Dancing With Oil-Soaked Pelicans

I won't say that Kevin Costner's career has sunk beneath the waves, but it certainly has settled lower in the water than in his high sailing pre-Waterworld days.

Not that Waterworld was all bad. I actually liked it after a couple of viewings on VHS enabled me to catch more of the nuances, like those gills. And who could ever really hate a movie with the late Dennis Hopper in it?

Plus, something about playing around with a rusted-out Exxon Valdez as a prop must have triggered some environmental thinking on Mr. Costner's part. About the time he was shooting the film (it was released in 1995, but took years to make), his brother came up with a clever way to clear oil from seawater. Kevin became an investor and supporter in his brother's technology.

From the story posted on Yahoo News, it appears that Mr. Costner made valiant efforts to sell the cleaner to oil companies and governments around the world, but with no takers. Aside from making him a natural for a remake of 'Glengarry Glen Ross', the experience must have tainted his faith in the ultimate victory of what's right.

But the idealism evidenced in his stand-out 'Dancing With Wolves' seems to have kept him going, and now fate, in the form of an undersea oil volcano spawned by corporate carelessness, has given him - and his brother's invention - the spotlight.

Sadly, Mr. Costner's device only cleans the water, and isn't designed to help stop the leak. But we should take every bit of good news and every little victory we can get right now. We should be happy that his career slack has given him the time to bring us this help.

Now if only his Elliot Ness can return, with Sean Connery as his sidekick, to clean up the bad guys ...