The filmmakers who inspired Kevin Costner’s love of westerns: “I’m aware of the people who have been influential”
Anyone even vaguely familiar with the work of Kevin Costner will know exactly what the actor and filmmaker’s favourite genre is, not that he’s ever made an attempt to wear his love of the western anywhere other than right on the sleeve.
Since his eyes were first opened to the possibilities of stories set in the American West when he was a child, it’s remained Costner’s preferred form of cinema. He’s made romances, sports movies, dramas, thrillers, action flicks, historical epics, gangster films, and many more but his career has nonetheless been defined by the western.
An early display of his easygoing charisma and natural star power was on full display in 1985’s Silverado, while he reached the summit of the industry five years later when Dances with Wolves won seven Academy Awards including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, becoming the genre’s highest-grossing release ever in the process.
The movie that instigated his downfall as an A-lister, Waterworld, was a post-apocalyptic western where he played a lone wanderer in the Clint Eastwood mould. The film that almost killed his career, The Postman, was another post-apocalyptic western where he played a lone wanderer. That would swear most people off, but not Costner.
His third directorial effort Open Range? Western. Miniseries Hatfield & McCoys that he executive produced and won a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy for? Western. Let Him Go, one of his best movie performance in years? Neo-western. Yellowstone, the series that ignited his comeback? Modern western.
His extravagantly ambitious four-part hopes for the sprawling Horizon? No prizes for guessing, but it remains to be seen if he’ll get to the finish line. Regardless of whether or not the quartet eventually comes to fruition, Costner revealed to Isaac Feldberg that he’s been paying tribute to his heroes anyway.
“A few nods to a couple of people, including John Ford,” he said of Horizon‘s winks. “It’s just a bow, for me. I was never able to meet him. Jim Harrison, who wrote Legends of the Fall and Revenge, there’s a line I give out of respect to him, and Lawrence Kasdan, there’s a little nod in there, too, to what he did. I go make my own movies, but I’m aware of people who have been influential to me, and a lot of times, it’s just a silent, cinematic way of saying thank you.”
As often tends to be the case, Ford was singled out specifically. “Anything can miss the mark on certain levels,” Costner mused. “But there are other things that are just really dead-on.” The star praised him for taking the western out of California and into more suitable filming locations, even if he “didn’t like the westerns where the costumes weren’t right.”
Ford was the one above all others who “went out to these places that fire your imagination,” and it struck such a nerve with Costner he’s spent his entire career trying to replicate that feeling.
