Friday, November 8, 2013

"More is More"--an old Post about me and Cousin Kevin Updated with Matthew McConaughey



MORE IS MORE
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dallas-buyers-club-director-wasnt-653354
When the long-delayed shoot actually began and the scenes came to life, the frustrated Vallee only half-jokes that he wanted to die. "The first week, I said, 'I'm going to commit suicide, I'm directing a stupid, big and bold film,' " says Vallee. He was after a sense of stillness, and McConaughey was giving him larger-than-life, huge moves on camera -- as was Leto. "I wanted stillness, and Matthew's into movement. I'm 'less is more,' and they were 'more is more.' " But when he got into the editing room, Vallee had a revelation. "They were f---ing right! I found the balance, so 'more is more' doesn't look stupid and too much. And Matthew told me, 'Jean-Marc, Texas is movement.' He was my Texas 101 class teacher.

Saturday, March 19, 2011
Genetics, of course[?]--Kevin Costner and Hershel Parker saying "More is More"
Please see the 3 following posts about "More is More."

In RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN LITERARY STUDY Autumn 1981 (printed late in 1983) I made a big argument that sometimes "More is More." The Chicago Tribune on 16 April 1989 printed an article in which Kevin Costner declared likewise that sometimes "More is More." On 1 May 1989 I received a clipping of this article from Brian Higgins, who remembered the RALS article and thought it an interesting coincidence. Calling Higgins on several matters, I mentioned that of course this advocacy for "More is More" was genetic, since my mother was Martha Costner. Brian had not known I was a Costner. "Ho ho ho," we laughed. Then I asked my last Costner uncle if he knew anything about one of our Costners becoming an actor and he said, "Sure do, he's one of Uncle Mode's grandson Bill's sons." That is to say, my second cousin once removed.

Now, what do studies of families show about such similarity of attitudes in the descendants of two brothers? To be sure, these two brothers were closest in age and went off from Mississippi together into the wilds of the Oklahoma Territory panhandle and homesteaded there, so that their many children knew only one uncle. The Costner cousins there in Guymon knew no other relatives for ten years or so. How much of the "More is More" attitude, if any, could be genetic reinforced by family tradition?

My mother, one of the children born in Guymon, Oklahoma Territory, in her youth was known as "Bull Head Costner." That sort of thing, plainly, cannot be inherited or instilled.

I am only half joking here, because I want to test the limits of what's inherited and instilled when I write ORNERY PEOPLE, about the American ancestors I have found through the Internet, beginning at the end of 2002.



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