Costner and Russell in Cutting Duel

November 15, 2000 -- Ever since winning a Best Director Oscar for Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner the actor has been only too happy to offer advice and criticism to anyone occupying the director's chair.

Costner was unhappy with cuts, including a full-frontal nude scene of his, made to For Love of the Game, and he reportedly clashed with director Sam Raimi on the baseball pic. The actor also sounds off in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly about a pivotal piece of profanity that was cut from the Cuban Missile Crisis film 13 Days.

Now, according to Inside.com, Costner won't have a thing to complain about on the Las Vegas heist film 3,000 Miles to Graceland: He's reportedly getting final cut, even though he's not the director.

The industry site claims that both Costner and co-star Kurt Russell submitted different cuts of the film, with Costner's heavy on the action and Russell's heavy on the character development. Test audiences, according to the article, favored Costner's version by a wide margin.

"Both [actors] went into the editing room and made their own cuts," a source involved with the project tells Inside.com. "It sounds a hell of a lot nastier than it actually was." Reportedly, first-time director Demian Lichtenstein was happy to step aside and let his actors take over the film.

The producer on Graceland is "talent-friendly" Elie Samaha, who is known to finance actors' vanity projects, such as John Travolta's Battlefield Earth. His office refused to comment to Mr. Showbiz about the article, saying that everyone involved in the film agreed to a "no-quote deal." Reps for distributor Warner Bros. also refused to comment, referring Mr. Showbiz to Samaha's office.

The Costner cut of Graceland is being compared to Pulp Fiction by those who've seen it. Costner told EW that he hopes that the film's violence will be controversial, since it may finally shake his All-American image as "that Field of Dreams guy."

Well, if they won't let him be naked or swear in the movies, maybe he can finally play the violence card.