KEVIN
COSTNER ON ‘HORIZON’
“I love what I do. I feel privileged to be able to do it. It has been a
struggle, but it was a struggle for my crew too. Just to give you an example, I
shot Dances with Wolves in 106 days. And Horizon, the first one,
is arguably as big as that, if not bigger. We shot it in 52 days. No one
stopped working. No one was late. [Everyone] was ready.” -- Kevin Costner
On
Tuesday night, November 12th, at the Angelika Theatre in New York’s
West Village, Horizon, an American Saga, Chapter One, was screened for
an audience of mostly members of various film guilds. Afterwards, star,
director and co-writer Kevin Costner took to the stage with actress Ella Hunt,
and Mara Webster of In Creative Company. Mara interviewed Kevin and Ella about
making Horizon, and the following quotes from Kevin Costner are in
answer to Mara’s questions.
For those who have not yet seen Horizon, Chapter One, the title is the name of a town-to-be which an unscrupulous and thus-far unseen businessman has promoted as heaven-on-Earth to many would-be pioneers. Costner, who doesn’t appear for the first hour, plays Hayes Ellison, a horse trader who inadvertently gets thrust into a feud. Ella Hunt plays Juliette Chesney, a privileged Englishwoman travelling by wagon-train with her artist husband, both of them woefully unprepared for the trip, and clueless as to what’s expected of them. Costner’s and Hunt’s characters do not meet in Chapter One, but doubtless will in Chapter Two.
Mara
Webster began by pointing out that Costner had been trying to put together Horizon
since 1988, and wondered how having a 35-year gestation period affected the project.
(Note: I spoke to Kevin Costner in 2019 for True West – here’s the link:
https://truewestmagazine.com/article/kevin-costner/
-- an updated version of my interview is in my book, The Greatest Westerns
Ever Made and the People Who Made Them -- and we had discussed Horizon,
a project that he wanted to make: “I have a Western that I really want to make;
I just can’t find the rich guys that want to make it—an epic Western.”)
“Well, I was certainly ready to make it. I wasn't sure I'd find somebody like
Ella. And I'm not sure Ella was born when I started thinking about this thing
(note: Ella Hunt was born in 1998). It's an unusual story about Ella. It hasn't
happened to me very often -- it happened to me once in Dances with Wolves.
Robert Pastorelli (note: Candice Bergen’s useless apartment maintenance man
from Murphy Brown) came in to read a part. And he came in spats, he had
his bowling shirt on, and his gold ‘goomba’ stuff. And the part I had picked
out for him -- I just looked at him -- he started reading and I said, ‘Robert,
just stop for a second.’ I took his sides out of his hand. There was another (role),
this dirty teamster, and I handed him those sides, and he made history with it.
He was such an incredible actor. (Note: Pastorelli died in 2004, at age 49.) And
when I first met Ella, she was going to read for the daughter (of a pioneer
family), and I didn't take the sides out of her hand, but I made a switch right
there, that she would play this incredible character, that we would be asking
to do so much. She just has this incredible beauty and youngness about her. But
there's some incredible maturity about her too.”
“I thought he was joking,” Hunt responded. “And then was incredibly flattered, and daunted, as Juliette is a character who is very tested over the course of these films… I think one of the very special things about Kevin as a director is…the belief that he invests in all of the people around him. I'm so grateful that you looked at me and thought that I could do that. And now, because of Juliette, I've gone on to do things that I wouldn't have allowed myself to. I've just played Gilda Radner (note: in the new film, Saturday Night).”
In
answer to Webster’s question about how Costner chooses when to shoot closely,
intimately, and when to “see the impact of the landscape,” he replied, “Well,
we did go to places that still exist in America. It's if you're willing to get
out of chasing a rebate. For me, that was important, to have these landscapes
that went on forever. But you know, we're not making a travelogue. And eventually
it boils down to what is the story, and it shrinks down. And when someone can
dominate the horizon, this giant landscape, you have to find scenes that are so
intimate to set against it. And so we created scenes where my actors swallow
this horizon. They're so strong that you forget about how far the country goes.
You realize the pain and what they're going through. I like to think of the
Western as our Shakespeare. This is not a series of ‘yeps’ and ‘nopes’. It was
a Victorian age and people did have the ability to express themselves really
beautifully. You have Danny Houston giving us a speech, which I equate to James
Earl Jones' speech in Field of Dreams, Danny explaining Manifest
Destiny. And you get someone like Ella, who shows the most intimate moment of a
woman who is just tired of being dirty, and just the feel of water. And when
you watch her perform that moment, and look in that mirror, (you) also
understand how cold that night was. You know, that scene has as much place for
me in a Western as a gunfight. It had to be there.”
Asked
how he gave familiar genre elements a deeper context, Costner replied, “Well, I
tried to break with Westerns because I don't like a lot of Westerns; most of
them aren't very good. And the black-and-whites that we grew up with, they were
so simple, they were a mainstay of our televisions, our theater. But they often
were too simple for me. The black hat, the white hat, the way people dressed. But
the thing that stood out for me, what had been missing almost in every way --
and it took a while for it to dawn on me -- is every western has a town. But
they're not like mushrooms: they didn't just come up. There was a terrible
struggle that took place. And it took place from sea to shining sea. Every inch
of that land was fought for, was contested. Where our great cities exist, (there)
were (already) people. They know where the good places were to live. And we did
too, and we kind of wiped them out. But that was not ever talked about in any Westerns:
the towns always exist. And I started wondering, what would it be like to see
the beginning of something? There was nothing there, there was a (new) group of
people that had found a level of equilibrium that made peace with the (native) people
to such a degree that they were getting along. [As the film begins,] the first
image is a surveyor stick that goes into an ant hill. And we disrupted their
way of life. And what you'll see when you see all four -- and I hope that you
do -- is you'll see the struggle: this town burns and is rebuilt and burns and
rebuilt, and finally there's a tipping point in the West. And it was just
simply numbers. They (the natives) never stood a chance. But I also don't want
to be embarrassed about the ingenuity and the bravery and the spontaneity and
the courage that it took for people to cross that Mississippi and go there.
It's not a land in Disneyland; it was contested, it was real. The country was
founded in the East, but its character was really formed in the West with this
constant battle.
“I
think we've had enough of heroes having buffoons to knock down. When you face
formidable people, it makes for a more interesting movie. When you believe in the
behavior -- it's not really possible for one guy to beat up everybody in the
bar. Everybody assumes that everybody could ride a horse, or fix a wagon, or
make a fire. If you stick with the reality, there can be a lot of drama in the
West, and a lot of danger. Something that I gravitated to when I was little,
was when I saw children in a movie being able to survive in an adult world; I
leaned into the movie more. But when children were stupid in movies, where
directors or writing made them stupid, I leaned away. And I think that with all
our CGI, with all our great effects that we have to build our movies up, when
we don't invest in character, in behavior, those things aren't any good to us. When
we see ourselves is when our greatest joy happens in the theater.
“I do like to make these movies, and when I started writing this with Jon (Baird) in 1988, it's safe to say that no one really wanted to make it. And in 2003, the studio wouldn't make it for 5 million more dollars. And I was distressed about that. I went on to make other movies, but I couldn't leave this one behind. And I was so mad that they didn't understand the first one, that I decided to write four more. (The audience laughs.) And everybody goes, oh yeah, that's Kevin! Jon and I, we started writing, and again, I wasn't writing to please anybody, I was trying to please myself because I think that's my best chance at pleasing you.
“I do love horses running fast. I do love the mountains and rivers that never end. And I do love the gunfight if it's orchestrated correctly. But what surprised me was when I looked up or looked down, with Jon Baird, who I am completely indebted to, was that every story had women running right down the middle. So here I had these Big Four Cowboy Movies, and women almost dominate -- and Ella dominates Chapter Two. I just found that I couldn't tell the story that I was trying to, without making women dominant. It was a surprise to me. I don't know if fate was just moving my hand. I go, ‘Not another woman! Come on! Where's the gun fight?’ But I loved how their struggle fit so perfectly in the West. I'm proudest of the script, that Jon Baird allowed these actors to feast on with myself.”
An
audience member asked if all four parts of Horizon are written. “They're
all written, so this is not a case of ‘we don't know where it's going.’ We know
exactly where it's going. I don't know why four movies is what's in my head,
but that's what it is. And so I will push the rock uphill to find the money to
do this. So that one day you'll have these four, and I hope this is a Treasure
Island on your bookshelf of electronic films. I hope you have it to show
your friends, to revisit it and see the details, see the nuances and choices
that these actors made because it was really extraordinary acting going on in
an American Western. There's a notion that things are easy for me. I guess
maybe they are, if I do the things that people want me to do, and it's not that
I am a contrary person. I'm not even an avant garde person for crying
out loud. I make movies with horses and campfires, but I do it with an edge.
It's not always in vogue. But I'm so happy to be able to do it. And I won't
rest until I'm done. And I will figure it out. If I can't find that
billionaire, I will look to myself like I did on One and Two. But
there will be four.”
An
audience member asked Costner how he made period films seem so contemporary. “Well,
I think that in every generation we have abusive people. We have peeping toms
-- we had them on the wagon train. So I can blend the same difficulties that we
have in life and bring them right into the frontier. We have the sociopath; we
have acts of kindness. There were guns and there was alcohol and a lot of times
there weren't very many women. People were angry. And you run into a person
that's just killed somebody and there's a bloodlust. (Note: the following refers
to a scene where he’s going up a hill to see the prostitute Marigold, played by
Abbey Lee, and is stalked and goaded by gunman Jamie Bower playing Caleb Sykes.)
Jamie Bower, who walked up that hill with me – that actor's amazing. So we have
a gun fight -- I’m not trying to reinvent the Western. But what I was really
interested in was the walk up the hill; that this was a bully, and we've all
encountered them in school and at work. And this was somebody that was coming
out of a blood lust. He had just killed someone. He'd just been humiliated by
his brother. And that was just as interesting to me. A studio might say, ‘Just
get to the gunfight for crying out loud, Kevin!’ And I'm in love with the walk.
I think I'm always going to be in love with the walk.”
An audience member notes the industry’s lack of interest in passion projects, and asks Costner where his wellspring of determination and hope comes from. “I just believe. I believe in story so much. I believe I have a secret in my pocket, and I just can't wait to share it). The only thing that's disappointing to me is I can't be you, and see this for the very first time like you just saw it: I wanted people to make a movie like this for me. But I can't lose my enthusiasm. No one can break me, break my spirit. I do get down, do wonder how I'm going to go on, but I love my actors. I just love that I found my Yellow Brick Road a long time ago, when I didn't figure to have any future. I got D’s and F’s in high school, where you're supposed to at least be kind of good.
“I found myself. And to be here in front of you, to be able to share what I
love with people who share and have a passion that runs so deep, it's so
personal, every detail. And I hope that you see them, (the Horizon
films) and you revisit them the same way. When I watched Wizard of Oz, I
didn't know the horses change color. I should have, because there's the line, ‘A
horse of a different color.’ Every time I watch that, I see something new. And
that's what I want from my movies. My movies. They have to be more than just an
opening weekend. They have to be a lifetime.”
CRAIG
‘LONGMIRE’ JOHNSON JOINS ‘RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER’ TO DISCUSS HIS NEWEST NOVELLA,
‘TOOTH AND CLAW’
On the first Thursday of every month, I have the pleasure of being ‘in the limelight,’ joining hosts Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell on their weekly Rendezvous with a Writer podcast, where I present the month’s news in the world of film and TV Westerns, and take part in their interview with a guest writer. On November 7th, that guest was Longmire creator Craig Johnson, who was announcing the publication of his newest novella, Tooth and Claw. This story takes Longmire and Henry Standing Bear back to the Vietnam War years, and their adventures in Alaska among polar bears and bad men. The link below will bring you to the podcast:
https://www.facebook.com/bobbi.j.bell/videos/8753051584737954
AUSSIE
WESTERN SERIES ‘TERRITORY’ ON NETFLIX
Actor Robert Taylor, who starred as the title character on the phenomenally popular Longmire, has two series this year. He plays Jackson Gibbs, a continuing character on NCIS: Origins, and for Netflix, he stars as Colin Lawson, the patriarch of the Lawson family, who are 5th generation owners of the largest cattle-station in Australia. (Note: what Americans call ranches, Australians call stations.) It’s stated in the first of six episodes that it’s the size of Belgium, which I suspect is roughly the size of Yellowstone. In the opener, the son that Colin has been grooming to take over the family business meets an ugly fate, and the others scramble to take his position. I found the first episode gripping, and will definitely watch more.
JANET
ARNESS DISCUSSES JULIEN’S ‘GUNSMOKE’ AUCTION
On
November 15th, Julien’s held a Western-themed, largely Gunsmoke auction
in the Hollywood Museum, former home of Max Factor glamour empire. There were
568 lots up for bids, 230 from the estate of TV’s Matt Dillon, James Arness. I
had the pleasure of discussing the auction before the fact with Jim’s widow,
Janet Arness, for an article for the INSP blog. Here is the link: https://www.insp.com/blog/what-janet-arness-thinks-of-the-gunsmoke-auction/
Incidentally,
I’m writing another INSP follow-up article on how the auction turned out.
THOMAS
JANE, ARMIE HAMMER TO STAR IN ‘FRONTIER CRUCIBLE’
Shooting in Monument Valley and Prescott, Arizona beginning this month, Frontier Crucible will be rolling camera under the direction of Travis Mills, who gained attention when he made good on his audacious pledge to make 12 Westerns in 12 months – during Covid, no less! In the post-Civil War drama set in Arizona Territory, Myles Clohessy is an ex-soldier who throws in with outlaws lead by Jane, and a couple, Mary Stickley and Ed Brown, to fight against common enemies. The role for Hammer, the screen’s most recent Lone Ranger, was not specified. Also in the cast is Eddie Spears. Producer Dallas Sonnier pitched the project as Reservoir Dogs meets Bone Tomahawk, and he in fact produced Bone Tomahawk, as well as 2022’s Terror on the Prairie. (Click HERE to read about my visit to the Bone Tomahawk set, and my interview with Dallas Sonnier https://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2015/10/bone-tomahawk-review-interviews-plus.html )
…AND
THAT’S A WRAP!
Please
check out the new November/December issue of True West Magazine, featuring my
article celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sam Peckinpah’s classic,
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid – I was fortunate enough to interview Peckinpah’s
assistant Katy Haber, film editor and historian Paul Seydor, and one of the
movie’s last living stars – although he’s the first one killed onscreen – Charles
Martin Smith. And the next Round-up will feature my interview with Michael
Feifer on the eve of directing his 8th Western!
Much
obliged,
Henry
C. Parke
All
Original Contents Copyright November 2024 by Parke – All Rights Reserved
