even ambivalent things about The Bodyguard, the terrorists win” is my favorite line in a long time.

Whitney’s version of the theme song is less annoying than Celine Dion’s cover.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/10 at 03:24 PM
Bull Durham. For me, the movie doesn’t stand up to the second and third watching. It takes itself too seriously. Costner is too earnest. I can see Sarandan and Robbins working. I love the baseball in it, but after the story is told, I have to move on and be done with it.

Not the same as, for instance, Field of Dreams, which you know is trying to squeeze the very last tear out of your eye by manipulation or attempts at soaring dialogue with long ago legends and redemption for being a bad son. Such schlock is perfect for the 20th watching on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Not so good that you can’t take a nap while it’s running.

Posted by on 12/10 at 03:48 PM
Zizek.

Posted by on 12/10 at 04:30 PM
I hereby invoke my own law: the thread is over when someone mentions Zizek.

Posted by on 12/10 at 04:53 PM
You’re stopping the conversation at Zizek, Godwin? What about me?!?

I thought what we had was special....

Posted by on 12/10 at 04:59 PM
Well, if I reconsider my post based on 1) the clarification of definitions, and 2) pretending for a minute that 2001 is a good movie, then I’ll say 2001 is the perfect example of what’s being discussed here. Before that, Kubrick made small, intelligent movies that were interesting even when they weren’t great (for me, Paths of Glory and Strangelove are great, Lolita interesting). And Spartacus, the best sword-and-sandals epic ever made, which admittedly doesn’t fit into my theory, but Kubrick never liked it anyway.

Then comes 2001. It takes him forever to make. It’s bloated. Its “philosophy” is willfully inscrutable. The acting is almost universally awful (except for HAL ... I suppose that’s a worthwhile joke/commentary in the context of the movie, but it should also have warned us where Kubrick was going to falter). It has a lot of pretty pictures and a lot of good music, to which I personally say so what but it looks nice in coffee-table books and sounds nice when I play the soundtrack.

And that sums up most of his career after that. Pretty pictures, good music, acting that is either awful (everyone in every picture with the exception of Malcolm McDowell, Lee Ermey, and arguably Jack Nicholson) or uncontrollably over-the-top (see the three aforementioned actors), pace like molasses, suggestions of psychological depth that never rise above the suggestive (who knew that damn monolith would come to represent the pinnacle of Kubrick’s ability to coherently express his philosophy).

So yeah, I’d blame 2001 for what followed.

Posted by Steven on 12/10 at 05:02 PM
I hereby declare the thread back open. Sorry about that, Dolf. Won’t happen again.

Godwin, you have been warned. No more capricious invocations of Your law.

Posted by Michael on 12/10 at 05:03 PM
I agree with what BB said about Paul McCartney. “Maybe I’m Amazed” is the only great solo song. Songs from the Wings era make you cringe. Yet, my favorite Beatles songs (Hey Jude, Lady Madonna) are Paul songs. I’ve heard the last album is pretty good, but is that wishful thinking?

He is an artist who really needs a stong partner to tell him “no” and keep his ego in check. He had that with John Lennon; I’ve heard that the producer he worked with on this latest album also challenged him.

Posted by on 12/10 at 05:21 PM
If Robin Williams hadn’t rehabbed, he’d be dead, but we’d have a bunch more good stuff.

Posted by John Emerson on 12/10 at 06:06 PM
Oh, I get the assignment now. You mean kinda’ how The Buddy Holly Story, which is still watchable, unhinged, I mean introduced Gary Busey.

Posted by on 12/10 at 06:49 PM
I am surprised no one has mentioned Ezra Pound. The early lyrics & “Hugh Selwen Mauberly” are exquisite, but they seem to lead inexorably to The Cantos, which have lovely patches, but are mostly the record of a descent into delusion. There is a moment of clarity in The Pisan Cantos, then delusional gibberish until the end. Perhaps poets should have the good sense to die young, like Keats.

Posted by joseph duemer on 12/10 at 09:35 PM
William Shatner in The Incubus. The heroism, singleminded ethicality, and appreciation for life in all its variety he exhibited (not to mention his elegaic line readings, and in Esperanto, no less!) was the high mark - not only of his career but, I daresay, in the history of the thespic arts.

Everything after was a depixilating copy, a deheterodyning echo.

/snicker

Posted by on 12/10 at 10:24 PM
Well, if I were intelligently designing the world, Keats would have lived into his 70s—and he would have been brilliant and gracious all his life. But I’m with you on Pound, Joseph. Interestingly idiosyncratic translator; accomplished impresario and promoter; mostly mediocre poet after 1920. And a raving lunatic to boot.

Posted by Michael on 12/10 at 10:27 PM
Hmmm...Elvis Costello before and after his unfortunate encounter with the Brodsky Quartet? I mean, does Imperial Bedroom outweigh the ponderous symphonic meditations he has unleashed on the world in the last decade? How about Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason? Sure, we would have missed the “categorical imperative,” but now that we have Intelligent Design, we don’t really need that anyhow…

Posted by on 12/10 at 11:29 PM
The Anxiety of Influence.
Interview with the Vampire.
“To Hell with Dying.”

Posted by on 12/10 at 11:45 PM
With the various mentions of the great and incredibly comsistent Stanley Kubrick and 2001, 2001!!!! being a sign of decline, I want to throw out a filmmaker who after promising and at times great work tanked it for the rest of his career, Fellini and after 8 and a half is anything at all watchable or worth thinking about.

Posted by on 12/11 at 12:25 AM
Crick was never among the top neuroscientists. He had that golden aura of reputation made from his Nobel, sure, and he could talk up a storm, but I thought he was a rather loopy flibbertigibbet. All his consciousness stuff was just spectacular handwaving.

I’d say both Watson and Crick were good examples of the phenomenon Michael is tracking, except that they honestly didn’t have that much star power in science to begin with. They were smart, ambitious, and most of all, lucky.

Science is somewhat immune to the problem, I think, because reputations are usually built on tens of years of work, and with a few exceptions, we don’t so much think of scientists as people, but as papers...(Smith, 2002) and (Jones, 1989). If Jones turned into a flatulent gasbag in 1993, we don’t so much care, since we just cite (Jones, 1989) and ignore the post-collapse work.

Posted by PZ Myers on 12/11 at 12:27 AM
Nobody has picked on Steve Martin yet? “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is, in itself, an adequate movie with lots of very funny moments. But it is the beginning of the Steve Martin - Family Man persona. The horror.

Also, musical examples are suspect because of the FIrst Album Phenomenom. Lots of acts have great first records because they’ve spent years honing their craft and had a very long time to get their material just so before finally recording. But if it’s a hit, they have 6 months to crank out the next one. Unfair.

Posted by on 12/11 at 04:46 AM
What’s with the picking on Watson and Crick?

Crick became a central intellectual figure in the birth of molecular biology in the 1960s. He is widely acknowledged as fostering ideas, discussion, and providing inspiration. It’s true that by the 1990s his neuroscience was not fabulous (this is my discipline, so I have read a fair amount of that work).

Watson was an administrator, it’s true, but I believe he had the idea to start the Human Genome Project. Not bad for an administrator.

It seems to me that the question requires that an initial success be followed not by just one disastrous follow-up, but a long string of them that creates sustained offense. I offer Kary Mullis, who got the Nobel for the polymerase chain reaction, a cornerstone of modern molecular biology; but used his fame to perpetrate idiocies such as a terrible book and “expert” testimony at the OJ Simpson trial.

Nobel prizes appear to be a good way to be trapped into Life-of-Brian-esque high expectations by others. Crick has some amusing riffs on this topic in his memoir What Mad Pursuit, which I recommend highly.

Neuroscience is a good graveyard: Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman, who made considerable contributions to cell biology, has now bestowed several books on neuroscience on the world that are not, um, considered central. Likewise, brilliant mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has pretty much become a joke with The Emperor’s New Mind, which manages to be erudite and risible at the same time, a neat trick.

Posted by on 12/11 at 07:34 AM
. . . .Gerald Edelman, who made considerable contributions to cell biology, has now bestowed several books on neuroscience on the world that are not, um, considered central.

Just wanted to repeat this as many of my humanist colleages regard Edelman as a touchstone to neuroscientic nirvana.

Posted by Bill Benzon on 12/11 at 08:13 AM
Michael, Keats at 70 would have been something to behold, or so we get to imagine since he died at 26. Agree with you that EP produced some interesting translations. I like the Propertius especially.

Bridgett, Elvis Costello after, hmmm, My Aim is True. And he ought to be damned to a special hell for trying to turn a perfectly good jazz singer, Diana Krall, into a pop singer, or worse--a female Elvis Costello.

Posted by joseph duemer on 12/11 at 09:14 AM
That’s true love for you.

But I wasn’t all that enthralled with her jazz singing—her ennui seemed forced, or maybe what I heard was when she was well along the way to pop conversion.

Posted by bill Benzon on 12/11 at 10:24 AM
This is completely off topic, but it’s an article on college programs for students with Down syndrome. Since we’ve been deprived of Jamie-centric posts for weeks, the link’ll have to share space with the vital discussion of Costneriana. (Kevin Costner used to be so cute.)

Posted by Orange on 12/11 at 10:32 AM
Since we’ve been deprived of Jamie-centric posts for weeks

Quite true, Orange, and very much on my mind. I have two that I’ve been composing mentally for a while, and I hope to commit them to keyboard later this week.

Posted by Michael on 12/11 at 10:42 AM
Pretty pictures, good music, acting that is either awful (everyone in every picture with the exception of Malcolm McDowell, Lee Ermey, and arguably Jack Nicholson) or uncontrollably over-the-top (see the three aforementioned actors), pace like molasses, suggestions of psychological depth that never rise above the suggestive....

Well well. I suppose if you were in my household you’d line up in the other, increasingly large camp against me and my love of Barry Lyndon.

Posted by on 12/11 at 12:51 PM
Karl,

FWIW, I share your love of Barry Lyndon, and would add my love of The Shining, and my deep appreciation (if somewhat short of love) for Full Metal Jacket and Clockwork Orange.

Posted by on 12/11 at 02:58 PM
Funny....I never would have thought it, but Adolf Hitler apparently shares my taste in Stanley Kubrick movies (damn that “Remember my personal information” box!).

Posted by on 12/11 at 02:59 PM
A few years ago I reviewed a film festival entry from Yugoslavia called “The Powder Keg,” a brilliant, violent, harrowing piece of work with great acting and a script that delivered on the promise of the title over and over again: every hair-raising scene was constructed to make you wince as you waited for the explosion. Shortly after the festival run, it was released for a brief U.S. run, but under the title “Cabaret Balkan”—because Kevin Costner had optioned the title “The Powder Keg.” Which immediately raised the as-yet unanswered question: is there anyone in cinema less like a powder keg than Kevin Costner? As I wrote at the time—and someone upstream pointed out again—he’s never given a more dynamic performance than he gave in The Big Chill.

The title I would change: “Dances with Wolves” to “Bores with Movie.”

Posted by on 12/11 at 03:09 PM
Zizek? Daryl Hannah.

In Blade Runner.

“Then we’re stupid, and we’ll die”—in her tone—has gotten me through many touchy moments. She was good.

So maybe she should only be in movies in which she plays a lithe replicant as Costner should only be in movies written by Ron Shelton in which he plays opposite Sarandon and Robbins.

Posted by on 12/11 at 04:00 PM
What about the opposite curve? Artists or scientists who start out slow or even awful then mature to a fine & powerful old age? My first nomination would be W.B. Yeats.

Posted by joseph duemer on 12/11 at 10:51 PM
Allen Ginsberg treated us to jumping the shark for the last 30-40 years of his life. “Howl” and “Kaddish”? Genius. Everything else? Shark after shark after shark.

A great literary parlor game is to decide whom you would go back and save from an early death, if you could. (Keats and Poe always win.) Then you reverse it: whom would you go back and kill young? Wordsworth? Alice Walker? Ben Jonson?

Posted by on 12/11 at 11:29 PM
As soon as I read this post I thought of the joke from Family Guy. Chris and Brian are walking out of “Now Way Out” and Chris says, “How does Kevin Costner keep getting work?”
I never really thought he was that great in “The Untouchables”
Also, have you ever paid attention to his accent in “Prince of Thieves”? Yep, that’s right. Not British at all. He never even attempts one. I understand he does the same thing in “Thirteen Days,” although I’ve never seen it.

On Elvis Costello, how can you neglect his brilliant work with Burt Bacharach on “Painted from Memory”? One of my favorite albums ever, although I do admit that he came out with some crap after “My Aim is True.”

Posted by jon mcgee on 12/11 at 11:29 PM
Glenn Gould gave it as his opinion that Mozart died, not too soon, but too late--that he’d lost his youthful imagination and fallen back on tired formulas. (Gould’s recorded performances of Mozart suggest that he harbored an antipathy to the man--the only plausible explanation for this preposterous claim.)

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 12/12 at 12:36 AM
”I offer Kary Mullis, who got the Nobel for the polymerase chain reaction, a cornerstone of modern molecular biology; but used his fame to perpetrate idiocies such as a terrible book and “expert” testimony at the OJ Simpson trial.”

Kary “HIV doesn’t cause AIDS” Mullis? Bright guy and a bit odd.

Some observations about Kevin Costner’s career:
1) Life isn’t fair.
2) Since when has the ability to act mattered?
3) Who would pay to see any of us in a movie?

I’ve always wondered whether Robert Heinlein “jumped the shark” in the second half of practically every book he wrote.

Posted by on 12/12 at 12:55 AM
Oh man, I’m soooo late to this party. Is there any beer left?

Anywho, just want to say:
1) Michael, I know you’re virtually married multiple times over to many other readers, but after your Wordsworth screed I just gotta say: Will you marry me? - because I *heart* you!

2) For me it’s possible to enjoy Costner in Bull Durham and the Untouchables, despite knowing the dreck that follows, because I can still recall the experience of seeing those movies in their first run, before the dreck. Plus, they both made much deeper impressions on me than the dreck. So the pleasure of re-watching them is the bittersweet pleasure of nostalgia. Also, what makes Costner good in those films—stiffness in Untouchables, earnestness in Bull Durham—is exactly what makes him bad in the rest. The contexts make it work in the earlier films.

Posted by Dr. Virago on 12/12 at 01:49 AM
jon mcgee - Evening funnier on Family Guy was when they had Hugh Grant starring in, “What’s My Appeal?”

Posted by on 12/12 at 03:56 AM
Waaay back up at 37, there’s a Louis Armstrong reference.

The poster defends Satchmo against the charge (not actually offered by anyone here) that his post-1930 work is Costner-bad.

Since I am actually one of the people who make the claim that the important part of his career was over by 1930, let me distinguish.

Armstrong made some great records in the twenties. Nothing he did after that contributed anything to his artistic reputation, or to the evolution of jazz. It made him more popular, sure; but that’s not the question.

Now, for me, there’s no compelling reason to listen to any post-1930 Armstrong. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily unlistenable.

Contrast Miles Davis. Another trumpet player who started as a sideman (on some great Charlie Parker records; while Armstrong was on King Oliver’s) before striking out on his own. But instead of resting on his musical laurels, Miles re-invented jazz 2 or 3 more times in the next 30 years. His last records, though perhaps not his greatest, are not nostalgia exercises.

But Costnerian badness? To go from Bull Durham to the Bodyguard? It’s hard to think of anyone in jazz whose first gigs as a leader were great, and who then put out utter crap (for decades!) and continued to get recorded.

Leaving aside fusion (of which there were precious few decent efforts in the first place, and sounding good on a Miles Davis record before having an atrocious solo career doesn’t count—Costner was a legit lead in Bull Durham), I don’t think the economy of jazz supports putting out a string of Costner-bad releases.

Seriously, I can’t think of anyone in jazz who really follows this kind of career trajectory.

Matt

Posted by on 12/12 at 08:28 AM
It may not be jazz, but Louis singing “Mack the Knife” with Lotte Lenya sure is one hell of a performance, as are any number of other Armstrong pop records up through the sixties.

Posted by joseph duemer on 12/12 at 10:26 AM
How about Cap’n Crunch? The original stands up well after decades, and Peanut Butter Crunch still satisfies, but Crunchberries should have been a warning. But no, he just kept it up until we had th e cultural nightmare of Jean LaFeet’s cinnamon Crunch.

Posted by on 12/12 at 10:29 AM
86—Which is why we can’t quite dismiss post-30s Armstrong. He kept delivering as a performer, though the innovation was over.

But if innovation is the game, then Costner was never in it. That is,
what he did at his best—whenever that is judged to be—was just good acting. He didn’t invent any new acting style.

Which reminds me . . . did anyone mention Brando? If you credit, e.g. The Godfather, then it’s certainly not straight down from the beginning few years, but it’s a very bumpy record.

And Orson Welles?

Posted by bill Benzon on 12/12 at 10:50 AM
88--Agreed. I just can’t work up enough interest in Costner to talk about him. Funny you should mention Wells. I had been thinking about him earlier, having watched The Third Man on TCM the other night. Man, that scene in the ferris wheel where he keeps calling Joseph Cotton “Old Man.” That is a moment of brilliant, creepy movie-making. I’m not enough of a movie buff to know what happened to Wells later except in the most general way.

Posted by joseph duemer on 12/12 at 12:02 PM
Many things, but especially <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311>Touch of Evil</a> which you should see as soon as you can decently manage.

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 12/12 at 12:35 PM
88 and 89.
Sorry to throw “innovation” into the mix; you’re right that it has nothing to do with Costner.

My point is that even if you dismiss post-’30 Armstrong, you probably don’t do it because it’s mind-bogglingly awful—just not the meaty part of his career.

Welles isn’t exactly fair game. When your first flick is arguably the best movie ever, it’s hard to maintain that level. But Touch of Evil is good, and Third Man isn’t shabby. And Othello? Fugghedaboudit.

Posted by on 12/12 at 04:40 PM
How on earth did I miss this? All this Sadly, Non! Stuff put me in some time-web-warp. I was going to sit this one out until I saw the comments on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and it clicked in my mind what great arbitrary judgments this film offers. But they are probably not on the level that you might think.

I believe that this is the first sci-fi film in which the special effects did the subject any justice. Kubrik was able to put human life into the perspective of the universe thanks in a large part to these effects. And this makes it the creepiest movie ever. Sure, when you got to the end you asked, “WTF?” But you knew you got your money’s worth. I don’t think any film in the genre made as good use of the effects since. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” came close but, Sadly, Non Cigar!

If you wanted to get a handle on the ending, you could read Arthur C. Clarke’s book. It has the best opening sentence ever in a novel: “The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.” It makes one wonder how long we’ll have to put up with global warming before the Republicans all die off.

And who doesn’t enjoy the music. “Overture: Atmospheres” is the perfect pop song since it only consists of perfect backup vocals without a brilliant guitar solo to make it suck. Of course, it should be banned from athletic competitions and is one of a few disco songs that does not suck.

So there you have it all: movies, books and music. “2001: A space Odyssey” wins the Arbitrary But Fun Trifecta.

Posted by on 12/12 at 07:05 PM
Eric Clapton’s solo career. I’m not talking about Derek and the Dominoes, nor am I talking about Layla acoustic.

Just as someone wrote “I’d rather fail my Wasserman’s test than read a poem by Edgar Guest,” there are much more painless things to experience than syrupy Clapton.

Posted by Randy Paul on 12/12 at 09:57 PM
For Kevin Costner, you must exercise the Kevin Costner’s Head Theory. This is the theory that states that the size of Kevin Costner’s head on the promotional posters for a film are directly proportional to its suckiness. Thus, if Kevin’s head is the biggest thing on the movie poster, run away. If it’s the same size as the other stars’ heads or smaller, the film is usually watchable.

This is of course, a corollary to the Author’s Name Theory of books, or what we in the library profession like to call “judging a book by its cover.” If on the cover of the book the author’s name is larger than the title, stay away. This indicates the author has become the “brand”, and the publisher has decided they no longer need an editor, since at this point in their career they could defecate on a page and their fans will buy it. You see this mostly in mass market hacks: Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Anne Rice, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, etc. Even if their early work was somewhat readable, they’ve become victims to their own success. But it applies equally to celebrities in other fields who are given book deals based entirely on their celebrity in some non-writing related field.

Posted by on 12/13 at 11:28 AM
Tyler:

It may interest you that the German title of “Bull Durham” is “Annies Männer” (Annie’s Men), rather supporting your take…

Posted by on 12/13 at 04:39 PM
Late to the party, and obvious I fear, but Stevie Wonder strikes me as such an epic, sad in this category (tho I like Steve Martin - excellent). Just buy the millenium collection: the first 2.5 discs are phenomenal, just amazing music, then it starts to go downhill save a few nuggets like overjoyed, and now what do we have? dreck, folks. Of course, the early stuff holds up so well that perhaps we can forgive that horrific don’t drive drunk song in the 80’s…

Posted by on 12/13 at 07:44 PM

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