Kevin Costner breaks down his most iconic roles from films and television, including 'Field of Dreams,' 'Dances with Wolves,' 'The Bodyguard,' 'Yellowstone,' 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,' 'Bull Durham,' 'Silverado,' 'For Love of the Game,' 'The Untouchables,' 'JFK,' 'Wyatt Earp' and 'Horizon: An American Saga.'Director: Kristen DeVoreDirector of Photography: Grant BellEditor: Robby MasseyGuest: Kevin CostnerProducer: Sam DennisLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James PipitoneProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Dana MathewsCamera Operator: Shay Eberle-GunstSound Mixer: Kari BarberProduction Assistant: Brock SpitaelsGroomer: Francisco PerezPost Production Supervisor: Rachael KnightPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Andy Morell
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 There was a real problem because a lot of people felt that that would never get on the radio.
00:04 That's not my problem. My problem is my movie. But I said, "Don't be so sure."
00:10 The song had a real second life, a little Dolly Parton song.
00:13 Is this heaven? No.
00:27 It's Iowa. A good story requires a good script for it to somehow leap off the page
00:32 and become a movie. That little movie had gold dust all over it. Not in the way that I thought
00:38 it would be a big hit, whereas gold dust on it in the way it moved me personally. And I think if I
00:44 can be moved personally, I feel like in moviemaking, I can find a way to share that on a mass level.
00:52 And so when I read "Field of Dreams" on a couch by myself, the first page was sweet.
00:59 Somebody's talking to him in the corn. Okay, let's keep going. And it wound its way not to a gunfight
01:06 or to a car chase or to a big fight. Its journey took you to a place where you look
01:11 and you saw your father. And it's biblical for things that go unsaid between father and son,
01:20 between mother and daughter, things we wish we would have said.
01:23 And this little movie in the corn got me all the way. And suddenly it wasn't a movie anymore. It
01:31 was truth. And it was, I wish I could have said that in my life. And he says, "Do you want to
01:37 have a catch?" You want to have a catch? I'd like that. And I thought, movies can be about that.
01:48 So if you were looking for the car crash, if you were looking for the gunfight,
01:52 you're going to walk right by things like "Field of Dreams." And it's the same way I felt when I
01:58 read "Bull Durham" or when I read "Sobirano." I felt like I had a giant secret.
02:03 If you build it, he will come.
02:16 Hey, Eddie! Eddie, what was that?
02:19 There was an interesting thing because Robin Williams, bless his heart, there was a moment
02:25 when I asked the director, I said, "You know, Robin Williams is a big star, as big as you ever
02:30 want to get." So when he picked me to do it, kind of over Robin Williams, because it seems like a
02:36 natural for Robin Williams. And he said, "I'm pretty sure that Robin Williams hears voices
02:42 in the corn. I'm kind of sure that you don't. They're going to end up believing you, Kevin,
02:47 because they're going to see how it works." If you build it, he will come.
02:53 All right, that's it.
02:54 They might have said "voice," and I'm like pulling a piece of corn. I forget what happened,
03:01 but it's like, gee, I had to act like I heard a voice, right? So I did.
03:10 I'd never known a people so eager to laugh, so devoted to family, so dedicated to each other.
03:16 And the only word that came to mind was harmony.
03:19 I asked three pretty prominent directors to maybe think about directing it, and all of them had
03:24 something that they would do different, something that they didn't agree with in the script. I won't
03:28 tell you what the names were, but I said, "Oh my goodness, I think I actually need to direct this,
03:32 not because I think I can make it better, but I think it'll be more what it looks like on paper."
03:38 I believe in the written word. My script is my Bible. It's a document that's living and breathing.
03:44 I can protect it, and that's what I intend to do. I connected in a much deeper way than I
03:49 anticipated as I started that script. I started to become involved. I love the people, and I love the
03:56 animals. And I knew that they were all going to be casualties in the end, and that makes for drama.
04:03 -Buff. -Buff. -Buff. -Buff. -Buff, to talk. -What allowed for the miscommunication, what allowed
04:13 for the danger, what allowed for the confusion, what allowed for the humor, was that they couldn't
04:18 talk. The miscommunication led to so much drama, and occasionally a sense of humor, which when
04:25 people couldn't talk and thought somebody was saying one thing. You see people have a real
04:29 desire and see what happens when they can't speak. So much bad can come out of that.
04:34 Well, I'll tell you what was uncertain was, were we going to even be able to find the buffalo?
04:43 And we finally did in the middle of South Dakota. Number one, I was so grateful that they even
04:48 existed. And then number two, had to negotiate with the rancher, "Will you let me chase them?"
04:54 He was formerly a lieutenant governor of the state, so he was a pretty evolved guy, but he said
04:59 he wanted to chase my buffalo. And I was young, and he finally said, "Okay, we'll chase him.
05:04 We'll chase him." And that son of a bitch, I love him forever. He's like 80 years old. He got in
05:09 his truck. He got five other trucks. He got a helicopter, and we started chasing him for six
05:15 days. And on the sixth day, all the buffalo finally backed up. I was waiting to work that day.
05:22 They'd all backed up the herd, and a helicopter came down low and faced off with this bull, just
05:29 the way I'm looking at this camera, about 10 feet back more. And they were doing everything to make
05:34 the buffalo run, and the buffalo wouldn't run. And this one bull finally charged the helicopter.
05:39 The helicopter lifted up, just missed him. Roy said, "They're not going to run anymore."
05:44 They were done. The bull finally said, "Six days is enough." It was fast. It was scary.
05:52 And it was, like you say, it was beautiful. That's something I'll never forget.
05:55 I remember after the first time we chased him, it didn't work very well.
06:03 They told me the buffalo wouldn't run downhill. You had to run them uphill,
06:06 which sounded a little bit odd. But I said, "Okay," to the experts. We ran them uphill the
06:10 first time people were coming. I could tell how uptight and everybody was nervous. They went all
06:15 over the place. So now all the riders met on our walk back to the camera, and I was realizing,
06:20 "Gee, we didn't get very much film on this." And we had 3,500 buffalo.
06:24 But as I looked to my left and I looked to my right, all the Native Americans,
06:28 and they were all Native American riders, rodeo riders. And as we're riding back,
06:34 and we were together, we're still far away, so nobody else knew what we were talking about.
06:38 I looked at them, and I looked at them, and I looked behind me, and I said,
06:42 "You didn't shoot any arrows." And the guy went,
06:48 "I know, and you didn't shoot, and you didn't shoot, none of you guys shot any arrows."
06:53 What happened was, it was kind of holding on for our life. No one had ever done it. No one
06:59 knew what to expect. So it was just this kind of thing. After that, they never came back
07:06 with a full quiver. The whole ride of passage for them was, when we rode back after each take,
07:12 their quiver was empty. That became something. But that first one, maybe one guy got one arrow off,
07:19 and then was just amazed at these animals running around him. It was really something.
07:25 I don't think I ever told that story. It marked me. It marked me in a real way,
07:30 not because of its success, but because people were willing to at least see what I was willing to do.
07:38 [Music]
07:42 So have you ever liked anybody?
07:44 What do you mean?
07:48 Like me, a girl.
07:52 Yeah, a long time ago.
07:56 What happened? Do you mind if I ask?
08:00 You mind if I don't answer?
08:01 The idea, well, who is going to play Rachel Marin? There was all, I want to say, the usual suspects,
08:07 but none of them fit. They were really good actresses. And I remember seeing Whitney Houston,
08:12 I thought, I'm going to have her play this. And what she did for the movie and what the movie
08:17 did for her is obvious. Whitney trusted me really early on. And I said, you're going to need to.
08:23 I said, but you're not going to have an entourage. I don't have one, and you're not going to have one.
08:28 I said, if there's a person that's important to you, that person can be on the set, but nobody
08:34 else. And she trusted that. And that's how Bodyguard, I don't know how the rest of the
08:39 career played out with what the sets were like. But for me, I said, I want you to be able to hear
08:44 my voice. It was just about knowing she could trust me, that my whole intention was for her
08:50 to look good. And she desperately wanted to. We all do.
08:53 [Music]
09:00 I read that it was your idea to have the beginning of "I Will Always Love You" be a cappella.
09:05 Yes. When you want to impress, you get all the bells and whistles, right? You get all the bells
09:11 and whistles and the symphony is playing and you can impress. But think about an apology
09:15 that you would want to say to somebody, that you would want them to understand,
09:20 that you really meant every word you were saying to them. And what if you did it without music?
09:25 I don't need music to tell you that I love you, that I want to apologize to you,
09:31 that you did something for me. And of course the music kicked in after, but it was so much
09:37 more powerful for her to start that without music. There was a real problem because a lot of people
09:43 felt that that would never get on the radio. And I said, well, that may be, but that's not my
09:48 problem. My problem is my movie. And that's what I'm taking care of. But I said, don't be so sure
09:55 the song had a real second life, little Dolly Parton song.
09:58 ♪ We'll always love you ♪
10:04 Did she teach you to sing any?
10:05 Did she teach me to sing anything? No one's going to sing in front of her.
10:08 Can I give you some advice, Casey? Someday your son's going to test you.
10:18 He's going to force you to make a decision that not only determines his future, but your place in
10:24 it. I want you to remember me standing here, son, before you make that decision, because this,
10:30 this is a consequence of choosing wrong.
10:34 When number one, you have a legacy and your legacy is your land and it's come,
10:38 what's come before you. And then a man wants to protect that for not only the generations that
10:43 have come out of respect, but for things to go forward. And in a raw place like the country,
10:49 where not the whole world is watching you, it can be abrasive. How the world operates outside
10:55 the lines of his property is one thing. How it operates on his property will be another thing.
10:59 So it's, it's kind of brutal in a lot of ways, kind of very biblical. It's just the way it's
11:06 going to be. And so that's the way that character was drawn. I wanted to serve the writing that
11:11 Taylor was doing, and I found my own way of doing things, but I can't say like I invented anything.
11:19 Get back before that thing eats somebody.
11:20 It seems friendly.
11:22 It's not. Now get back.
11:25 We won't get any closer.
11:27 You see that fence? That's mine. That fucking fence down there, that's mine too.
11:34 Everything this side of that mountain, all the way over to here, mine too.
11:39 I love the scene when the tourists had seen a bear because it happens. They saw a bear out
11:44 actually in the environment. And I happened to be on my way to something. I'm in a tuxedo and
11:48 I happen to also have my gun in the car, which makes sense. He, you know, talked about the notion
11:53 of what was his. I thought that was a very classic scene for me. I think dealing with some
11:58 environmentalists was kind of good fun too. There's so many scenes that were written so well
12:03 in Yellowstone for me.
12:04 You should bring the net if you're planning on a big one.
12:06 Why can't we live right here? Like this. All the time.
12:16 You know, I ask myself the same thing, grandson, every day.
12:18 Every day.
12:21 Well, I think that's one time when he, John could be different. It's about how you teach
12:26 someone young. Maybe there's a softer thing to John about how you explain things. And certainly
12:31 that's part of the job in our life. That's what, what does an older man have to do?
12:35 Offer a younger man or a boy. It's a gentleness. It's an inclusiveness.
12:40 It's a sense of trying to empower him.
12:44 We can lose him in the forest.
12:52 Sherwood Forest is haunted, master.
12:55 Either we take our chances with the ghost or become ghosts ourselves.
12:57 It was a real page turner. I normally don't think I would have wanted to do that, but it was so
13:04 physical. Swinging, running, jumping, Maid Marian on horses. It was just good American fun. They
13:12 came to me. I read it. I thought it was really good and I wanted to do it.
13:16 Most kids get to shoot a bow and arrow. In my instance, I had shot bow and arrow, not
13:25 like archery. It was just like, I, I tried to kill a lot of things when I was little,
13:29 you know, not like the neighbor's cat or anything like that, but I would go out into the, I lived
13:34 in the country and I wanted to like provide for my mom. You know, I saw myself as being that kind
13:41 of guy. Recognize this? It belonged to your father. Appropriate, don't you think, that I
13:55 now use it to send you to meet him? I almost said a really funny thing about me. He said,
14:00 oh, another American actor who really likes to fight.
14:07 When Kevin directed me and him, we were really going at it. Another American who likes to fight.
14:12 He was a beauty. Running on the backs of three horses and then jumping on another one. I love
14:18 doing my own stunts. I just love it. I remember hunting some mushrooms out in the field with one
14:22 of my friends. He said, they're out there. And he goes, do you want to go find them? This was that
14:27 day. I had a big sword fight with, with Alan Rickman that afternoon. He was the stunt guy
14:32 playing a little boy. And he goes, Hey, there's some magic mushrooms out in this field. And
14:36 because you want to go look for them. I said, okay, let's go. It was an opening scene with
14:39 those little boys being chased by a dog in that field. So we're out looking for them. Everybody
14:44 went to lunch and he found one. And then he, he found another one. I couldn't find one.
14:49 I couldn't find one mushroom. After about the fifth one he found, I said, I said, Nick, I said,
14:56 how, how are you? How are you? I'm looking. How are you finding these mushrooms? He says, well,
15:02 you have to eat one. And it tells you where the rest of them are. And I thought I'm not eating
15:07 enough mushroom. We're having a sword fight, Nick. At, at, at, you've eaten, you've eaten
15:12 some mushrooms because we're going to be with swords in about an hour. And he looked at me and
15:17 went, yeah. I said, okay, well, let's keep looking, but let's not eat any more mushrooms.
15:29 God, sucker teed off in there like he knew I was going to throw a fastball.
15:32 He did know. How? I told him.
15:36 When it first came to me, they wanted me to play Nuke. I said, no, I'm not going to play Nuke. I
15:42 said, I would rather play Crash. I felt that I had done the Nuke character in Silverado,
15:49 the little out of control. Then I met Ron and Ron and I went to the batting cages together. I did
15:56 that on purpose for him because I wanted him to be able to say to any actor that he was going to
16:01 hire, well, Kevin went to the hitting cages because a lot of people will say they can roller skate.
16:05 A lot of people will say they know how to ride a horse. And a lot of people will say they know
16:09 how to play baseball. You don't have to be a great athlete to see a person who knows how to play.
16:15 But Ron captured something so real, minor league baseball, and he did it without the guy
16:23 getting there. That broke with the tradition. The tradition is, oh, they'll call him up and
16:27 he'll hit a home run. No, he never makes it. The kid makes it. There was something
16:32 romantic and golden and sad and heroic in it. And Ron understood the romance. And he did the exact
16:40 same with 10 Cup. He didn't have me when the US Open. He had me in Plode. It resonates with men
16:49 and women that that he was at least true to his character. There's a romance in that
16:54 we don't have to win in order to be respected. We have to stay true to ourselves. We have to find
17:02 the relevance and who we are and not strive to get become what's popular.
17:08 I mean, everybody wants to be popular, myself included,
17:12 but I don't need to lose myself in order to do that.
17:16 Your place or mine? Despite my rejection of most Judeo-Christian ethics, I am,
17:22 within the framework of the baseball season, monogamous.
17:25 Susan Sarandon just was, number one, a dream partner and become this long distance friend
17:33 where we don't talk. But there's nothing I don't think I could ask that Susan wouldn't do for me.
17:39 There's nothing that she needs that I wouldn't try for her. And there's just a silent understanding
17:44 that that's the case. She's the kind of girl that can make every guy think they have a chance,
17:49 and nobody has a chance except what she wants to have happen. And she's just a total woman.
17:57 We got ourselves a natural disaster.
18:00 It almost was a scene that wasn't going to be in there,
18:08 but Ron and I had this relationship where he'd say, "Okay, try it. Do it."
18:12 [Music]
18:15 So it was late in the night, and I got all the guys on the field. Ron goes, "I'll set up the
18:20 cameras." And I laid this thing called visqueen down, which is plastic. We threw dirt all over
18:26 the top of it. And we said, "Turn on the sprinklers." And Ron and I both didn't know
18:30 it was going to happen. And then we just started sliding from first to second, second to third,
18:38 to home, not making it, slipping and falling. But it is a boy's game. It's just played at the
18:45 highest level by men on the professional circuit, but it's still a boy's game.
18:50 And to slide in the mud, there's nobody that doesn't want to do that.
18:54 [Music]
18:59 What's the matter, Peyton? You afraid I couldn't get those two behind me?
19:02 I don't want you getting anybody in my place.
19:06 [Music]
19:14 Boom.
19:14 That movie was such a miracle for me. I was able to work in the big chill. I was able to
19:22 watch Lawrence Caston work and the cast that he assembled on the big chill. And I thought to
19:26 myself, I was in the right place. Regardless that I didn't appear in that movie, I realized I had
19:34 landed in my own way. Being with Caston was a big difference maker for me, regardless of what
19:39 happened at big chill. Silverado was the thing that he allowed me to be in. And it was a great
19:47 American character, a young guy full of juice. And I'll be perfectly honest, I was a little
19:54 disappointed in that role because Kevin Kline and Scott Glenn were getting to play the prototype
20:00 who said very few things, very laconic, but then got to do the thing. That was the
20:06 product. Here it was, I had this character that was just raging against the horizon, if you will.
20:12 He was loud and he had a great joy.
20:16 I walked out in the street and this fella tries to shoot me in the back.
20:20 You had to kill him?
20:22 No, no, no. I winged him and he dropped his gun.
20:25 You're in here for winging a guy.
20:29 No, not exactly. Because see this friend of mine.
20:33 What friend's that?
20:34 It's the one with the shotgun.
20:36 It was certainly the right role for me. I had planned in my life that I knew I would do
20:40 Westerns. Ask me why, I can't tell you. I knew I would make them. So I had already in my mind
20:45 the kind of characters that I would line up with. I didn't contemplate the out of control guy that
20:51 was great fun. And I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity to make that and play opposite
20:58 all the guys and women in that show. There was a matinee, like that Saturday afternoon matinee,
21:05 that go back movie feeling that Western had. It's fun. It was big fun.
21:10 I'm going to throw a little harder than usual today.
21:17 There's your warning.
21:19 Chap, don't throw it away too early.
21:26 Today I'm throwing hard, Gus.
21:28 The movie wasn't going to happen in Yankee Stadium and we were already had a crew out there
21:32 and no one knew what to do about it. But George wasn't going to let it happen.
21:36 It wasn't fair. And it came down to I didn't have no lawyer, no studio executive. Our movie was
21:43 dead in the water. And somebody said, Kevin, you need to talk to him. And I was like,
21:48 where are all the tough guys? Where's all the everybody? What are you talking about?
21:54 I have to talk to George. But he had said, no, it wasn't going to happen. We had a contract.
21:59 So I call up George. He's a legendary guy, difficult guy. And I wasn't certain
22:04 how I was going to go about doing it, but so much was riding on it. And so I called him up and I
22:10 said, hello, George. He goes, hello, Kev. And I said, hi, George. He goes, what do you need, Kev?
22:15 And I said, well, George, we're not, it sounds like we can't come to Yankee Stadium. He goes,
22:23 that's right. And I'm thinking to myself, where's my dad? I need somebody to help me with this. I
22:28 don't know what to say to this guy. We had, I said, George, but we had a contract. He goes,
22:31 I know that, but I can't let it happen, Kev. And I said, all right, George, you want to explain
22:36 that to me? Why? He goes, well, the Yankees lose. The Yankees what? They lose. Can't let that
22:44 happen, Kev. I said, George, it's a perfect game. I pitch a perfect game. You don't even get a hit.
22:49 Yes, you lose. Yeah, the Yankees can't lose. And I thought, well, we've just lost the stadium
22:54 because I'm not going to change the plot. So I listened to him. It was a little bit of silence.
22:58 And I finally said, and I use different words than I'm going to use with you. I said, George,
23:03 what are you talking about? You can guess what I filled in. And he said, what? I said, what are
23:08 you talking about? I said, the Yankees don't lose. They win. Now I'm really lying right here right
23:14 now because they do lose. I kicked their ass with a perfect game. And he goes, what do you mean they
23:19 don't lose? And I said, tap dancing. I said, you guys win the pennant. This is a meaningless game.
23:26 You guys actually win. You don't need this game. In fact, you even bring up minor leaders. I'm
23:30 thinking, God, I'm just a world-class liar here. And I said, you win. In fact, you not only win
23:35 the pennant, George, you go on to win the World Series. He goes, we do? I said, you do in my
23:41 story. Just we're not going to see that part. And he went, I don't know what the hell happened,
23:47 but he said, okay, but you know what this organization means to me? I said, I certainly do.
23:54 You win the World Series, George. I swear to God, you do. Turns out they did. They won that year.
23:59 And you know, Steve, you get the feeling that Billy Chappell isn't pitching against left-handers.
24:06 He isn't pitching against pinch hitters. He isn't pitching against the Yankees. He's pitching
24:11 against time. There was a lot of things going on. My mom and dad were still alive. They watched me.
24:16 My mom and dad went to every Little League game I ever played. They went and watched me direct the
24:20 whole movie, Dance with the Wolves, up on a mountain in Winnebago. My mom sat in a lawn chair.
24:27 She said they wouldn't bother me. She'd wave at me every morning. I would go out to direct,
24:31 and I would walk up to all the rest of the guys, and I'd see my mom waving at me, and I'd go.
24:35 And I'd go direct the movie. My whole life was Little League for my parents.
24:40 And so for love of the game, they were on the stands and watched me shoot that movie.
24:46 What is it about baseball that connects with Maine?
24:49 I don't know. You know, people argue that you shouldn't make one baseball. I made three of them.
24:53 I mean, I made Bull Durham and Field of Dreams back to back, but they didn't seem
24:57 strictly about baseball. They separated themselves. That's why I could do it. Field
25:04 of Dreams was not a story I was going to let pass me by. And conventional wisdom,
25:08 don't do a second baseball movie. I wasn't going to let Bull Durham pass me by,
25:13 because it was everything a movie should be. And so I didn't do another baseball movie and would
25:18 never do another one. But then I read For Love of the Game, and I'm not going to let it pass me by.
25:24 When I sense something, and I feel like I can connect with an audience,
25:28 I don't want to let it pass me by.
25:31 Come out here, Clifford. You want to fight? You want to fight you and me right here?
25:41 That's it. Come on. What's the matter? You afraid to come out from behind your men?
25:44 You afraid to stand up for yourself? You want to do it now? You want to do it now?
25:48 Come on, you son of a bitch. Untouchables was a really well-written script. David Mamet had
25:54 written really a very perfect script. And so I wanted to be a part of it. Brian De Palma directed
25:59 it. And of course, Sean Connery was in it, you know, Robert De Niro. And it was a good moment
26:04 for me to be in that movie. What I need is a small group of men, handpicked, starting with you.
26:10 And how we... I am just a poor beat cop. Now, how can I help you?
26:17 Just work with me. But why should I, though? He always called me Mr. Nash. Mr. Nash,
26:24 can I talk to you? And I was like, shit, every time he'd say that, I'd go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:29 We became friends. And I actually didn't think Sean was the kind of guy that was going to
26:32 like me. I don't know why, but he did. He was good to me. And I learned a lot because my eyes
26:40 were open. I wish I was a better actor when I did The Untouchables, but I was where I was at.
26:45 I go to the set every day, even if I wasn't working. I like what's happening. I wasn't a
26:51 very good student in school. I tried, but I wasn't very, very good. I feel that sometimes I was,
26:58 I don't know, kind of dumb. There were certain things that I felt like I had to learn on Monday
27:03 again after learning them the week before. But I never felt that about the movies or about history.
27:09 It's something that stuck to me. Everything in the building blocks of my movie thing,
27:15 once I got started, all made sense to me and it mushroomed for me in a way no other subject did
27:21 in my academic career. I can't believe they killed him because he wanted to change things.
27:35 In our time, in our country. Kings are killed, Mr. Garrison. Politics is power.
27:41 Nothing more. Oh, don't take my word for it. Don't believe me. Do your own work, your own thinking.
27:46 The size of this is beyond me.
27:51 It's a complicated thing. JFK was such a big loss for us. A sense of poetry, a sense of
27:59 kind of intellectual leadership. A lot of people want to find the faults in John Kennedy,
28:04 but there was a moment in time where he was golden, when it mattered the most,
28:08 when a lot of things were in the balance and what happened was a calm, a kind of
28:13 something deep. Don't forget, he served in war. So for all the things they want to say,
28:18 this was the president that served in war. There was a loss. We've had great confusion
28:25 about what happened that day. I just think he had so many enemies at the highest level.
28:30 He threatened to fire Alan Dulles to break the CIA into a thousand pieces.
28:34 He was going out with Giancarlo's girlfriend. What are you thinking about, John? His brother
28:39 was going to put Jimmy, who helped put John in office, now Bobby was going to put Hoff in jail.
28:44 And then there was Castro, who I actually talked about this personally, this moment when John was
28:50 killed. He and I talked just before we watched 13 Days Together in Cuba. And he goes, "I was
28:55 so afraid they were going to pin that on me. I was terrified." This is not the country in which
29:01 I was born in and it's certainly not the country that I want to die in.
29:04 Denison wrote, "Authority forgets a dying king."
29:09 This was never more true than for John F. Kennedy, whose murder was probably
29:16 one of the most terrible moments in the history of our country.
29:20 That was an interesting moment because we had scheduled it for three days.
29:24 I'm very slow in my memory. It takes me about 30 days to be able to perform a scene.
29:29 I just don't know what it is. I think I can kind of memorize like most people,
29:34 but I can't perform for some reason unless it just gets really deep inside me. And so I knew
29:41 that entire script a month before we ever went to work. I remember we set up to do the rehearsal
29:46 for the courtroom drama. It was like 11 pages, just completely word to word to word all the way
29:52 going through. And I did the whole thing and Oliver said, "You know the whole thing?" I said,
29:58 "Yeah, I know the whole thing." Because he goes, "Well, I was going to break it up into pieces.
30:01 You know the whole thing?" I said, "Yeah, I know." And he says, "I want you to go back to
30:05 your dressing room. Come back in an hour." He set up like four or five cameras and we were done at
30:11 noon. I did it six times through, you know, and we had it. But I was proud to do that speech.
30:18 I really was. It's up to you. That was Oliver's idea. I think there was something
30:27 glorious about it when he said, "Don't forget your dying king." This is a country, you know,
30:34 for the people and by the people and nothing, you know, you ever do will be as important.
30:41 There was a cry out for justice. What happened that day? We lost something special.
30:48 And it seemed unlikely that one guy could do that. But I don't know and I don't profess to
30:53 have the truth. But we're right to look back. Thanks, but I got some coffee coming.
31:03 I don't do well on whiskey. If you'd pay for my coffee, I'd be much obliged.
31:11 Drink! Mr. I've been in a real bad mood for a couple of years, so why don't you leave me alone?
31:18 I loved Wyatt Earp. I just, I just loved that movie. We got into a level of competition with
31:24 Tombstone. A good friend said, "Look, we can postpone this movie. We don't want to compete."
31:29 And I said, "Look," I said, "I'm sure this writer, director, wants to make this movie. Let
31:36 them." And then this kind of space race started. And I always regretted that there was this kind
31:43 of weird competition. And it was a fun movie, Tombstone, but it's too bad it went the way it
31:49 went. I was excited to get to that because it's, you know, listen, we want to roll around in the
32:08 dirt. We want to save the day. We want to get the girl, you know, and we want the gunfight. You
32:13 know, guns are loud. They're frightening and nerves are tested and people don't always hit
32:19 what they're aiming at. It's remarkable that Wyatt was as many skirmishes as he was and was never,
32:24 you know, hit. And the relationship he had with Doc Holliday was very mythical. Two guys that
32:29 seemingly, the more you read about them, wouldn't seem like they would be friends. And they probably
32:34 just as easy could have been enemies, except for their, whatever that first meeting was,
32:39 something had to happen. And I'm sure Doc tested Wyatt in his own way and found him not to be
32:48 wanting, meaning there was something that sometimes people make up their mind about.
32:53 And while we'll never know what that exact moment was, Larry created a nice, a nice thing where
33:00 actually Wyatt didn't like how he was addressing him. He said, you know, you can call me Wyatt
33:05 or you can call me Earp. - Not both.
33:08 - Sometimes it's just something like that. It didn't have to be me saving him by shooting
33:13 something. Oh, now we'll be friends. - You and I are standing guard in one
33:22 of the last great open spaces. These people think that if you're tough enough, smart enough,
33:35 mean enough, all this will be there someday. - I wasn't interested in doing a remake.
33:43 Of anything I wanted to just keep breaking ground after Wyatt, Earp and Silverado. I commissioned
33:50 Mark Kaz. I had an idea for two characters, one who was pretty lucky in situations,
33:57 violent situations. Another one who was unlucky, was kind of bloody. He had difficulty coming out
34:03 of those things without one either being able to talk himself out of it or whatever. When it came
34:09 time to try to make it the first time following Open Range, I was just unable to do it. I wanted
34:16 a little bit more money to do it, but the studio didn't want to come across with that money.
34:21 And so I just am a little bit stubborn. And so I wouldn't do it and I didn't get to do it. And
34:26 I couldn't do it for less. And it languished there. And about six years later, I started to think,
34:33 "Wow, the one Western Open Range did pretty well." And I was thinking, "Man, people were so hot for
34:41 my script in 1988. Duh, nobody wanted it. Why don't I make four more of the same movie?" And
34:50 it was kind of a two-hander. It was the way a lot of Westerns are. It was traditional in the sense
34:56 that there was a town that already existed. A person coming in off the horizon, so to speak,
35:00 my character, a character that you don't know a lot about. And he comes into a place and I think
35:06 the idea is that the formula of the Western is he's turning his back on some skills that he has
35:12 honed that either haunt him or he doesn't want to keep them going or whatever.
35:17 You use that much this year?
35:18 Haven't had much need of it yet.
35:20 And so in the perfect formula of the Western, he's drawn back into
35:26 a thing that he's not want to do and the town itself needs it. Our kind of aggressive nature
35:34 coming across this country, we came to places where there had never been a bridge, never been
35:39 a town, never been anything. And the people that were there, we found them an inconvenience in
35:44 their own country and we began to displace them. We began to do more than that. We began to hunt
35:49 them. We killed them. We tried to eradicate them. And so these towns all have that in common.
35:56 So I thought about what if we saw this in the very beginning and perhaps even what if
36:01 even the town's growth was a bit of a lie. United States, America, whatever you want to call it,
36:09 North America was like a Garden of Eden with the animals and the things. They were so,
36:14 it was breathtaking. And that story leaked back. And what happened is people made their way to the
36:22 East, to this continent. They were told there was a place out West. And if you were mean enough,
36:28 if you were strong enough, if you were sourceful enough, it could be yours. And anyone could be
36:34 a king if they had that kind of tenacity, that kind of luck. But what they weren't told was there
36:40 would be a terrible struggle over this with the people who'd been here for thousands of years.
36:45 There's no army of this earth.
36:50 It's going to stop those wagons coming as little as they're wanted.
36:53 I don't know that it's your typical Western, but it has all the trappings of everything
37:02 that you do see in the West, random violence. But more than that, you see random kindness. You see
37:08 gestures. You see a lot of thing about people. And that's important to me. We will get to our
37:14 action. I promise. I promise you'll also be able to recognize yourself and wonder about it.
37:21 order.
37:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]