Life Gets Worse for Buffalo: Kevin Costner Ditches the Bills to Make His New Movie About the Browns

Buffalo News – A furious fourth-quarter rally mounted by New York State officials – including a top aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo – has fallen short in keeping the film “Draft Day” in Buffalo. The movie, which was to depict Kevin Costner as a fictitious Buffalo Bills general manager trying to restore his team to past glory, will instead be shot in Cleveland, with the actor portraying the Cleveland Browns GM. The big reason, said Tim Clark, who heads the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission, was economics. “At the end of the day, it was a money thing. I think Mr. [Ivan] Reitman really wanted to shoot here, but it just came down to the cost factor. What we were told is that the Cleveland incentives were better,” Clark said. “I feel the worse for the Buffalo Bills, because they worked real hard to convince the film company that Buffalo was the place to shoot this, and that Buffalo was America’s team.” Last month, Reitman, the film’s director, and a location scout toured Ralph Wilson Stadium, as well as other local sites, and seemed excited about filming the movie in Buffalo, Clark said. But Lionsgate, the film’s distributor, thought otherwise

God help me, I feel bad for the people of Buffalo.  They seem like decent enough folks.  Aside from ruining four straight Super Bowl Sundays and benching Doug Flutie, the Bills have never done anything to seriously bother me.  Even that business of having a rally at the airport for Drew Bledsoe like he was the Beatles in ’64 was more cute than obnoxious, really.  I’ve been a guest on a few Buffalo radio shows and they’ve never been anything but nice to me.  And they didn’t ask to root for the Shemp of the AFC East.  The one team in the division that’s never dominant like the Pats, isn’t occasionally competitive like Miami or ridiculous like the Jets.  The Bills are just sort of… there.  If the division was the Ghostbusters, they’d be Winston Zeddmore.  If it was “Sex in the City” they’d be the homely redhead.  The club no one notices in a city no one ever goes to stuck over there on the ass end of New York state.  So while I think calling them “America’s team” is the overstatement of the millenium, I’ve still always kind of pitied the poor hapless, non-threatening bastards.

But this is a new low, even for Buffalo.  Getting dumped by Kevin Costner for Cleveland?  And we’re not even talking about Kevin Costner of his prime.  80s-early 90s Costner.  The one from Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Dances With Wolves.  This is post-Waterworld, post-Postman Costner.  The creative force behind two of the Top 10 biggest box office bombs of all time.   And he rejected these guys for the new Cleveland Browns, the worst franchise in all of football.  It has to feel like having an aging, skanky cougar you’re only hitting on because you’re wearing beer goggles blow you off to go give dumpster head to the wino who lives behind the bar.   I hate to break it to you, Tatonka, but this is the town Costner chose over you:

That said, a movie about trading NFL Draft picks?  I am all over this.  And if I find out Belichick plays himself in it, I’m going all Star Wars geek on this thing; dressing in costume and sleeping outside the theater for a week. @JerryThornton