"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
KEVIN COSTNER
by Peter Sobczynski
August 22, 2003
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Although still one of the most recognizable American actors working today, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that the career path of Kevin Costner has been bumpy in the last few years. After a string of popular hits, such as "The Untouchables", "Bull Durham" "Field of Dreams", "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" "J.F.K." and "The Bodyguard", it seemed as if he could do no wrong. Since then, however, his career has been littered with films that have failed to catch on with either audiences or critics (including such duds as "The War", "3000 Miles to Graceland" and "Dragonfly") and his directing career, which began on a high note with the Oscar-winning triumph of "Dances With Wolves", crashed and burned with his follow-up "The Postman", a post-apocalyptic mishmash that received the kind of universal scorn not seen directed against a film again until the release of "Gigli".
Considering the amount of bad press that such bombs have received over the years, it is a little surprising to see Costner sitting down in a local theater recently after a screening of "Open Range", his latest project as both star and director, to speak to a few journalists. Of course, he has the advantage of having a fine film to discuss, which always makes things easier. A surprisingly straightfoward and effective western (a favorite genre of his), Costner and Robert Duvall as a pair of loner free-rangers (cowboys who roam the land with their herds instead of settling down) who run afoul of the greedy cattle baron (Michael Gambon) who runs the town near the open spread where they have chosen to rest. When the baron tries to drive them out of town through violent means, the two settle down to seek their own brand of frontier justice (and the fact that the local nurse looks like Annette Bening doesn’t hurt matters either).
Although perhaps a bit too long (not an uncommon factor in
a Kevin Costner film), "Open Range" is a strong example
of that most hallowed of genres and embodies it without any of
the self-consciousness that most contemporary westerns feel the
need to include-it is an honest-to-goodness western instead of
being a film about western myth and iconography. Beautifully shot
and filled with interesting performances, it is easily the best
film that Costner has directed to date and his performance is
the most appealing that he has delivered since "Tin Cup".
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What is it about the genre of the western that appeals to you so much?
I love movies-all genres- and I have tried to have a career where I can work in all genres. I don’t know if that has necessarily worked to my advantage because audiences don’t always know what to expect-I love the experience of going to a movie and not knowing what you are going to see.
That being said, I do have an affinity for the western. I think that maybe a lot of us do and we don’t often get a chance now to see a good western. It was my intention to make a great one. Our ancestral history is something I think about often and I measure myself against those situations and wonder how I would bear up-I don’t mean just in a gun battle but the kind of courage and resourcefulness that it would to make it then. When I see those character on a screen, I wonder if would have been as brave or if I would have walked away from certain situations.
I like westerns because I think there is a poetry to them-there is a lot more than saying "Yep" and "Nope". I think there is a language that has a Shakespearean approach to it. I like the notion of horses running free and men with their only possessions on their backs. It was really important to place a woman in this movie as well who had a dignity and courage and an ability to swallow her pride and wait for love. I think that westerns can be complicated and I think that too many of them have been too simple. I wanted to make a western in 2003 that you could take your sons and daughters to so you could show them what it is that you love about westerns.
The tone in the previous westerns that you have done, such as "Dances With Wolves" and "Silverado", has been relatively light. "Open Range", on the other hand, is much darker in its approach, closer to a Sam Peckinpah or one of the later Clint Eastwood films...
A lot of times when I pick a movie, I understand immediately what the tone should be. "Silverado" was kind of a Saturday-matinee situation and I am very proud of that film-I played a character who was fully juiced and very acrobatic. "Wyatt Earp" was a darker look at an iconic westerner.
I understand your question about tone-it is very important. I was just interested in the language and the friendship and the love story in this movie. I think that when there is violence, it is dark. I think that all too often, it is pat and loud and messy-it isn’t elegant. There is a death ballet when one man is trying to kill another and it is often point-blank and sudden. If you look at this film, you will see that I didn’t shoot the violence in slow-motion or in close-up and it wasn’t terribly important for me to see blood spraying everywhere. I think you got the point that when the guns started going off, you didn’t want to be anywhere near them.
(At this point, perhaps inspired by the talk of darkness, all of the lights in the room suddenly go out)
When we did the screening of "Dances With Wolves" in Washington D.C., it was a film that was very much under the radar. We went there and it was a black-tie affair and we were very excited. Ten minutes into the movie, the bulb in the projector broke. It was devastating if you understood what was at stake for me-especially because it was a three-hour movie and it would take at least ten minutes in getting something done. Then they came out and told me that there was a reel problem and that there would have to a minute between each reel change unless they fixed it. They fixed it and the film started and they had mistakenly grabbed the sixth reel and it started showing the buffalo hunt. They stopped the movie again and my son asked "Is the movie over?" and I said "Kind of."
We had a good run with that movie and I am going to take this darkness as a really good omen.
How did working with Robert Duvall come about?
I had him in mind and tailored the part for him, never knowing that he would actually accept it. I tend to do things backwards. In Hollywood, people tend to go out and get the elements-meaning the actors-before the script has been fleshed out. When I first saw the script, I passed on it-not that there were things that didn’t interest me but there were a lot of things that needed to be done and I thought "I don’t want to do it" because writing is hard. I am not a writer like you guys-I can work on scripts and understand behavior but writing is an art and you do it by doing it every day. I knew that if I was going to fix the script to the point where I would want to do it, I would have to work on it every day. I finally came around to it and worked on it with Robert Duvall in mind without ever telling him. At a certain point when I was done, I called him with the script and he accepted it the same day. A lot of times, the approach is to fix the script later and sometimes it never gets done.People are happier sometimes making the deal than the movie.
He is one of our great American actors and we had a great relationship off-camera. We didn’t really pal around simply because the hours for me were 16 or 17-hour days and I would see him on the set and the beauty of him was that he was always ready and always prepared. Robert and Annette give performances that are very important and powerful and it is up to people to keep that alive for them-I think there work is worth notice. Michael Jeter is another one, we lost him a couple of months ago, and he fits into the same category as Walter Brennan or Ward Bond-people like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne wouldn’t work without them because they knew what those guys brought to a film.
The few westerns that have come out in the last couple of decades have tended to be revisionist films that were about the myths and conventions of the genre-"Silverado", for example, was designed as a conscious homage to every Saturday-matinee oater ever produced by Hollywood. "Open Range", on the other hand, is a straightforward example of the genre without any self-referential trappings. Because the film is such a traditional example of the genre without any irony or self-consciousness, did that make it harder to interest people in producing such a film?
It was hard. In Hollywood, we are driven by the dollar and not driven terribly by the love of movies. With this movie, they ran the numbers and they said that it wouldn’t work in Europe and that there hadn’t been a western in several years. I said okay and went about my way to figure out how to make it. I made this very much in the same way as "Dances With Wolves"-this one cost about $20 million and "Dances With Wolves" cost about $16 million.
Movies can be very powerful when money isn’t the only thing driving them forward. This movie exists in the middle of a summer with all these giant tsunamis that are continually crashing on the beach and this is in between the swells. That is okay because I believe that people go to the movies for fresh air. You need to believe that as well when you write-sometimes you must just write and feel like no one listens and no one hears but you just have to carry on.
How difficult was it to find locations to shoot the film that approximated the look of the open ranges of 1882 in 2003?
It is hard to find the open range. We went up to Canada for two reasons. The biggest reason was that when you are working with small amounts of money, we needed to stretch our dollars and a lot of states haven’t made it easier for filmmakers to pay their way. The $4 million swing from tax breaks and grants made the difference in allowing us to make the movie-it allowed 200-300 people, about 150 of them American, to work because of the advantages that Canada presented to us in Calgary.
The other problem was that we were 90 minutes out of town from
the open range. The rule-of-thumb in moviemaking is that you usually
can only afford 30 minutes of transportation time coming and going.
We were losing almost 2 days a week just being in the car but
I wanted that 360-degree feeling. I think the open range is quite
beautiful, even though there are no trees and there is no certain
definition. I love the big horizons. I talked to Martin Scorsese
one time and he told me that he was afraid of big horizons-he
liked being in alleys and streets and didn’t know what he
would do with all that space.
-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI
Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
Peter's Film Review
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