Premiere Magazine

At the same time, Dances (screenwriter Michael Blake adapted his own novel) is an ideal piece for Costner. His character, Lt: John Dunbar, goes from an opening sequence of Civil War heroism to a John Ford-style journey into a frontier that still belongs to the Indians. A big, handsome production that used six scholar-consultants to get settings, customs, and costumes right, Dances With Wolves shares its ample scope and certain western touchstones with such films as Ford's The Searchers. In sharp contrast to John Wayne's character in that film, however, Costner's Lieutenant Dunbar immerses himself in the tribe he befriends, and the carelessly lethal, blue-coated U.S. cavalrymen become the villains. Costner does some of his finest acting to date in the film, mixing his character's sense of wonder with witty cross cultural insights and not a few daredevil stunts-like the massive buffalo hunt in which he gallops no-hands amid a surging herd of the beasts. Indeed, the studio is saying it's pleased (no one is uttering the word "surprised") to have in hand a virtual epic with a running time of three hours. "This is going to be a profitable film for us," says Orion executive vice president William Bernstein. "If he wanted to direct other films for us, whether or not he appeared in them, he would find a welcome mat at Orion."

When Dances outgrew its planned budget, inching toward its eventual cost of $18 million, Costner had an ace in the hole: his substantial salary as actor-director. The picture was about two thirds done and running some three weeks behind schedule when he told producer Wilson he'd forgo any further paychecks until the end of production, lending the money to the film against its future receipts. It was pretty much a snap decision, made one morning in his trailer-but only after a quick consultation with Cindy, his wife of twelve years. (Both of their daughters-Annie, age six, and Lily, age four-are seen briefly in the film as part of a pioneer family, though it's their son, Joe, then age two, who steals the scene as he runs across the frame with the sun blazing off his flaxen crop of hair.)

Costner has just interrupted his marketing meeting to take a call from Bernstein when Cindy calls, and his secretary, in what is clearly standard policy, appears at his office door to inform him. With a quick apology to Bernstein, Costner jumps on the line, changing gears from business to quietly, unhurriedly personal. It would seem that what America sees onscreen is what those close to Costner get-a relatively unaffected, 35-year old regular Joe who happens to be a player in an absurdly expensive game. His canniness in not being overwhelmed by that is glimpsed in something he says a few minutes later. He has spotted a flaw in a shot the studio has reversed a photo, thus flip-flopping the age the audience will see in his movie. "Aw," says the visiting exec, trying to note that Costner's eye, as director is far keener than that of his audience, "that's just your Hollywoodism." Costner looks down at the slightly weather-beaten toes of his cowboy boots and speaks so quietly; he might be talking to himself. "Hasn't hurt me so far," he says. That's about as much bragging as you're likely to get out of this star, who nonetheless demonstrates in the talk that follows just how thoroughly he knows the chessboard he finds himself on.

Q: I noticed the license plate on your Shelby Mustang-CRASH D.

A: Yeah My wife got that for me.

Q: Crash drove a car like that in Bull Durham.

A: He did; that was the car in the movie. I bought it. In high school, I was never into car culture, so it was one of the first perks I ever got myself, and it was like -what a car. I can t drive that car anyplace without guys wanting to talk about it. And I don't even have the vocabulary. I've got the basics down: it's a 350, and it's a 1968 ... and then these guys go on about it, and I just kind of give ‘em my chin boogies. My head starts bobbing up and down like I know what they're talking about. I think there's probably something in the roles that I play that I would seem like a guy who could fix his car.

Q: But you're helpless under the hood.

A: I'm not helpless anymore, but I'm not equipped, you know. I Huck Finn it, man. I keep trying to get the wrench in the other guy's roles.

Q: Is that your car of choice?

Q: What if you’re taking the whole family?

A: I’ve gotta get the truck, man, ‘cause the dog goes, everybody goes (Laughs)

Q: So your dog Rosalita-she’s the daughter of Rocky, your characters dog in Revenge?

A: Yeah, the blond Labrador: she came from Mexico.

Q: I don’t see any souvenirs from Dances with Wolves-but you did leave a fair parcel of your own money back in that location in South Dakota: Some $2 million you deferred with no guarantee of seeing it again.

A: Yeah: “What’s Costner doin? He’s out fucking there fucking around, directing. I heard he gave all his money away”. I’m not ignorant about money or even cavalier about it. But the movie needed it. And I thought if I had gone over, it was my responsibility to take care of that. I told Cindy I was going to do it, because I thought it was fair that she knew. But, you know, the money is the least of our problems. My life is a logical adventure. I’m not doing things I don’t think I can do.

Q: It wasn’t like you had the studios deep pockets to reach into. Though your distribution deal is with your longtime pals at Orion, you financed it independently-why is that?

A: I avoided [the studios] right from the start, because I was going to ask for tough things, contractually. Not money wise, but freedom wise…saying I need final cut, I need a movie that is going to run at least two and a half hours, I need subtitles. All of which spells death for them.

Q: This is a story featuring several Indians in key roles: Was it daunting to approach such a large, bloody slice of Native American history?

A: I'm not trying to atone for the things that have been done before. And I certainly am not going to be the guy to put their problems in perspective. It's just a story. Some critics really rapped Cry Freedom-"An interesting story, but why didn't they do it about a black man?" Well, it happened to be Kevin Kline's-Donald Woods's-story. This is Dunbar's story, set against that background. If I wanted to pretend I knew exactly what an Indian was doing, then I would do a story about an Indian. But what I do know is that people are people, and that's how I treated them in the movie-with dignity. They have joys, they have fears, and they have children who care about them. And I don't ignore that they run the gamut of feelings, good, bad, and indifferent.

Q: To do that, you felt they had to speak the Lakota Sioux language onscreen-thus the subtitles, which became a real sticking point with the studios.

A: Some of the smartest people I know are running studios. All the studios didn't want to do it with subtitles too big a risk for today's audience. But my sense was that their view was bad commerce. It's like Revenge. It's like, "Hey, if you really want this movie to make money, make the movie about what it's really about. Don't be afraid." What audiences need to know is that there was an honest effort. That there's a story there. It's like a judge says, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but... ?" That's what we expect. It doesn't mean you will like the story. But you tell the whole truth.

Q: There's been talk of a video or overseas version considerably longer than the three-hour one we'll see this fall.

A: You know, it's not [Orion's] movie overseas, so maybe I can have two different movies ultimately. It's a movie about wagons moving across the prairie. You have to slow people down for a movie like this.

Q: On his way to hooking up with the Indian tribe, Dunbar clashes with a coarse frontiersman named Timmons; but later on, the two actually find a sort of camaraderie.

A: It's like, you ever travel cross-country with a college friend? You ever go through those three days when you don't talk to each other? You know that immaturity of being twenty years old and saying, "Fuck you, and I'm not talking to you anymore"? Well, I think they have that, and in the end Dunbar wishes he hadn't had to draw [his gun] on this guy. And I think there's a sadness that underlies that. What happens from an audience standpoint is that we feel Timmons is a pig, but in the end he's just a human being.

Q: He's one of the mileposts on Dunbar's way out of white civilization.

A: A lot of times, even big movies have one set piece that they turn on. Dances has several, and they're very action-oriented. There's the Civil War; you could almost count Timmons as a set piece; the buffalo hunt; the ambush; the Pawnee attack-four or five fairly good set pieces. There's a lot of violence, a lot of action, but when people describe the overall tone of the movie, they always describe it as gentle.

Q: Dances With Wolves is the first film you've done since the unlucky Revenge, which you just alluded to. What happened with that movie?

A: Revenge is really kinda the first time that I feel like I made a mistake.

Q: If you summed up that mistake in one line... ?

A: It would be in the development of the script. Because the script is everything. That project moved so quickly in some ways: Ray Stark is a prolific producer-he deals well with speed and the pressure of it, and I don't. I feel like mistakes can be made. Cochran was an attractive character, but I never do movies based on one character, you know, I just don't. I was going against my whole creed.

I think the fatal flaw was that we were having a little trouble making [director] Tony Scott's deal. Ray asked me to give up script approval because he felt it was difficult for a studio to hire a big-name director and then have an actor who has script approval suddenly say, "I'm not gonna do the movie." And I gave in to that. There was, like, a gentleman's agreement that I would still have a complete say-but it was just a struggle. I had written with Michael Blake a Revenge script that I felt I would be comfortable making. It was 108 pages long; the script we ended up making was 135 pages long. About 80 percent of what we had put together made the movie. But that other 20 percent didn't, and a movie as delicate as Revenge cannot suffer those mistakes.

It was the most ... complicated movie that I've been a part of. There were a lot of people who never would've made Revenge who suddenly had a lot of opinions about it. Revenge was a dead project till I wanted to make it, and it's a very tough subject. A lot of people were not comfortable ultimately with the tone of the movie and kept trying, in my opinion, to shift it.

Q: Who were those people?

A: Well, there were differences of opinion that existed within Ray's company, within Columbia studios, and even with Tony. We all had different ideas.

Q: In the weeks before production was due to start?

A: Yeah. I couldn't believe we were willing to go out and shoot the script in March that we were gonna shoot. I just couldn't believe that, and as it turned out, I didn't do it, cause I went off and did Shoeless Joe [Field of Dreams]. I believe they felt the script worked because I was in it, and Anthony Quinn was in it, and Madeleine Stowe was in it, and Tony had two hits. But that's not why a movie works. Movies are not about elements. They're about stories. I cannot explain the phenomena of some movies, and I won't try to. But I know that with a movie like Revenge, success depend wholly on the literacy of the movie and the tone in which it's done. That was its only chance of success. And I feel that we overly manipulated it.

Q: How were you able to do Shoeless Joe?

A: There was a real big power struggle. I needed a stop date on Revenge in order to do Shoeless Joe, because the corn was a very critical thing to us. And when I realized that I wasn't going to get a stop date on Revenge and it kept dragging out, I finally made a pretty bold move and said, "Look, I'm not gonna do this movie," and it got very uptight. The veins in all our necks were pretty tight.

Q: Did your agency take up the fight?

A: At that time, I was represented by William Morris. And with the threats that were going back and forth, everybody's advice to me was, "Get a lawyer." I thought, I've got this big agency here-what do I need a lawyer for? I'm a client, I guess, of some repute; they're a big agency, and when they're threatened, the first thing they say is, "We can't do anything about this, get a lawyer." And the names quickly flew out-people who, in one phone call, could basically hit somebody else over the head, and I thought, shit, man, I don't want that; I just want this resolved.

Q: What kinds of people can make that one phone call?

A: Well, I think everyone knows who those lawyers are. I think Jake Bloom's a real interesting, powerful guy, and Peter Dekom-these guys can do it. They won't do anything illegal, but they're thought of as the hitters, in a sense. I had never known who those guys were, but I became very familiar really quickly. They said, "You want this problem solved? Get Jake. Jake'll solve it." [Laughs] What I didn't want to do was get into a war; what I wanted to do was try to get my point across: "Look, I don't wanna end up the year doing one movie. I'd like to do two movies."

Q: What is the stick those lawyers carry around?

A: I don't know what it is. All I heard was, "If you call him, he can solve it." [Laughs]

Q: Those business realities could become a distraction.

A: Right. And I thought, well, maybe I should get Jake, or maybe I should get Peter ... you know, or Eric Weissmann, or these guys. Because in fact I did need 'em. And Stan Coleman's a friend.... But really it comes down to an actor and a script and a producer and a director. It's your ability to say no that makes the wheels go round and round.

Eventually, through Eric Weissmann, Ray and I were able to work it out. Ray said, "I'll flip-flop the movies." But I really resented the idea of having to have the lawyer come in between.

Q: Part of the upshot was you switched from J. J. Harris, your longtime William Morris agent, to Michael Ovitz at CAA. Was that done partly to free yourself from the business side?

A: I was having to do a lot of that, I felt. More than I wanted to do. For whatever reason, I'd gotten into some complicated situations, and I made an agency change. It's like, then somebody could come in and say, "Man, you didn't have to handle any of that." What happens is with hits, with success, stuff grows exponentially. Your deals grow exponentially, and the complications of how they're put together. Deal points and issues can translate into millions of dollars. You're thinking of the security of your family, and you want to make sure that somehow that stuff is being handled.

Q: Ovitz is a guy nobody picks on, which must help with someone relatively unguarded, as you seem to be.

A: One way Michael is really helpful to me is a lot of things can go through him. But I have a pretty open relationship with the community. I have a tremendous number of relationships anybody can call me here. There's not a big insulation for me. Never has been. And Michael's respectful of me, knowing I operate like that. But it's caused me problems in the past that a lot of people could get at me. By just walking across the street to talk to me-like, "What's the deal, what's the problem?" Whereas with a lot of the actors, I think, you've gotta go through this to get to that to get to this, and you're never quite sure. I'm as accessible probably as the come.

Q: You could carry that in the movie.

A: Absolutely. He brought me that, a bottle of whiskey, and this shot- gun shell.

Q: Can you see the window for doing that film?

A: Not really; not at this point, because we're still rounding the script into shape. If you get a deadline on when the movie is going to go, the script either gets there or doesn't, and you end up doing the movie. I would rather the script get there before the date is set. Those are pressures that I don't deal very well with, you know, and other people do deal with-Ray Stark, for instance. He has another project that I'd like to do called Random Hearts, and we both know more about each other. I'm sure we'll use what we know about each other to make that one go better, if we do it. But my rhythms are different.

Q: And yet you respect what he can accomplish as a producer.

A: I think that the critical thing for me is always the script, and I think we would be a good team with the right script. We never really had that. It's like when you cross a stream and you hit a rock and it wiggles or you hit a rock and it's firm-we never hit that firm rock.

Q: And yet you were contractually bound to shoot Revenge.

A: Yeah. I mean, I had a chance to do The War of the Roses with Danny DeVito, and I really wanted to do that.

Q: With Kathleen Turner?

A: No, I think at that point it was maybe with... that Terms of Endearment girl....

Q: Debra Winger?

A: Debra Winger-and that would have been really great. Danny's really big-league, really smart. But I don't try to hold on to problems; I try to see the big picture when it comes to that kind of thing.

Q: And now you've got your own movie coming out.