One month before Kevin Costner release the first installment of his multi-chapter western Horizon: An American Saga, the actor and director stopped by the Cannes Film Festival to unveil his self-financed passion project. “Two of my guys are fishing right now,” Costner says with a smile in an interview at the Carlton Hotel, adding: “And the three girls are on a boat. So dad is here, campaigning for his movie.”
The movie is actually two, or if Costner has his way, four. Horizon: Chapter One, three hours long, will be released in the United States on June 28. The second part will arrive on August 16. Costner has the scripts for the third and fourth parts ready.
It’s only the fourth time Costner, 69, has directed, after Dance with wolves (1990), The messenger (1997) and Justice pact (2003). When it happened, Costner did it with a clear passion for storytelling and characters. This is demonstrated in the epic Horizonwith a cast that includes Sienna Miller, Abbey Lee, Sam Worthington and Costner himself. It’s also his biggest bet. To raise the money necessary for this more than $100 million production, he mortgaged his home in Santa Barbara, California. He has been trying to do it for more than 30 years Horizon.
“I thank God for Cannes. I am an independent filmmaker, essentially, and I’m here alone,” Costner remarks. “So this is a big moment for me because it’s helping me get a movie out there. I don’t have all the money in the world to expose it. But here I have my time and a platform.”
—What was your calculation when deciding to invest your money in horizon? Why was it worth it?
—You can spend your life trying to make your money grow more and more. And I haven’t been very good at it. I’m like anyone, I would like it to be a very large number. But not at the cost of not doing what I love. If no one helps me do it and I firmly believe in its entertainment value, I have the trade in mind. But I don’t let it overshadow the entertainment value and the essence of what I’m trying to represent. I don’t let the fear of that control my instincts on any level. I don’t want to live like this. If I were watching a movie about myself and thought: “Don’t risk your money and do something like that”… It wouldn’t make sense (insults).
—Was it an easy decision? Didn’t you take a look at your house in Santa Barbara and reconsider mortgaging it?
—No, it was not an easy decision, but it was what I had to do. It is like, “Wow, why do I have to do this?” I think I’m doing mainstream entertainment. I don’t know what you thought of the film, but it seemed very mainstream to me. I don’t feel like an avant-garde person. But nevertheless I think my things are a little out of place. I’m willing to watch (in one scene in the movie) a woman bathe because her desire to be clean was so pronounced. If you’re a woman, who wouldn’t want to be? But in the next moment, you realize that she is going against the norm. It could cost you your life. So that scene became important to make the next one important. For me, a scene like that is as important as a shooting. And if that type of scene doesn’t want to exist in a conventional movie.
—Could it have been a series?
-I guess. It will be. They’re going to split this into a hundred pieces, you know what I mean? After four of these, you’re going to have 13, 14 hours of film and it’s going to turn into 25 hours of television, and you’re going to do whatever you’re going to do. This is our life, but they will also exist in this way. And that was important to me, to make sure that happened. And I was the one who paid for it.
—It’s a bold release plan: the second film is released two months after the first. What attracted you to it?
—The studio wanted to try it. I knew it was going to be released pretty quickly, like every four or five months. That could have been easier. But they feel that people can remember the first and can link to the second. I included in all of them a montage of what is to come.
—Since he directed Dance with wolves“, did Justice Pact and starred Wyatt Earp and Yellowstone. What attracts you to westerns?
—I like to see behavior that makes sense in men. I make movies for men. I make sure there are great female characters because that’s very important to me. The backbone of our film is women. I don’t like boys acting stupid. I like the boy who (fleeing from an attack) rescues the two horses and effectively saves his life. I like to see people behave honestly in desperate situations. The heroism of a little boy who says “I’ll stay with you, dad.” It’s a really powerful moment. This is my son (Hayes Costner) and it was very hard to watch.
—When dramatizing the settlers’ journey, what was the Native American perspective that you wanted to take into account?
—Confusion about it. The colonel says: “If we salt the earth with enough of their dead, the wagons will not come again.”. When you’re so far away, you can’t leave. When people said goodbye on the East Coast, they didn’t come back. So the confusion for the Native Americans was that they couldn’t make sense of it. Normally if you kill enough people, they don’t bother you. But these Americans, these people were getting fliers saying you could have this land. There are sellers in every century, every decade selling something that they don’t really know what it is. It’s just America. It’s just this giant experiment in hope.
—But America means different things to different people, right? There are also Chinese immigrants in the film.
—When they were no longer useful, they were simply thrown away. And they had to create a sense of community and they came in droves. They got together and were very industrious. They would be the richest people in that town until a tipping point comes and racism kicks in and suddenly they are gone too. Look at you. That’s what would happen in real life.
—What I want to say is that there is tragedy in this. Do you see the expansion of the western and its film as a tragedy?
—There is an inevitable tragedy On it. And there are divisions. You see an entire tribe split in half. You see a father separate from a son.
—Has the third installment already started filming?
—I’ve shot three days and I still have to push for money to finish this. I have to figure out what else I can do… But I’m not waiting to see what people think. I know what this is, and I think if people love the cinematic experience, they have a good chance of wanting to see the next one. That’s all I can believe. The prudent thing would be to wait, but I don’t think I’m cut out for that.
—Some of the problems of Yellowstone They seemed to have to do with timing and scheduling. What do you think now about your future in the series?
—Yellowstone It was very important in my life. I loved that world and what we were able to do in five seasons. I thought it would only be one, but we did five. I was willing to do three more – five, six and seven – but it didn’t happen that way. Certain things happened and it just didn’t happen. So I’m open to the idea of returning. But it’s based on everything that the first three or four were based on, which is the scripts.
Source: AP
[Fotos: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP; REUTERS/Yara Nardi; REUTERS/Stephane Mahe; Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP; prensa Warner Bros]
