Kevin Costner's Horizon which I haven't seen

I'm repeating myself, but it was three years ago that I mentioned this so I guess it's okay.

I may have misunderstood it, but I once read that Pudovkin made Storm Over Asia because he happened to be in Mongolia or someplace that looked like Mongolia. There were some reasonably good films of the late Roger Corman made only because he had a few days before he had to tear down a set. 

And yet there are independent low budget film people who insist that you shouldn't make a movie just to make a movie. You should only make movies about which you are deeply passionate. Well, tell that to poor Kevin Costner. Tell it to John Travolta who fought for years to make Battlefield Earth. 

After Waterworld and The Postman, Costner knew things like this could end in disaster. 

Psychologists used to think compulsive gamblers were unconsciously trying to punish themselves by losing all their money, but research has shown that they usually started out winning. The poor wretches keep trying to recreate their early success. It's a shame Cosner didn't make Waterworld first and then followed it up with Dances with Wolves. He'd be about $38 million richer.

I am reminded of what someone said about Russ Meyer. You'd watch his movies and think that if he just had some money to work with he'd have been a great filmmaker.

If Costner had made an obviously cheap but overlong western, didn't work too hard at it and pleaded poverty---that it would have been better but he had to pay for it all himself---people would have...well, I don't know what people would have done, but he would have saved money.

He should have made thirty-eight $1 million movies instead of blowing the whole thing on one film.

Many years ago, the pioneering zero-budget filmmaker Jon Jost spoke at the University of Oregon. They had shown his movies over a number of weeks and he was there for the final film. The student group that arranged it quickly pulled together some more money and Jost did a filmmaking seminar and a filmmaking workshop, but no one was sure which was which. I was working so I went to the shorter one. We were crowded into a small room. One of the older students ran to 7 Eleven to get beer.

This was the mid-'80s and Jost said that if he were just starting out in film, he'd film on Video 8. This was long before digital video or even Hi8. He said to shoot everything in sequence, do all the editing in camera and when you're done, push eject and there's your finished movie, a $10 video cassette. One film student muttered something about a tape-to-film transfer. Jost said, no just show it on video. The film students were aghast at the idea of making a movie that couldn't be shown in a theater.

If it's your first movie, it won't be any good anyway, Jost assured them.

"It won't be any good anyway." I've lived by those words ever since.