Swinging With 'Vote' and Hard Work
Kevin Costner appreciates politics and making movies.
Aug. 2, 2008 -- Kevin Costner has been around the cinematic block. He has starred in a spate of blockbuster hits. In the late 1980s and early '90s it seemed he was everywhere: "No Way Out" and "The Untouchables," both in 1987; "Field of Dreams" in 1989; "JFK" in 1991; "Tin Cup" in 1996.
His acclaimed "Dances With Wolves", which he directed, produced and starred in, won seven Academy Awards in 1991, including two statues for Costner for best director and best picture.
The actor recently took time to chat with Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers about his new election comedy "Swing Vote," which opens nationwide on Aug. 1, and his experiences from more than two decades on the silver screen on "Popcorn With Peter Travers" on ABC News Now.
"Swing Vote" tells the story of Bud Johnson, a slacker who is inadvertently thrust into the national spotlight when it turns out that his vote -- cast by his 12-year-old daughter -- will determine the outcome of an impending presidential election.
"The good thing about Bud is that he's not living in the past, he's living in the future," Costner said. "But he'd rather that future be on the bank of a river fishing. He doesn't have all the ambition in the world. He's not what I would call a PTA dad."
The fact that the film will be released just months before the 2008 presidential race is a mere coincidence, Costner said. "I wasn't trying to anticipate an election year, I just simply saw it as a film that makes that journey and does that special thing that I think movies can do once in awhile: You begin to feel something that you didn't think was possible when you went in."
But Costner certainly isn't unaware of the timeliness of the movie.
"You think at a certain point that 'my single vote doesn't matter,'" he said. "But I think that's when people are thinking selfishly. When you think in terms of that you're a fabric of a whole, when our whole democracy depends on this one event, voting. To exercise this one privilege that was clearly fought for, designed for, and one of the great things America stands for that your voice can count."
