Kevin Costner’s Dong Inadvertently Turned a Drama into a Comedy

Kevin Costner has been in the news a lot lately following the Cannes premiere of his new movie Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, which he partly financed by mortgaging one of his properties for $38 million. Unfortunately, critics are calling it a “regressive snooze” and “a numbingly long, incoherent disaster.” Plus, Costner fans will likely be disappointed by the lack of baseball and/or piss-drinking scenes.

But even if Costner were to have made a baseball-themed drama instead of a $100 million Western, he still might have faced some significant production hurdles. We know this because his last baseball movie, For the Love of the Game, was plagued with behind-the-scenes drama.

For the Love of the Game, about an over-the-hill pitcher who’s dating a single mother, was, oddly enough, directed by Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame, which may have led to some confusion amongst fans who were expecting Costner to be attacked by Deadites at any moment. 

While Costner managed to keep it in his pants for all 107 minutes of Field of Dreams, For the Love of the Game originally included a “steamy shower scene” featuring the Full Costner. Yes, Costner’s penis made a cameo appearance in the movie — that is, until the studio insisted on cutting it… from the movie, we mean.

Universal Pictures forced a number of edits upon Raimi, making him curtail any offensive language in order to maintain a PG-13 rating. Costner was extremely upset, telling journalists, “For Universal, this movie has always been about the length and the rating. It’s never been about the content. You feel a studio would want to release the best version of the movie, not the one they think appeals to the biggest common denominator.”

As for Costner’s dong, that ended up on the chopping block — there’s got to be a better way of saying that — not just because of the rating controversy, but because an audience at a test screening in Arizona reportedly laughed at his “first full frontal” nude scene. Presumably this was because the moment was so unexpected, not because the Tin Cup star has singularly hilarious genitals. In a follow-up focus group, one attendee of the screening questioned: “Do we really need to see Kevin Costner’s penis?”

When asked about the deleted nudity, Costner laughed and responded, somewhat immodestly, “Well, that’s hurting you.” More seriously, he added, “Universal wasn’t even willing to try (to fight the ratings board). They said it wouldn’t do any good. … The love of the movies, I believe, is waning.” 

He then pointed out that Midnight Cowboy was released with an X rating because the studio wouldn’t censor the filmmaker’s vision just to get a more commercially-friendly rating. At no point did he mention how the decision was also informed by the fact that his junk turned the movie into an accidental comedy. 

So if Kevin Costner doesn’t expose himself in any of the Horizon: An American Saga movies, now you know why.

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