Oscar-winning director and actor Kevin Costner sat down with THR's Scott Feinberg in Cannes for a live recording of our 'Awards Chatter' podcast in front of an audience in Cannes, presented by Campari.
Enjoy Campari Responsibly.
Enjoy Campari Responsibly.
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00:00:00 I'm Scott Feinberg, executive editor at The Hollywood Reporter and the host of our Awards Chatter podcast.
00:00:06 And I want to thank you for joining us for our third annual edition of the podcast that we're recording at the Cannes Film Festival here in the beautiful Campari Lounge.
00:00:16 You can't really beat this view. And so we want to thank them for hosting us and thank all of you for being here.
00:00:22 Today, it is my great honor and privilege to be joined by one of the most gifted actors and filmmakers of our time,
00:00:30 a two-time Oscar winner and screen legend who tonight will premiere at this festival the first chapter of a multi-part Western that has been his passion project for decades
00:00:40 and that he co-wrote, produced, directed and stars in Horizon, an American Saga, Chapter One.
00:00:47 I'd like to read something that was written about him in Time magazine back in 1989, but is every bit as true today.
00:00:55 Quote, he is something else, a grown up hero with brains. He's modern and classic.
00:01:01 He thinks fast and shoots straight. He has city reflexes that help him beat the big boys at hardball.
00:01:06 Yet he stokes memories of the lone man on a horse silhouetted against the craggy horizon and setting sun of Old West values.
00:01:15 He has the requisite danger for big screen stardom, the stubbornness in pursuit of ideals, the slow anger when pushed,
00:01:21 the threat in a face that can mask its intentions, even as his actions inspire trust.
00:01:27 He could be a husband, a lover, a chief of state. And now he is poised to tote the Ten Commandments of frontier heroism into an anxious new decade.
00:01:36 He is the hard riding scout bearing the movie's message of what America thinks it was and hopes it can be again.
00:01:43 Close quote. Would you please join me in welcoming Mr. Kevin Costner.
00:01:47 [Applause]
00:01:55 Good morning, I think.
00:01:57 Good morning, and thank you so much for making the time to do this.
00:02:01 I understand that it's the first – it's not the first time that you've been at Cannes, but it's the first time that you've unveiled a film of yours at Cannes.
00:02:10 Can you just tell us a little bit about your history here at the fest?
00:02:14 Yeah, I was here once. Thank you. There's a lot of Campari going on here. Anybody seen any Campari lately?
00:02:24 [Laughter]
00:02:27 Yeah, I was here. I was selling open range, but it played on one of the back streets, and I didn't even watch it.
00:02:36 And I started to wander around, and I started to feel this thing that happens here.
00:02:42 And somebody said, "Do you want to go on to see a film?"
00:02:46 And I said, "Of course, we're going to need a tux."
00:02:48 And I said, "Okay."
00:02:51 And so I think it was the second Matrix.
00:02:55 But I went up, you know, and I walked on the red carpet, and I looked around.
00:02:59 And I will tell you for sure, you know, I thought I'd like to come back to this place.
00:03:05 But I want to come back to it in a very specific way.
00:03:09 When I feel like I've authored something, that I can stand in front of it, that there's no apologies,
00:03:16 that if you have problems with the film, you bring them to me, because they were my decisions.
00:03:21 And that happened, and I knew I was going to make these films, and I knew I was going to do it independently.
00:03:30 And I had the idea, if I make these films, I'm going to bring the first one to Cannes if they'll have me.
00:03:39 And Theory stepped up in a very big way for me, this whole festival did.
00:03:45 And when you're an independent filmmaker, to have a platform, the biggest platform in the world here,
00:03:52 I can't tell you what it does for me, what it does for this film.
00:03:56 It's important. And all I can say is this is an important moment for me,
00:04:04 and I'm in the celebration of movies, which I think unites us all.
00:04:09 So that was it.
00:04:11 That's great. Well, we are going to circle back around to Horizon, which I've been lucky enough to see already.
00:04:17 It's terrific. It's going to premiere tonight.
00:04:19 But on this podcast, we go chronologically.
00:04:22 So if we can go to the very beginning, can you share where you were born and raised and what your folks did for a living?
00:04:28 Yeah. Well, I was born in a place called Compton in California, and I think a lot of you have heard of it.
00:04:36 It's straight out of Compton.
00:04:39 My parents were from Oklahoma.
00:04:42 My dad had one job, and it was during the Dust Bowl, and they lost everything.
00:04:50 And my dad swore that he would never let that happen to him.
00:04:54 He watched his own parents lose everything.
00:04:56 His father began to drink.
00:05:01 And so my dad was a really simple person, and he had a job.
00:05:05 And he told me time and time again, never let another man outwork you for your job.
00:05:12 And he repeated that to me so much.
00:05:15 He only had one job his whole life because that was to feed his family, and we didn't have a lot of money.
00:05:22 But he said, "Don't let a man outwork you."
00:05:25 And I remember looking at him and saying, "I'm five years old.
00:05:32 So I won't, but really that's what has to happen."
00:05:39 And so I've had a very conservative, simple life, and the idea that I would find my way into storytelling was that I knew how to work.
00:05:54 I worked fishing boats, commercial fishing boats.
00:05:56 I drove trucks.
00:05:57 I framed houses.
00:05:59 But I also wrote when I was by myself, and I didn't really tell people about it because in my family, you had to have a job, and you weren't going to let anybody outwork you.
00:06:08 And so to be writing was to be daydreaming.
00:06:13 And so code for daydreaming with my dad was you're lazy.
00:06:18 And I said, "I just can't help it."
00:06:20 I said, "I can work and daydream."
00:06:22 And I was lucky for me that later in my life, I heard the ticking of my heart, and I knew that I would tell stories.
00:06:34 And I knew that I wouldn't let anybody outwork me and that if I had to work alone, I would do that too.
00:06:43 Not all of us have a specific moment that we can point to where our lives went in a certain direction and could have gone either way.
00:06:51 You're sitting in accounting class in college, right?
00:06:54 And what happens?
00:06:55 I was.
00:06:56 I was in an accounting class.
00:06:57 I was in my last year of college, and it was at night.
00:07:00 And so if you know anything about night school, the people in there are really serious about going to school.
00:07:05 Shit.
00:07:07 And so I knew that on a bell curve, I was going to be on the wrong end of this thing.
00:07:12 And I really actually felt myself turn off in the middle of class, and there was a student newspaper.
00:07:19 And college newspapers are only three pages long.
00:07:23 One page, two pages, it's over.
00:07:25 And I got to the back of it, and I saw there was this thing, an audition for Rumpelstiltskin.
00:07:30 It was a play.
00:07:32 And I'm thinking, Rumpelstiltskin?
00:07:34 What's Rumpelstiltskin about?
00:07:38 I forget what Rumpelstiltskin is.
00:07:39 And I go, well, there's got to be a prince in it.
00:07:42 They all have princes, right?
00:07:44 So I'll just go down there, and I'll try to be the prince.
00:07:47 And of course, I didn't.
00:07:49 And somebody else got that part.
00:07:51 But for the first time in my education, even in my last year of college, I caught on fire.
00:07:59 There was something that interested me.
00:08:01 You know, I have a dog, a hunting dog.
00:08:07 Not very popular with people, but for me, the dog was everything.
00:08:11 And my dog, like a normal dog, just lays in the hallway like everything else.
00:08:15 If the door, someone knocks, there's a bark, there's a loud.
00:08:18 And so he's just an average dog.
00:08:21 But when I take him out into a field of grass, a yellow field, where I'm going to hunt with him,
00:08:29 something happens to him, and he looks like a different dog.
00:08:33 It's like his IQ goes up 30, 40 points.
00:08:37 His head is up.
00:08:38 His tail is out.
00:08:39 He's moving.
00:08:40 And I thought, I need to be like this dog.
00:08:43 I need to know when I'm in the right place in my life.
00:08:46 And if I can get myself in the right field, I'm going to, my IQ is going to go up 30 or 40 points.
00:08:54 And when I found storytelling, when I found movie making, there was no guarantee of success.
00:09:01 There was no guarantee of anything.
00:09:03 But I was in the right field.
00:09:05 And that's the only thing I could hope for in my life and for anyone else,
00:09:09 that if you find your yellow brick road, your first step on it.
00:09:14 You don't have to have the guarantee of what's going to happen.
00:09:17 But it's a neat thing to feel like, can I find that first step on what it is I think I am?
00:09:23 Can I be that dog in the field?
00:09:25 Can I look like this is where I belong?
00:09:31 Now, at the outset, as would be the case with many people just finding their path in life,
00:09:36 I gather there was a little bit of doubt if this was also, you know, pursuing acting was the responsible thing to do.
00:09:45 And so can you share how, of all people, Richard Burden helped to clarify that?
00:09:50 Well, he didn't clarify it as much as I just ran into him on the plane.
00:09:54 And I remember seeing him and I was just married.
00:09:58 I was married at 22.
00:10:02 I married the first girl that liked me.
00:10:06 I thought, this is great.
00:10:08 And I thought I was getting old at 22.
00:10:11 I should do this.
00:10:12 But it was on my honeymoon.
00:10:14 But I was thinking about acting.
00:10:16 I hadn't told my wife that's really what I thought I was.
00:10:19 And I got on a plane after our honeymoon.
00:10:22 I remember it cost $300.
00:10:25 And actually $324.
00:10:29 And so now we're leaving Puerto Vallarta and we're waiting to get on a plane.
00:10:35 And I see this one couple being let out to the plane, like getting on the plane by themselves before anyone else.
00:10:41 And so, okay, now the rest of us go on a plane.
00:10:44 And I look up and I see it's Richard Burden.
00:10:47 And I see that he's bought all the seats around him so that no one could sit next to him.
00:10:51 But I didn't know anything.
00:10:53 And I became that dog in the field.
00:10:55 And I just looked at him.
00:10:56 I was looking at him.
00:10:57 And I didn't think that a person could buy seats around them.
00:11:01 I came from a very conservative background.
00:11:03 It was just hard enough to buy one fucking seat, let alone like five, so nobody's around you.
00:11:09 So, and I knew he had a volcanic personality.
00:11:12 I knew that he was, you know, him and Liz Taylor, legendary.
00:11:17 But I didn't know anything.
00:11:18 So if you've ever thought about a mongoose and a cobra, the mongoose has no idea that this thing could kill him.
00:11:26 And so I'm looking at him and finally I walk up to him.
00:11:31 I walk down the aisle and everybody in the plane went.
00:11:35 [laughter]
00:11:37 It's like peering.
00:11:39 So I walk up and I whisper in his ear.
00:11:42 I said, "Mr. Burden," I said, "I don't know what," I said, "if you don't mind at some point during this flight, if I could ask you a couple questions."
00:11:49 And he said, "Yes."
00:11:53 He says, "I'll look back for you."
00:11:56 And I said, "Okay."
00:11:58 And everybody went, sat down, and I went back and even my wife was going, "What the fuck was that?"
00:12:04 [laughter]
00:12:05 "Why are you asking him something like that?"
00:12:07 And so now I watch him just like a dog.
00:12:10 I don't look over here, I don't look out the window, I don't care what's out the window.
00:12:14 And I see him and he's not turning around and he picks up this, you know, this book, Gore Vidal on Lincoln.
00:12:20 It's about 800 pages and I think, "Fuck, he's going to read the whole thing."
00:12:24 And so now he's reading it and I'm still watching him because I'm not going to miss a beat.
00:12:29 And he closes the book after a while.
00:12:31 After about, he closes the book and I go, I'm like halfway up my chair.
00:12:34 And then he takes his chair and he sets it back and it goes to sleep.
00:12:38 So now I'm thinking, "I'm still going to watch him."
00:12:43 And so I watched him and he finally woke up and he looked back at me and so sweetly just went.
00:12:51 And so I walked up to him and everybody once again, like this.
00:12:56 And my wife was like this, like what happened?
00:12:59 And I won't tell you what we talked about, but there was something very sweet about him to me.
00:13:04 And I didn't stay long and I came away and the plane landed and he got ushered through customs like that
00:13:11 and the rest of us were there for an hour.
00:13:13 And like I said, we didn't have a lot of money.
00:13:15 We spent it all on the honeymoon and we were sitting on our luggage at LAX,
00:13:19 just like going my way with Clark Gable or whatever.
00:13:23 And I'm just sitting there because our parents were going to come pick us up.
00:13:28 I was no catch.
00:13:30 I was just a person trying to find myself sitting on my luggage with my new wife.
00:13:35 And all of a sudden this limousine came right here.
00:13:38 I was right on the street, came right here and it stopped.
00:13:43 And the window came down.
00:13:45 And it was Richard Burton.
00:13:47 And my wife's like, and he was about this far away from me and he just said, "Good luck to you."
00:13:52 So that was my story.
00:13:54 That's great. That's great.
00:13:56 [Applause]
00:14:01 So after--
00:14:02 But I will say this.
00:14:03 He never-- I always regret never-- he didn't see me have any success.
00:14:08 He passed away and I always wished I could have circled back to him.
00:14:13 Well, you-- as you began to pursue screen acting,
00:14:19 I know getting the SAG card was a little bit of an ordeal.
00:14:22 There's the movie "Francis" that Jessica Lange was in,
00:14:25 and I know you've said there was some-- a bit of a roller coaster getting it on that.
00:14:30 But eventually you get the SAG card and there's a movie that comes along called "The Big Chill"
00:14:36 with-- directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who's going to come up a few times here.
00:14:40 And I just wonder if you can contextualize for a young actor,
00:14:44 you guys do weeks of rehearsal, weeks of shooting.
00:14:49 It's a group of incredible contemporaries of yours, young talent.
00:14:55 And then you get a phone call that this character who you've played-- or you're playing,
00:15:00 whose suicide is essentially what brings the group together,
00:15:04 has actually been excised from the film.
00:15:08 We all know that it worked out now, and in fact that Lawrence Kasdan would come back to you
00:15:13 very soon after with the role that kind of was the star-making role in "Silverado."
00:15:18 But you didn't know that at the time.
00:15:20 Was that crushing? Was it-- did it knock your confidence?
00:15:23 How did you take it?
00:15:24 It wasn't.
00:15:25 No?
00:15:26 It wasn't, because there's a lot of people look at our lives one way,
00:15:29 but you have to look at your life the way you see it.
00:15:32 And so a lot of people, they look for outward success.
00:15:36 We look at the tip of the iceberg.
00:15:38 We-- you know, you're not successful unless you have a part.
00:15:42 You're not successful unless it's a big part.
00:15:44 You're not successful unless you're a lead.
00:15:46 Whatever. Let me see your resume.
00:15:49 I didn't measure my life that way at all.
00:15:52 I knew that when I got the big chill, the day I got the part, I knew my life would change.
00:15:58 I knew it driving down the freeway.
00:16:01 I knew it. My life would change.
00:16:03 I knew that I was-- because I was with the right people.
00:16:05 I was in the right field.
00:16:07 And, of course, when I got cut out of the movie, I just accepted it.
00:16:13 I accepted it as part of the mythology of whatever my life would be,
00:16:17 because what was supposed to happen had happened already.
00:16:21 You're waiting for the movie to come out.
00:16:23 You're waiting for the movie to premiere.
00:16:25 I knew how it started nine months earlier that I was on the yellow brick road.
00:16:30 I was there.
00:16:32 And so not being in the movie was not something that affected me, and it's not an afterthought.
00:16:39 I knew that I would have a moment, and I didn't know what it was going to be,
00:16:44 but whatever it was going to be, I was going to be ready,
00:16:47 and I was going to be more ready because of that film.
00:16:50 So outward success is something that the world sees,
00:16:54 but you have to understand the moments in your own life when something really did happen.
00:16:59 Somebody else says, "This is when it happened."
00:17:01 I said, "No, this is when it happened for me."
00:17:06 And it is kind of poetic that the same filmmaker, Lawrence Kasdan,
00:17:11 comes back to you approximately two years later to do Silverado,
00:17:15 which is not just any movie but a Western,
00:17:18 which has been the genre that you have sort of single-handedly, largely single-handedly kept alive.
00:17:25 Let's just note we're going to come to Dancers with Wolves, Wyatt Earp, Open Range, Yellowstone, Horizon.
00:17:34 I guess the question I'd like to ask is,
00:17:38 what is it about the Western genre that appeals to you and that makes you such a fit for it?
00:17:46 I mean, even your band, I believe, is called Modern West, right?
00:17:49 There's something for your whole life that the West has appealed to you.
00:17:55 Well, first off, I think Westerns, they're really hard to make, and there's not a lot of great ones.
00:18:03 It's interesting how much the public will mythologize them, say, "Oh, just love Westerns."
00:18:10 And it's true, but there's not very many good ones.
00:18:14 And a lot of times it sets the movie, it sets the genre back when you see movies that are just too simple.
00:18:22 There's a black hat and there's a white hat.
00:18:24 There's just too simple.
00:18:25 Somebody kills my family, I get to kill people the rest of the movie.
00:18:30 It's okay. I guess if it's done well, then it's okay.
00:18:33 But a lot of times people think of the American West as a myth, as something that's simple.
00:18:39 It was terribly complicated.
00:18:42 People from Europe came there to settle.
00:18:44 They were told the things that they didn't have here, living under a monarchy, living under a king, your children would too.
00:18:55 But if you could make it across that ocean, if you could get onto this place called--it didn't even have a name at that point--
00:19:03 could we get to this place that looked like the Garden of Eden?
00:19:07 And if you were mean enough, and if you were tough enough, and if you were resourceful enough, you could be a king.
00:19:16 You could take what you wanted and you could keep it.
00:19:19 And you could keep it for your family.
00:19:22 And while that was the message, while that was the promise, there was a civilization that had been there for 15,000 years.
00:19:32 And our story can't be told if we don't tell the fact that we rolled over these people.
00:19:39 But what is it I love about the West is that was great drama there.
00:19:44 Drama that we'll never experience.
00:19:46 People think of Westerns as simple.
00:19:48 They're not simple.
00:19:49 Living now is simple.
00:19:51 It's amazing that we still can't fucking get along.
00:19:55 We think that the West was violent?
00:19:57 Look what's going on in the world.
00:19:59 We have learned nothing.
00:20:01 But what I love about the West is that drama could occur over water.
00:20:07 It could occur over seeing a stranger.
00:20:10 You had to be incredibly resourceful.
00:20:12 And so for me, creating the architecture of a movie for you to sit in the dark, I have to find a story that I think is entertaining.
00:20:22 Because this is what our connection is, to be entertained.
00:20:25 Not to be schooled.
00:20:27 It's not my job to reinvent the Western.
00:20:29 It's not my job to recreate history.
00:20:32 I think our connection is about entertainment.
00:20:35 But I don't have to forfeit my own ideas about what I think are important, what I think are interesting, what I think are entertaining.
00:20:43 And that's the platform that Europe gave me.
00:20:48 I used to think that movies were just for Americans.
00:20:51 Remember how I grew up with nothing.
00:20:54 My family from Oklahoma.
00:20:56 It was America.
00:20:58 Even when I finally made a movie, the movie got shelved.
00:21:02 It was only when I went to the Venice Film Festival 35, 40 years ago, that a movie that I made that I was very proud of, that it got shelved, three years later was playing.
00:21:16 And somebody said, I thought they wanted to interview me.
00:21:19 I was with Silverado.
00:21:21 All the cast was being interviewed.
00:21:23 It was my first big role.
00:21:25 No one wanted to interview me.
00:21:27 And finally I had one interview.
00:21:28 One in two days.
00:21:30 And while I was doing my interview, some guy came in and he said, you have to come with me right now.
00:21:35 I said, I have my fucking interview.
00:21:38 He said, you have to come with me right now.
00:21:40 Your movie is playing, Fandango.
00:21:42 And I said, no, no, I'm doing Silverado.
00:21:44 You get that wrong.
00:21:45 It's not as Fandango.
00:21:46 It's Silverado.
00:21:47 He said, no, it's Fandango.
00:21:48 You have to come right now.
00:21:49 And I thought, but this is my interview.
00:21:52 So I went with him.
00:21:53 And I walked down the street.
00:21:55 I had no idea.
00:21:57 Walked into a theater.
00:21:58 It was full.
00:22:00 Even in the aisles, people were sitting.
00:22:02 And upstairs, I was in the last six minutes of this movie.
00:22:05 And I thought something was happening.
00:22:07 And the movie ended.
00:22:09 And I couldn't believe that the theater was full.
00:22:11 And people were standing and they were cheering.
00:22:14 And the lights came on.
00:22:15 And I thought, wow, this is incredible.
00:22:18 I'd also lost my luggage.
00:22:19 So I was in the same clothes for three days.
00:22:21 I just had a T-shirt on.
00:22:23 And at one point, the person said, I think in Italian,
00:22:27 that Kevin's in this room.
00:22:28 And the lights came on and the people turned and they looked up and they
00:22:31 clapped for me.
00:22:32 And my heart was like, you can't believe it.
00:22:36 It was so big.
00:22:38 And we walked out of that theater and walked down that street in mass,
00:22:41 you know, 800 of us.
00:22:42 And I thought, my God, what has just happened.
00:22:45 But something did happen to me.
00:22:48 I realized that movies weren't just for Americans.
00:22:53 I know that may seem odd to you and go, God, Kevin's a little stupid.
00:22:57 The world's pretty big.
00:22:59 But I knew right then that I would change my thinking,
00:23:04 that I would make movies that I thought the world could see.
00:23:08 And it just -- these moments have happened to me in my life.
00:23:12 And that was one of them in Venice.
00:23:15 And we'll note, so Fandango was the first leading role that you played.
00:23:19 But then as a result of Silverado, this small but star-making part,
00:23:24 I believe it's probably directly a result of that,
00:23:27 that there's two movies that come out in '87 that -- I mean,
00:23:30 when you're in two big movies in just a matter of months,
00:23:33 the first in June, the second in August,
00:23:36 that's going to really put you on the map.
00:23:39 So let's just note, first, Treasury Agent Elliot Ness going after Al Capone
00:23:43 in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables.
00:23:45 That's out in June of '87.
00:23:47 And then Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell,
00:23:49 the double agent in Roger Donaldson's No Way Out, out in August.
00:23:53 I think No Way Out was finished first but came out second.
00:23:57 And I guess I'd love to hear about both of those,
00:24:02 but particularly The Untouchables, because you have said,
00:24:06 at least at one time, that the role of Elliot Ness was in some ways
00:24:10 the most challenging one that you'd played.
00:24:13 And I found it interesting, your explanation for why.
00:24:18 Yeah, it was.
00:24:20 I had to play this very straight arrow guy,
00:24:23 which wasn't necessarily a problem to play that.
00:24:27 How are you doing?
00:24:29 See one of my actors here, and I just have so much thanks
00:24:34 for the actors in my life that have come and supported me.
00:24:37 Thank you.
00:24:38 It wasn't so much that the part was hard to play,
00:24:41 but because it was so straight and so narrow,
00:24:44 and I was playing opposite Robert De Niro,
00:24:49 he began to improv, and I didn't feel like I could improv
00:24:54 outside the lines of who I was.
00:24:57 And so it was very, very difficult.
00:24:59 And I'll tell you who came to my aid, and I miss him dearly,
00:25:06 was Sean Connery.
00:25:09 You know, somebody says, "Who's the best actor you ever worked with?"
00:25:12 It's very hard, these lists, right? Very hard.
00:25:15 But if I have to say someone, I might say Gene Hackman.
00:25:19 And somebody said, "Who's the biggest star you ever worked with?"
00:25:22 And I say, "Sean Connery."
00:25:25 I remember in Chicago, sitting with Sean, there was a tape around us,
00:25:31 we were getting ready to do a scene,
00:25:33 and this woman kept trying to get my eye,
00:25:38 and I was talking, and I thought she was--
00:25:41 I could see she was insistent on the fact that she wanted to talk to me,
00:25:46 and I thought, "Well, I'll get over there."
00:25:48 I was still doing something.
00:25:50 So finally--she was very pretty--
00:25:52 and so finally, I kind of step away,
00:25:56 because we're getting ready to do a scene,
00:25:58 and I walked over to her,
00:26:00 and I kind of leaned into her, and I said, "Yes?"
00:26:05 And she looked at me, and she said,
00:26:07 "Could you get me Sean Connery's autograph?"
00:26:11 And I said, "Yes, I will. Yeah, I'll get that for you right now."
00:26:18 So I said, "All right."
00:26:20 That's great.
00:26:22 Well, after that killer '87, '88 and '89 were your first baseball years.
00:26:29 Let's note, in back-to-back years--'88, summer of '88,
00:26:33 the directorial debut of Ron Shelton,
00:26:35 you were playing Crash Davis, this veteran minor league catcher in Bull Durham,
00:26:40 and then in '89, Ray Kinsella, this Iowa farmer
00:26:43 who begins hearing voices in Field of Dreams,
00:26:46 directed by Phil Alden Robinson,
00:26:48 which just earlier this month turned 35
00:26:52 and is really now almost like the "It's a Wonderful Life" of our time, I think.
00:26:57 It's still as great as the day it came out.
00:27:01 I wonder, just, A, are you a baseball guy,
00:27:04 and B, were there people dissuading you from doing two baseball movies back-to-back?
00:27:09 I mean, you made the right decision, clearly,
00:27:12 but I could see somebody saying at the time, "Be careful."
00:27:16 Yeah, I think there's a lot to this "be careful" business
00:27:19 that can scare us off from what we want to do in this life.
00:27:23 There's a lot of people to warn us off things,
00:27:26 and they do it with even good intentions.
00:27:29 Some of the people closest to you, your parents, your other thing,
00:27:33 what it is is they have a fear for you that you're going to fail or be embarrassed,
00:27:38 and they can hold you back.
00:27:40 And I'm thinking to myself, I'm still this mongoose with the cobra out there.
00:27:45 I don't really care too much what people think.
00:27:48 I enjoy people, and I am not aloof.
00:27:52 I'm not a loner, but I'm not afraid to go alone.
00:27:55 And so what happens is I just didn't--
00:27:58 I felt like they were both good movies.
00:28:00 It didn't matter that baseball was box office poison,
00:28:03 and it didn't matter that the second one was baseball.
00:28:06 I thought they separated themselves.
00:28:08 So it really wasn't a hard decision for me.
00:28:10 It was kind of easy.
00:28:12 But I'll tell you a small little story about that.
00:28:15 It's like when I finally did get the role,
00:28:17 it was a big fight with one of the most legendary mean producers,
00:28:23 and I also met John Huston, the great John Huston.
00:28:26 I wanted to direct Revenge.
00:28:28 I wanted that to be the first movie I directed.
00:28:31 So I met John Huston.
00:28:32 He says, "You're very young, son.
00:28:34 You're very young."
00:28:36 And they didn't let me direct Revenge.
00:28:40 The next movie I directed was Dances with Wolves, but I was too young.
00:28:44 And I remember that.
00:28:46 But the story I wanted to tell you about Fields of Dreams is--
00:28:49 at one point I asked the director, because Robin Williams,
00:28:54 the great Robin Williams, was also kind of up for the role for Ray Cancela.
00:28:59 And I just thought Robin was fantastic.
00:29:03 And I remember asking the director, I said,
00:29:05 "Why did you choose me for Fields of Dreams over Robin Williams?
00:29:12 I think I might have taken Robin Williams over me."
00:29:15 And he said, "Well, let me tell you.
00:29:18 It's an interesting thing you ask me," because he said, "This is why."
00:29:22 He said, "When I think of Robin Williams, I think he's a person that does hear voices."
00:29:28 [laughter]
00:29:30 "And I need--it wouldn't be a surprise if Robin Williams heard voices in a cornfield."
00:29:36 But he goes, "When I think of you, I think of a person
00:29:39 who would have a hard time hearing voices in a cornfield."
00:29:44 And I thought to myself, "I love your thinking."
00:29:48 [laughter]
00:29:49 I mean, I was thinking he thought that through very correctly.
00:29:53 A quick follow-up about Fields of Dreams, there's another actor in that movie
00:29:57 who in some ways to me was you before you in terms of being a very physical actor.
00:30:10 But he could also be doing nothing, and it's fascinating.
00:30:12 And that was Burt Lancaster, who played Moonlight Graham.
00:30:16 I know it was right at the end of his career, his life,
00:30:20 I believe he was to some degree struggling a bit.
00:30:24 But what stands out to you about your interactions with Burt Lancaster?
00:30:27 Number one, he was a beautiful man, and I mean, just so handsome,
00:30:32 and a very, very gifted actor.
00:30:36 And we talked quite a bit.
00:30:38 And his definitive scene was when he described baseball,
00:30:43 "Wrap your arms around second face."
00:30:45 And he worked with his hands so much, the sky so blue.
00:30:49 He was a very physical guy that way.
00:30:52 But he was having trouble that night.
00:30:56 He was having trouble with his lines.
00:30:59 He was having trouble remembering them.
00:31:03 And I remember that the director was becoming upset.
00:31:08 And I said, "This is one of the greatest actors in the world.
00:31:14 We're going to keep working with him."
00:31:17 And I remember there was a moment, because I had just adored him,
00:31:22 where he didn't want me on the set
00:31:27 because he was embarrassed that he wasn't remembering his lines.
00:31:32 And I said, "No, I'm right here, and you're going to be perfect,
00:31:37 and I'm going to see it."
00:31:39 And he was.
00:31:41 All you have to do is get it right once.
00:31:44 And there was this moment, you could have heard music from heaven,
00:31:49 but Burt was perfect, and it made the movie.
00:31:53 That's great.
00:31:55 A year after that, and we'll note, "Field of Dreams" was nominated
00:31:59 for the Best Picture Oscar.
00:32:03 "Field of Dreams" nominated for the Best Picture Oscar,
00:32:05 starting a very rare feat.
00:32:08 We'll note that for three years in a row, you were the star of a film
00:32:11 that was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
00:32:14 Next up of the three was "Dances with Wolves,"
00:32:17 which, just for anybody who needs a reminder,
00:32:20 Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, a guy who almost accidentally survives
00:32:25 a Civil War battle and requests reassignment to the West
00:32:29 because he wants to see the frontier before it's gone,
00:32:32 winds up meeting and bonding with the Lakota Sioux,
00:32:35 who nicknamed him "Dances with Wolves."
00:32:38 The story of "Dances with Wolves" sort of traces back to your film debut
00:32:42 in a very low-budget 1981 film called "Stacey's Nights."
00:32:48 I wonder if you can explain that, and also how you,
00:32:51 rather than other directors who you had considered working with on this,
00:32:56 wound up directing it yourself.
00:32:58 Like anything, in Hollywood, there are people that are trying to get there.
00:33:04 There'd be somebody in this room that's trying to get there,
00:33:07 and you can't get there.
00:33:09 Acting is a funny thing.
00:33:11 If you're a musician, you can be on a corner with your guitar
00:33:15 and open it and maybe get a little bit of money and play.
00:33:19 But if you're an actor and you're wandering around town
00:33:21 just dribbling out your lines, they can put you in jail.
00:33:25 You need a place to be able to work.
00:33:28 And a lot of times there's no place.
00:33:30 We just started an acting group down by the LA River,
00:33:33 which isn't really a river.
00:33:34 It's a cement thing with no water in it.
00:33:37 It only fills up when it rains.
00:33:39 It was a chemical plant, and we built a little stage.
00:33:43 Many of us went down there and acted because none of us had any money.
00:33:48 But out of that group of people--and there was a lot of rock and roll people
00:33:52 that I hung with down there--and out of that group,
00:33:56 I began to identify people that I thought were interesting,
00:33:59 and one of them ended up writing "Dances with Wolves,"
00:34:04 and I brought another one on to help me produce it,
00:34:06 and he won an Academy Award too.
00:34:08 So it's a long story, and I'm not going to bore you with the things,
00:34:14 but "Dances" was like anything else in my life.
00:34:19 The mongoose, which is--I read it, and I thought, "This could be a movie.
00:34:26 Why wouldn't this want to be a movie?"
00:34:28 No one wanted to make it, so I got $75,000.
00:34:32 I wrote down on a napkin how I would make this movie.
00:34:36 I would give my friend who never made any money, the writer's minimum,
00:34:42 I would get myself a secretary, and I would pay her--I wrote down there--
00:34:46 $450 a month or a week or something, and I thought, "Boy, I've never hired anybody."
00:34:54 So I remember trying to interview her, and she came in, and I said,
00:35:02 "Well, you have to come on time and stuff."
00:35:09 She looked at me, and I thought maybe I needed to say more.
00:35:14 I said, "Sometimes I work longer than that,
00:35:18 and there will be some unusual people calling here."
00:35:22 And that's how I hired her.
00:35:25 I've had five in my life.
00:35:27 They've all worked for five years.
00:35:28 They all hired the next one.
00:35:30 They all had that little rub-up when they would hire the next one
00:35:35 that for maybe two months they tried to help too much,
00:35:38 and finally the one said, "Hey, I know what I'm doing, okay?
00:35:41 That's the way you did it with Kevin.
00:35:43 This is the way I'm doing it with Kevin."
00:35:46 I saw this happen five fucking times where that little dust-up happened moment.
00:35:51 So I don't know.
00:35:53 I just--you know, I believe in movies just like I believe in Horizon.
00:35:57 I believed in "Dances with Wolves."
00:36:00 It seemed no one else did.
00:36:02 It went around the studios twice.
00:36:04 I will tell you about "Open Range."
00:36:06 I will tell you about "Dances with Wolves,"
00:36:08 and I will tell you about "Horizon."
00:36:11 Very American movies.
00:36:13 But the first dollar that ever came to help me in all three of them was from Europe.
00:36:19 American movie.
00:36:20 I couldn't get anybody to do it.
00:36:22 So thank you for this kind of openness that you guys have had.
00:36:27 Imagine that.
00:36:28 [applause]
00:36:34 I just wanted to know, I think the Americans--
00:36:36 some of the reservations of the Americans, including some of the directors
00:36:39 that you considered hiring before you took the job yourself,
00:36:43 they felt, right, that the idea that a third of it would be subtitled was a killer.
00:36:50 They didn't, in many cases, want the opening battle sequence.
00:36:55 I mean, you were not going to compromise.
00:36:58 Yeah, well, I always think everybody's better than me.
00:37:04 They cannot work me, but I think a lot of times people are smarter than me.
00:37:09 And I had this movie, and so I went to three very notable directors,
00:37:14 and they all had something that they weren't going to do in "Dances,"
00:37:18 and thought it was this, thought it was that, thought--
00:37:21 and one by one I said, "Oh, no, I can't let that happen."
00:37:25 And the second one, that happened, and the third one, and you know all of them.
00:37:30 But the name's not important because they're really good guys,
00:37:34 but I thought to myself, "Fuck, I want the audience to see all of this."
00:37:43 And I thought--I said, "Well, I'm going to direct it."
00:37:48 And I thought, "If anybody's going to wreck it, it's going to be me,
00:37:52 and I'm going to shoot it all," because I believed in a story,
00:37:56 and I believed, like, when I put something up, gave something to my mom,
00:38:00 she put it on the refrigerator.
00:38:03 She cared about what I did, whether it was good or bad,
00:38:07 and I understood I couldn't make "Refrigerator Arc,"
00:38:10 but what I read when I wrote "Dances with the Wolf,"
00:38:12 I wanted to share with you once you were in the dark,
00:38:15 and I thought, "I'm going to shoot all of this."
00:38:17 And so I did, and my first cut was five and a half hours long, one movie.
00:38:23 But I worked at it, and finally it came.
00:38:26 But it is worth noting that the first money that came to help me
00:38:30 was from overseas, and both that and Open Range,
00:38:34 and this thing I'm doing now, Horizon.
00:38:40 This thing that's just--you know, Horizon, I got--I don't know, man.
00:38:46 So it's--
00:38:49 Well, definitely, we're coming there.
00:38:51 But I think another thing that connects "Dances with the Wolves" to Horizon
00:38:55 with also "Black or White in Between" is that you have dared to do something
00:39:00 that a lot of people are warned not to do, scared to do, won't do.
00:39:05 When you believe in something, you put your own money behind it.
00:39:09 With "Dances with the Wolves," I think it was several of the--
00:39:12 I heard $19 million budget, and maybe three of that came from you?
00:39:16 Yeah.
00:39:17 You know, you can spend--I don't think I'm a great businessman.
00:39:22 I'm a pretty good daydreamer.
00:39:25 My dad would tell you that.
00:39:27 But I've had the kind of success that I couldn't even dream of.
00:39:32 But I don't want to let this pile, this pile of things I have,
00:39:36 whether it's money, whether it's stuff--
00:39:38 I don't want to let this thing be so important to me
00:39:42 that I can't think about what I want to do right here,
00:39:45 that if I do what I want to write now, if I want to make Horizon,
00:39:50 am I going to lose this pile of things that I've made?
00:39:54 And I thought, I can't let that own me.
00:39:58 I can't let that be the deciding thing.
00:40:00 I'm going to keep enough things that my family is going to be good,
00:40:04 but I can't let this thing that I kind of wanted my whole life--
00:40:10 I'd like to have money, I'd like to have nice things--
00:40:13 but I thought to myself, that's going to control me if I let it.
00:40:18 And so every time I've looked at this pile, I'm like,
00:40:21 "Fuck, I don't want to lose you.
00:40:25 Why am I so interested in this movie?"
00:40:30 Yeah.
00:40:33 I end up taking everything I have and I push it in the middle
00:40:37 simply because I like movies the way you like them.
00:40:40 I just want something to happen when that fucking curtain opens.
00:40:44 I miss the curtain. I miss it terribly.
00:40:48 Because I remember as a kid when it opened like that,
00:40:53 something magical could happen.
00:40:56 It didn't always, because it's hard to make a good movie.
00:41:00 But when you make a good one, it can have moments--
00:41:05 when a movie's working at its very, very best,
00:41:08 a movie will have moments that you'll never, ever forget.
00:41:12 A look, a kiss, something that's sad.
00:41:16 One of the most powerful lines to me in all of cinema was in "Giant."
00:41:22 And Rock Hudson, the beautiful Rock Hudson,
00:41:25 was now an aging, silver-haired, wealthy, wealthy bigot.
00:41:31 His daughter, his son married a Mexican woman.
00:41:34 He was a bigot. He didn't want that.
00:41:36 Now he has a Mexican daughter-in-law
00:41:41 and pretty soon a Mexican child
00:41:43 and the incredibly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor.
00:41:45 She has silver hair now. It's an epic movie.
00:41:48 There's a theme with me, right?
00:41:50 Things I like, the kind of things I like.
00:41:53 So now they're older and they're sitting in a diner.
00:41:57 And he's still who he is, a big deal in Texas.
00:42:01 But they're sitting in a little simple diner,
00:42:03 both these two are the most beautiful people in the world,
00:42:06 but now gray-haired, this Mexican daughter-in-law and this child.
00:42:13 This is back in the '50s.
00:42:15 And the guy who owns the diner won't feed him.
00:42:20 And Rock Hudson, who's a big deal, goes, "What?"
00:42:24 He says, "I'm not feeding this Mexican child and this one."
00:42:28 He goes--he was confused.
00:42:31 The same guy who was that guy
00:42:34 saw bigotry right in front of his face,
00:42:37 and he was confused.
00:42:39 And the next thing you know,
00:42:41 he's in a fistfight with this guy from Korea,
00:42:45 our leading man, Rock Hudson's in a fistfight in this diner,
00:42:48 and they tear the whole diner up.
00:42:50 And Rock Hudson does the impossible in American cinema.
00:42:55 He loses.
00:42:57 He's beaten to a pulp.
00:43:00 And he's laying in a corner.
00:43:04 And Elizabeth Taylor walks over to him and bends down
00:43:09 and says, "You never stood taller."
00:43:14 When you stand up for someone who can't stand up for themself.
00:43:19 And so, you know, for as phony as movies are,
00:43:24 they're really real to me.
00:43:27 I look at them, and I knew right away who I needed to be.
00:43:32 And it had nothing to do with victory.
00:43:35 It had everything to do with what you believe in.
00:43:39 And that's, I mean, "Dances with Wolves" is...
00:43:42 [applause]
00:43:44 Exactly that.
00:43:46 That began just an incredible run of hits.
00:43:51 We had "Dance with the Wolves" in 1990, "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves."
00:43:54 You're going to wear these people out, honestly.
00:43:56 No, no, no, no, no.
00:43:57 Have a drink, Jesus Christ.
00:43:59 They know what they said.
00:44:01 "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves," 1991, "JFK," 1991,
00:44:06 "The Bodyguard," 1992.
00:44:09 These giant, giant hits.
00:44:12 And sort of helped to cement, I think, your screen persona
00:44:16 in a lot of cases, which obviously there are deviations,
00:44:19 but people have often likened you to Gary Cooper,
00:44:22 just this sort of strong, silent type.
00:44:25 But that being said, you've also given some of the greatest monologues
00:44:29 in the history of the movies.
00:44:31 And one of them I've got to ask you about is the summation at the end of "JFK,"
00:44:36 where this is you and Oliver Stone.
00:44:39 And I wonder if you can--
00:44:41 There are many I could have prodded you about, black or white,
00:44:44 so many where you've given great monologues.
00:44:47 But that one, I think, is a particularly special one.
00:44:50 Yeah, a lot of times I choose movies based on writing,
00:44:55 what I get to say, what is being said.
00:44:58 And sometimes I see things, I think,
00:45:01 I need to be the person that says this.
00:45:05 And that's why I'll go after these movies.
00:45:08 I'll say, "I think I'm the right person to be able to say this."
00:45:11 And there was this 11-page kind of monologue, and I looked at that,
00:45:15 and I thought, you know, it's just something I wanted to do.
00:45:20 And I'm very slow.
00:45:23 It takes me so long to learn lines.
00:45:26 I'm so much slower than every other actor.
00:45:28 It takes me about a month.
00:45:30 Other people memorize things.
00:45:32 There's something in me that's wired wrong.
00:45:35 And so I learn all the lines before every movie, before I show up,
00:45:41 and I learn everybody else's lines too.
00:45:44 But it takes me a long time.
00:45:46 And I remember when we got to this courtroom sequence,
00:45:51 Oliver was setting up things, and he said,
00:45:56 "Well, why don't we just do a run-through of this thing,
00:45:59 and then I'll figure out where to set my cameras and what I'm going to do."
00:46:02 And we were scheduled for three days.
00:46:04 I said, "Okay."
00:46:06 And so he says, "All right, are we hearing Tommy Lee Jones?"
00:46:09 And it goes, you know, action.
00:46:12 It was a rehearsal.
00:46:15 And I do the whole thing.
00:46:17 And Oliver says, "For fuck's sake, you know this whole thing?"
00:46:21 I said, "Yeah."
00:46:22 And he goes, "You know it all."
00:46:25 I said, "Yeah."
00:46:26 And he goes, "All right, listen to me.
00:46:29 I want you to go back to your trailer, go get a massage, go do something.
00:46:33 I'm going to set these cameras up, and we're going to do this whole thing."
00:46:38 And I thought, "I don't need a massage.
00:46:41 What I need is I want to do this thing."
00:46:44 He goes, "Well, I'm just going to set up the cameras."
00:46:46 So we did.
00:46:48 And I ran through it about five times, and we were done at 1 o'clock.
00:46:54 And the scene was over.
00:46:56 And it was something that we were going to do for three days.
00:46:58 But it was something I had worked on.
00:47:01 I had worried about it so much that I just wanted to be ready.
00:47:05 I wanted to outwork everybody.
00:47:07 That's brilliant.
00:47:10 Speaking of scripts, "The Bodyguard" was written by Kasdan.
00:47:12 Originally, I believe, for another of your heroes, Steve McQueen.
00:47:16 That gets made.
00:47:18 You were, I think, instrumental in giving us Whitney Houston as an actress there.
00:47:23 There's the next year, "A Perfect World" for Clint.
00:47:27 And then we come to a period that I think, with the benefit of time, people may look at a bit differently.
00:47:35 And I want to ask you, because there were just a few in a row where you got some grief over them.
00:47:43 There was "Wide Earp," there was "Waterworld," and there was "The Postman," which the third one you directed.
00:47:50 Now, the reality is, people talk--
00:47:53 I remember with "Waterworld," it was "Fishtar" or "Kevin's Gate" or all these kind of mean things before anyone even saw it.
00:48:01 But I think people look at the-- if they look now, they actually were fairly successful movies.
00:48:07 And there's a lot to say for them.
00:48:10 But I think with "Waterworld" in particular, was it--
00:48:13 did you feel there was a target on your back when you have had such a run of success that people are--
00:48:20 some people have their knives out?
00:48:22 Do you think it was the fact that it was the first movie over a $100 million budget?
00:48:26 Just with the benefit of time, anything about that?
00:48:29 See, that's such bullshit, what you just said.
00:48:31 What? What?
00:48:32 No, I'll tell you what.
00:48:34 I'll tell you what.
00:48:35 And I remember going to the studio.
00:48:37 I said, "Maybe you need to give this script up to somebody else."
00:48:41 And I said, "Listen, we don't have a third act."
00:48:45 And I go, "You're telling everybody this is a $99 million movie.
00:48:53 It's like a store, you know, what, 99.90 cents?
00:48:56 You know how they do that? Like a cent's going to make a--
00:48:59 Why do they do that?"
00:49:01 So everybody knows what that is.
00:49:03 $7.99.
00:49:05 It's fucking-- it's $8.
00:49:08 It's like, "Oh, Waterworld's going to be $99 million,
00:49:14 and it's going to be a 99-day schedule."
00:49:17 I shot Dancer with Wolves on 106 days.
00:49:24 It's going to be 99 days and $99 million.
00:49:28 And I remember going up and I said, "Hey, really, listen to me, fuck.
00:49:32 Who decided this movie's going to be $99 million?"
00:49:36 And they go-- I said, "The most expensive movie to that date
00:49:42 had been $129 million.
00:49:44 I'm going to school you just a little bit."
00:49:46 [laughter]
00:49:47 And it was Terminator 2, not $129 million.
00:49:51 So I busted them on that.
00:49:53 I said, "Lookit, we're not the first movie to go over $100 million.
00:49:56 There's probably been 10."
00:49:59 And, you know, when you confront power, they're kind of like,
00:50:04 "Well, yeah."
00:50:06 And I go, "So what the fuck?
00:50:08 Why is it $99-- why are you saying it's $99 million?"
00:50:12 They said, "We can't be the first movie that's budgeted over $100 million."
00:50:18 It's like a politician or something.
00:50:20 There have been movies over $100 million.
00:50:22 "We just can't be the first movie that's budgeted over $90--"
00:50:26 I said, "Oh, so you're going to tell everybody
00:50:28 that we're making a $99 million picture?"
00:50:31 And I said, "Lookit, I use my money on movies."
00:50:36 I said, "The most expensive movie is $129 million.
00:50:38 Why don't we pike a 10% contingency on that?
00:50:41 $13 million, so now it's like $143 million.
00:50:45 That would be a more reasonable thing to say to people.
00:50:47 We're making this movie on the water."
00:50:51 "Well, we can't say that."
00:50:52 "I know you fucking can't say it, but it's going to get said to me
00:50:58 that we're over budget on our first day of shooting,
00:51:03 that we're over schedule on our first day of shooting."
00:51:06 The movie ended up costing $157 million.
00:51:09 It's a little bit more than $143 million.
00:51:13 And it went 157 days.
00:51:16 And so this problem landed on me, that I was out of control.
00:51:24 And I said, "Jesus, look at me."
00:51:28 Not like this, but I mean, I paid for my movies.
00:51:32 I know what money's worth.
00:51:35 And so I think it's a fantastic movie.
00:51:38 I also--it's one of the most beloved movies.
00:51:41 People come up to me to this day and talk about "Waterworld."
00:51:44 All I did was stood behind it and made it the best it could possibly be.
00:51:49 And everybody ran for the shadows, for the corners,
00:51:52 and I'm standing like stupid Kevin, you know,
00:51:55 taking it around the world and trying to explain why it was so expensive.
00:51:58 I never told anybody that story, what I just told you.
00:52:01 But you're all drunk anyway.
00:52:03 [laughter]
00:52:08 When you have gone back over the years to baseball,
00:52:12 as with "For the Love of the Game" or "The Western" with "Open Range,"
00:52:18 does that feel like just a kind of a comfortable--
00:52:23 obviously they're all challenging, but I mean,
00:52:26 is there something almost cathartic about going back to certain genres for you?
00:52:32 Not really.
00:52:34 I'd still like--I'm on the hunt for the great script.
00:52:38 I'm still looking for the great story.
00:52:40 I just don't care where it comes from.
00:52:42 It's like, you know, there's the supermodels and so beautiful,
00:52:48 and sometimes there's the waitress.
00:52:50 You just have to think who for you is the most beautiful.
00:52:54 And when I look at the script, I don't want to just--
00:52:58 I don't want to be affected by what the trends or what's popular.
00:53:01 I want to go to what moves me.
00:53:03 And if I think this little movie in the corn is just as good as some other movie,
00:53:08 then I'm going to do that.
00:53:10 It's easy.
00:53:12 Two movies nine years apart with Mike Binder, "The Upside of Anger,"
00:53:16 you and Joan Allen, really deserved--I hope people are continuing to discover
00:53:21 it's a great movie where you're the neighbor of a woman whose husband's gone left.
00:53:26 And then nine years later, "Black or White,"
00:53:29 the grandfather of a biracial girl who there becomes a custody dispute.
00:53:36 You've said of Mike Binder, first of all, that there were a bunch in between those
00:53:40 where you didn't agree to do them, but the ones that you picked,
00:53:44 these scripts and performances that you gave are so great.
00:53:48 And talk about difficult things.
00:53:51 And again, you have "Monologue" and "Black or White," so great.
00:53:54 But just those two I feel like are something that people could go and revisit.
00:54:02 "Black or White" is a movie that deals with racism between Compton and Beverly Hills,
00:54:07 and I ended up funding that.
00:54:09 I paid for all of it.
00:54:11 No one wanted to make this little movie, and I thought it was pretty good, so away we went.
00:54:17 I told Mike we'd make it, and the person that was going to make it fell out,
00:54:20 and I went, "Oh, Jesus."
00:54:22 I told him we'd make it.
00:54:26 This is my pile of money up there.
00:54:29 I don't know the shit I have in the world that I made.
00:54:32 Am I going to risk it all for this movie called "Black or White"?
00:54:36 Yeah.
00:54:41 Didn't make very much money, but I loved making it.
00:54:44 At the start of your career--
00:54:46 Careful.
00:54:49 At the start of your career, the idea of going--
00:54:52 if you established yourself as a movie star, to then go and do television
00:54:55 was moving in the wrong direction.
00:54:57 That is obviously no longer the case, but it's no longer the case
00:55:00 because a few people like you changed that.
00:55:04 I think even before "Yellowstone," there was Hatfields and McCoys,
00:55:07 which was a History Channel three-parter.
00:55:12 I guess I just wonder, again, if you'd like to wrap "Yellowstone" into this,
00:55:16 but just the idea when you decided to go to television, what factored into that decision?
00:55:22 Just writing.
00:55:24 There's a mystery about it.
00:55:27 You can be charming all you want to be, but a movie has to--
00:55:31 you can't be charming for two hours, or in my case, three hours.
00:55:35 [laughter]
00:55:39 It has to be about writing.
00:55:41 That's all that supports movies.
00:55:44 If they want to make the same movie a sequel, they've got to figure out the writing.
00:55:48 But I like to--it's about writing.
00:55:51 Actors need it. They crave it.
00:55:54 Their careers, if they base it on writing,
00:55:57 I think they'll never feel bad about where their career has gone.
00:56:02 So writers are underestimated.
00:56:05 They're also whiners. They crybabies.
00:56:08 "Whoa, don't get--everybody pay me, and I never get the--"
00:56:14 You know, these jackasses.
00:56:17 They have the most power in Hollywood, and they don't know it.
00:56:22 Writers.
00:56:24 If you can write, if you can really write, you can do anything you want,
00:56:29 because every actor, every studio, everything is looking for the great script.
00:56:36 And so if you want to be a director, become a writer.
00:56:42 You can get anywhere you want if you can write,
00:56:44 because that's the blood of what we do, writing.
00:56:48 It's not movie stars. It's not anything.
00:56:51 It's writers.
00:56:53 Before we come to Horizon, I've got to ask you,
00:56:56 and I want to ask you about one of my favorite of your performances,
00:57:00 which is as John Dutton on Yellowstone.
00:57:03 We've had a number of, I think, five seasons so far of this.
00:57:08 It started out back in 2018, or went on Paramount Network,
00:57:13 which we learned about because of Yellowstone.
00:57:16 But I just wonder if you could share how that one was presented to you
00:57:21 and kind of what the appeal was of this guy, John Dutton, at the outset.
00:57:29 It was the writing. When are you going to catch on to what I like?
00:57:34 Well, in this case, the writing, it's Taylor Sheridan,
00:57:37 who'd done Hell or High Water. He'd done Wind River.
00:57:40 Did you guys know each other before that?
00:57:42 He had talked to me about Hell or High Water, and I just didn't--
00:57:46 I think that was--no, Wind River.
00:57:48 Wind River, yeah.
00:57:50 But no, it came to me, and I thought he was just spot on with what he'd done.
00:57:55 It's modern ranching, not a cowboy movie, but it's modern ranching.
00:58:00 It's still going on in America. We still ride horses.
00:58:03 We still get up before dark.
00:58:05 All that meat that you find in the stores and the restaurants,
00:58:08 somebody's doing that work. It's real work.
00:58:11 And so he really captured that world.
00:58:16 I respond to writing, and that's why I did it,
00:58:19 and that's why I did it for five years, and maybe I'll do it again
00:58:24 if the writing matches up with--
00:58:27 There's really no mystery how to catch me.
00:58:30 [laughter]
00:58:32 Just put the cheese right in the corner and put it right there,
00:58:35 and if it's like a really good script, we'll nail them. We'll get them.
00:58:40 Funny thing, your late father, who I was watching last night,
00:58:46 I watched the clip of you winning your Oscars for Dance with the Wolves,
00:58:49 and it's unbelievable, the resemblance that you two have.
00:58:53 But he apparently advised you against taking Yellowstone?
00:58:57 Yeah, he said it was too nasty.
00:58:59 He said, "You're going to lose your audience.
00:59:01 They have a filthy mouth. They have filthy mouths."
00:59:04 And he was in a kind of a--what do you call it?
00:59:12 Assisted living by that time.
00:59:15 And the first year it became really successful,
00:59:18 and all the nurses wanted to know about Yellowstone,
00:59:21 and he just kept telling me after that, "Don't you quit that show.
00:59:25 Don't you quit that show."
00:59:27 And I talked to all these nurses about you,
00:59:30 and they want to know what's happening next.
00:59:32 Four years it kept him alive, I think.
00:59:35 The same guy said, "This is terrible. This is nasty.
00:59:38 You're going to lose your audience, Kevin."
00:59:41 He said, "You're going to lose your one job that you had."
00:59:45 Just a couple stats related to that.
00:59:47 Season 4 finale in January 2022
00:59:50 was the most-watched telecast on cable since 2017.
00:59:54 Season 5 premiere in November 2022
00:59:57 was watched by 4 million more people than that.
01:00:00 This is getting--this show gets the kind of viewership
01:00:03 that nothing else really gets these days.
01:00:06 And I wonder if you, based on what you hear from fans,
01:00:10 what your own take is,
01:00:12 why has it popped so much in this time?
01:00:16 Is there something that it says about the world today or something else?
01:00:20 That's my standard answer with you, man.
01:00:23 It's writing. It's really written well. It's fun.
01:00:28 Who knows why?
01:00:30 It's very difficult to pick what a hit's going to be.
01:00:35 But it's not hard to pick what you think is good.
01:00:39 If you try to translate that you know what a hit is,
01:00:43 well, you're going to be chasing something.
01:00:45 But if you actually know what good writing is,
01:00:48 I think that's just going to support you.
01:00:50 And this is--it caught lightning with an audience
01:00:53 to see running horses, rivers that have never stopped,
01:00:57 mountains that have never moved.
01:00:59 Those are images that we'll never tire of.
01:01:01 And if you can put a story against it, that's what happened.
01:01:06 The show has been out of production for a little while.
01:01:10 There's been all kinds of anonymous people suggesting why that is.
01:01:14 You have not really weighed in on that
01:01:17 because I know you don't really do press unless you're promoting something.
01:01:20 So you're promoting something now.
01:01:22 And I wonder, I mean, just the suggestions that money, availability,
01:01:28 conflicts with the rise, and whatever people have been saying,
01:01:31 would you please set the record straight from your perspective
01:01:34 about what's going on and whether or not you expect to come back to the show?
01:01:39 I will come back to the show if it lives up to everything
01:01:44 that we've been trying to build on that show.
01:01:46 It's just things happen with a show.
01:01:48 Five seasons is a lot.
01:01:52 There was a season that we shut down completely,
01:01:55 and no one really knows about it.
01:01:57 About a month before we were to start filming, we didn't film,
01:02:03 and we went about 14 months before we came back.
01:02:06 No one really knows about that.
01:02:08 And I thought to myself, I can't let that happen to me again,
01:02:13 because you can't just pick up another job.
01:02:15 And so at that moment I thought, well, if it happens once, it could happen again.
01:02:20 I need to put myself in a position where that doesn't happen.
01:02:24 And so I just, after starting Horizon in 1988, I don't really fall out of love.
01:02:33 I love something in 1988. I love it today.
01:02:37 It's very hard to move me off a position.
01:02:40 It doesn't mean I won't, but until somebody says something that makes sense to me,
01:02:44 that's where I stand.
01:02:47 I know you want this Yellowstone thing.
01:02:50 It's just simply, Yellowstone was important to me.
01:02:54 It's still important to me.
01:02:56 I put it in first position, and I decided that I would make Horizon between the raindrops.
01:03:03 And so that's what I did.
01:03:05 I scheduled my movie between when we were supposed to make Yellowstone
01:03:08 and when we were supposed to start.
01:03:11 And somewhere along the line, they couldn't follow their dates.
01:03:15 And I had 400 people waiting for me and my own money there.
01:03:21 And so a series that I gave all my attention to for five seasons,
01:03:26 I still was prepared to do that, but I couldn't break my word with actors
01:03:31 that I made promises with and a promise I made to myself.
01:03:36 It doesn't matter how much money you throw at me.
01:03:40 Let me check with my lawyer for a second.
01:03:44 How much were they talking about?
01:03:48 Kevin, that much?
01:03:51 Maybe you should think about it.
01:03:55 I don't know what's wrong with me.
01:03:58 I'd like money too, right?
01:04:02 But it just doesn't inform my decisions.
01:04:06 It just doesn't.
01:04:08 Because if it all goes away, it all goes away.
01:04:11 I know how to work.
01:04:13 I can work on a fishing boat.
01:04:15 I can build a house.
01:04:17 I'm okay.
01:04:19 And I don't want to spit on my life because I'm afraid.
01:04:26 Well, here we are, up to Horizon now, and I've got to--
01:04:29 Fuck you, take a long time.
01:04:33 If that's what this was about, do you know where you're even at?
01:04:37 [laughter]
01:04:39 Now, 10 years ago, when you were doing Black or White,
01:04:46 I had the opportunity to interview you, and you said,
01:04:49 "I have another Western that's about 10 hours long.
01:04:52 What am I supposed to fucking do with that?"
01:04:56 You weren't sure--
01:04:59 I've changed. You can see I've changed.
01:05:02 I've changed.
01:05:04 You weren't sure if it would end up as a limited series
01:05:07 or a series of films or something else, but you had, as you've said,
01:05:10 already been thinking about it for years, going back to '88.
01:05:13 So how did this idea first come to you?
01:05:16 Why did it appeal to you?
01:05:18 And I want to reiterate that you are a co-writer of it with John Baird,
01:05:23 who you also did your Explorer books with.
01:05:26 So I guess to put that more briefly, just how did it evolve?
01:05:33 After I made Silverado, I wanted to make another Western,
01:05:38 and Mark Kazin, who's Larry Kazin's brother, I gave him an idea.
01:05:43 I wanted to do this cowboy movie, and it was called Sidewinder.
01:05:48 So I had it written in 1988, and I liked it, and I was going to--
01:05:53 I thought, "I'll make this. I'll fit this in."
01:05:58 But it was about two guys, and in 2003,
01:06:02 I decided I would make it right after Open Range,
01:06:05 and the studio wouldn't make it.
01:06:08 There was a $5 million difference, and the $5 million bugged me too much.
01:06:13 So I wouldn't make it for that.
01:06:22 And so about seven years passed, and I started thinking,
01:06:28 "Well, you know, this is probably the best example of who I am."
01:06:33 Not that I--you probably already have drawn your own conclusion of who I am.
01:06:39 But by the way, this is a really good format to talk with alcohol all around you.
01:06:46 But honestly, to have an interview like this,
01:06:48 I feel like I've been able to really truly communicate with you,
01:06:52 and there's nobody going to commercials.
01:06:55 I appreciate this format a little bit more than you might imagine.
01:07:01 But I had this idea that, you know, since the town seemed to really like that first one,
01:07:12 the one in 1988, that no one else would make,
01:07:16 I thought, "Well, fuck, I'm going to write four more."
01:07:23 "Really, Kevin? Nobody liked the first one?"
01:07:29 "Nobody. There's like eight studios. Nobody liked that first one,
01:07:35 and you're going to write four more?"
01:07:40 "Yeah, man, I have this really good idea."
01:07:45 "They didn't like the first one, and you're going to write four more?"
01:07:52 "Yeah, what do you think?"
01:07:54 Well, no one particularly was itching to make the next four either.
01:08:01 So I thought, "I didn't know what to think."
01:08:08 But there came a moment in my life where I said, "I'm not out of love."
01:08:13 "I'm going to make this, and I don't really care about you."
01:08:17 "In fact, I'm actually glad you're there. Come on down here."
01:08:21 "I'm going to make a Western. I'm going to make four of them."
01:08:24 "I'm not going to make one and see how it goes,
01:08:27 and then make something up because it went well."
01:08:30 "I'm going to make all four of these guys."
01:08:33 And so that's what I did, and that maybe doesn't make a lot of sense,
01:08:39 but half the people who went west didn't make any sense.
01:08:45 So the first one, which is premiering tonight, comes out in June.
01:08:49 The second one comes out in August.
01:08:52 Where do you stand on the additional installments?
01:08:56 I need some more money.
01:09:00 I do.
01:09:04 I need some of these big billionaires with fucking boats from here to here
01:09:11 who are fond of telling people they're billionaires to come with me and make a movie.
01:09:16 I don't have the money they had, and I've already made two of them.
01:09:20 Where are you, rich guys?
01:09:22 Well, they're right out on the harbor here.
01:09:24 Yeah, where are you, tough guys?
01:09:27 Let's put it all in the middle and see who blinks.
01:09:33 I'm serious, goddammit.
01:09:36 Where are you?
01:09:39 So me, I've been out there. I've shot three days already of Chapter 3.
01:09:45 I'm going to go back, and I think I have enough money to shoot another seven or eight days.
01:09:50 That's just me, and it's just the way I like it.
01:09:56 I'd like it to be easier, but I don't think it ever is going to be for me.
01:10:03 And I don't think what I love is that much different than what you love,
01:10:07 but I think that what I love is just a little different, and I think that's why I love it,
01:10:12 and I think that's why I feel like it's worthy of sharing.
01:10:15 It's just a little different.
01:10:17 So I hope tonight, for those of you who see it, I just ask you to do one thing,
01:10:23 and when the lights go out, and it's about to start, and you know it's about to start,
01:10:29 I just want you to close your eyes for a second and become a little girl again,
01:10:35 or a little boy, and open them and go for a ride with me to Horizon.
01:10:42 [Applause]
01:10:50 It's terrific.
01:10:51 That's how you close a show. I don't want another question from you.
01:10:54 I'm closing it. I'm closing it. I'm closing it.
01:10:56 It's a terrific movie. I can't wait for other people to see Part 1.
01:11:00 I can't wait to see Part 2.
01:11:02 Thank you so much for squeezing this in while you're here in Cannes, and keep it up.
01:11:08 It's fun watching. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
01:11:11 [Applause]
01:11:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]