In his latest film, Mr. Brooks, Kevin Costner plays a buttoned-up businessman whose family life masks a lifetime of serial murdering. It’s an audacious movie full of wild swings in plot, and one that refreshingly embraces certain excesses. Interestingly, though, one bit that could be overplayed but isn’t comes in the form of Mr. Brooks’ murderous id, Marshall, played by William Hurt. When Brooks has conversations with Marshall, time stops in the movie. But is the character, as seen, a randomly externalized presentation of Brooks’ inner psyche, or does Marshall actually have his own back story? According to Costner at the film’s recent press day, it’s the latter.
“I found
when I was 12 years old in a book of children’s dreams,” says Costner of his character. “And he would play
basically a Black Knight, an evil person. But I liked him so much in the book
because he was kind of cool. And I liked him so much, actually, I was afraid he
was going to die in the book, so I never finished it. And my father used to
discipline me with the idea that if I wasn’t good, that the Black Knight would
come and get me [because] he actually hid in my
closet. And like any young man, eventually you challenge your dad’s theory and
you open that closet. And there was my imaginary friend, and he was not scary
at all to me. So he’s been with me, sort of as my alter-ego. And that began
when I was 12 years old.