Jennifer Nelson of Nantucket asks: "Could you take a moment to ponder the careers of Kurt, Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid? Thanks."

Thanks for your question, Jennifer.

I wasn't sure which Kurt you're referring to, since there are lots of Kurts here in Hollywood. We've already tackled the easy greatness of Kurt Russell (much like Kurt himself was in the Robin Williams football vehicle The Best Of Times), so I assume you mean character actor Kurt Fuller, an old hand at weasely, spineless men-pigs with receding hairlines, shifty peepers, and extending guts. He enjoyed a prolific run through the 1980s and early '90s, peaking as Rob Lowe's righthand jackal in Wayne's World. He was still playing to that type into the New Millennium, dabbing liberal layers of slime to the role he was born to play: Karl Rove, in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's short-lived That's My Bush!. You might've also caught him mimicking Werner Klemperer's slow burn ("Hoooooooogan!") opposite Greg Kinnear's Bob Crane in Auto Focus.

Dennis Quaid: Likable, affable chap with the frame and look of a veteran minor-league baseball player. He first came to my attention as Gordo Cooper in 1983's The Right Stuff, though he'd been knocking about on celluloid at least four years prior in Jackie Earle Hayley's Breaking Away, which I still have yet to see in its entirety (I always manage to catch it during the climactic bike race). He was even married for a time to the cute-as-a-button P.J. Soles of Rock 'N' Roll High School/Carrie/Halloween/Stripes fame.

After holding his own on the same widescreen with the likes of Sam "Chuck Yeager" Shepard, Scott "Alan Sheperd" Glenn, Fred "Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom" Ward, and Ed "John Glenn" Harris (though Ed Harris at the time was a two-bit scene-chewer previously seen in the spine-tingling opening story of Creepshow: "Where's my cake, Bedelia?!"), Dennis Quaid spat buillion. He ruled the late '80s with his laconic charm, even melted the heart of Meg Ryan, then fresh from Top Gun and her stint as Anthony Edwards' real-life main squeeze--she was just a ho in training pants then. Everywhere he turned that cleft chin lived a top-of-the-bill hit (financially, not critically): D.O.A., Inner Space, Suspect, and the hot-n-heavy Big Easy, where his thespian chops were tested to the hilt as a man crazy enough to think Ellen Barkin was fuckably hot. The first misstep came with Everybody's All American (its only saving grace is Jessica Lange at the full flower of her insane sex appeal); Great Balls Of Fire proved to be the cliff dive. We didn't really see much of poor Dennis until he made an astonishing comeback a few years ago as Jesus Christ's dad in Frequency. There was the smallish role as Stephen Bauer's backstabbing confidante in the acclaimed Traffic, then a memorable turn as a sourpussed Sam Houston framed by a pair of black fright fuzzychops in The Alamo. The jury's still out on Dennis Quaid, but, as in Suspect, he holds all the clues. That last sentence didn't make sense, but fuck it.

Kevin Costner: Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Kevin. Where did you go so wrong so long? You think he would've learned after wasting most of his actory youth in crappy nudie beach flicks. The trouble began with Silverado (an epic but rather ordinary Western where no cliche is left unexposed to the prairie sun), where the young upstart woohooed and ran circles around his more accomplished brethren. Quite a feat on a call sheet with Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and Sheriff John Cleese. He seemed like a really cool guy. One of my favorite Kevin Costner stories from the period (aside from his turn as a corpse in The Big Chill) centers around an audition for an Apple (or IBM, I can't recall; not important) computer commercial. Costner was dismissed after ad-libbing the line "Honey, I can't get this fucking computer to work" over a prop phone. But after stealing Silverado and getting some choice roles his way, his range seemed to mellow, even atrophy. His facial expressions were limited to bored or miffed. Even when he smiled, his eyes seemed to say, "Eat shit." That look served him well as Field Of Dream's Ray Kinsella, but there were traces of actual chops in that final scene when he calls out in a breaking voice, "Dad? You wanna play catch?" Two years later he won Best Director and Best Motion Picture for the heavy-handed Dances With Wolves, a trial run for Waterworld and The Postman, the cinematic equivalent of microwave pork rinds, executed long after the general public stopped giving a hoot about Kevin and his arrogant Message Pictures and Messianic Complex. A glimmer of hope in Oliver Stone's JFK (watch his closing arguments as Jim Garrison) faded into a decade of half-assed bullshit. His torpid Wyatt Earp had the misfortune of playing theaters shortly after Kurt Russell's (Kurt!) Tombstone bulldozed triumphantly through moviehouses, with the advantage of three Everyman stars: Russell, Sam Elliott, and Bill Paxton as the Earp brothers, and one Method freak, Mr. Val Kilmer, whose droll Doc Holliday ("Ah'm yo huckleberry") provides some of that movie's--already cracklin' with peppy zip--greatest moments. All Wyatt had was the tired Costner bolstered by Dennis Quaid's last-legs Doc Holliday in a weathered cinematic color awash in gloom and defeat.

I had no hope for Kevin. I have very little hope for Kevin today. I think he's too far gone. I lost the faith after 3 Thousand Miles To Graceland. Its trailer lied like a fly with a booger in its eye. Finally, I says to myself, I says, Finally, Kevin's been humbled. With Kurt Russell in tow, I thought it was gonna be spectacular, especially with Costner playing a goddamn bad guy! Who believed he was the blood of Elvis! How in the fah-HUUUUUUUUCK could you possibly go wrong? It did, in oh, so many ways. In fact, in ways that I'd never dreamed existed. Costner was his usual dud self, and after the casino heist, as far as I was concerned, the movie was over. The rest was boring-ass chases and the eventual showdown. Its only highlight was the end-credit sequence, where Costner actually looked like a living person enjoying himself. If you looked hard enough, squinted 'til you got a headache, you could see the smile that once lived on his face, way back in Silverado. We won't even get into Thirteen Days, an otherwise decent flicker that would've benefitted immensely from his complete absence and phony New England accent, or Dragonfly, a low-rent M. Night ripoff that should've been rerouted to Saturn where it wouldn't bother a soul. Let's see if anything comes of the momentum from the Western Open Range, his single-best movie in at least 10 years. In other words, he's come full circle, the older, wiser kid who once loped down the streets of Silverado with open ears. Let's hope he's learned something.