But the film still made a huge impact: “We rehearsed for a month,” Costner recalls.
“Literally 30 days.
That really formed how I go about my profession.
Emerson Miller/Paramount Network; Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal; Ben Glass/Warner Bros.
All the other actors were very, very experienced.
I absorbed everything about how the set was conducted and the process.”
“His vision trumps people’s curiosity,” Costner says.
“It would only be judged.
“That was a really big, giant moment for me, to be inSilverado,” Costner says.
“I always felt that I would end up playing a laconic kind of Western character.
Columbia Pictures/Photofest
And here came this young guy full of juice… That was a perfect role for me.
I’ve always known that it was a giant block in my foundation.”
And audiences have loved seeing him on a horse ever since.
Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection
“you’re free to’t help but want to be the guy on the horse in a Western.
You don’t want to give that over to your double.
You want to do it.”
Everett Collection
Costner says he found the script, originally titledFinished With Engines, and brought it to Orion Pictures.
Connery won an Oscar, but it was De Niro’s unpredictable performance that proved most challenging.
“That was problematic for me I just didn’t feel like Eliot Ness went to that place.
Everett Collection
He’s a straight arrow.
It was difficult for him to get down into the gutter.”
“I’m wiping things off without ever taking my eyes off [her].
Universal/courtesy Everett Collection
What I like doing is taking a script and then finding the physical,” he explains.
So I loaded up that island.
When you really want somebody, [nothing] makes a difference.
Ben Glass
Oh, the milk spilled?
Who gives a sh?
Our big action moment is ‘Do you want to play catch?’
Ben Glass/Warner Bros.
It wasn’t a fistfight or a crash.
And people’s hearts broke into a thousand pieces.”
In spite of all this, Costner almost didn’t do the film.
Ben Glass
He was committed to another project, andRobin Williams was temporarily attached instead.
When I finally asked [director] Phil Alden Robinson, ‘Why did you wait for me?
Because I think Robin’s really great,’ he was like, I do too.
Paul Chedlow
Though he’d been working in Hollywood for a decade, Costner was new to the Oscar glow.
“I didn’t even really know how to behave after I won,” he says.
“I caught a little bit of flak because I didn’t go to any of the after-parties.
Chris Large/History
I didn’t know you were supposed to.
I thought people that went there knew all those people,” he explains.
I didn’t realize you [were supposed to] make the rounds."
Courtesy of STXfilms
“That wasn’t even Whitney, actually,” Costner reveals.
She’d gone home and that was her double, and her head was buried into my shoulder.
Which was appropriate anyway, she was frightened.
Paramount Network
I picked that picture out because my friend Ben Glass took it.
I sent it to Warner Brothers and said, There’s the poster.
“I’m very proud of that movie; I stand up for it,” he says.
“I know what the flaws of it are.
I know exactly what they are.
I went through a divorce at that time.
“I’m watching this show,” he remembers.
In their skit, they said every title to every movie I’ve made.
They go, like, ‘Stay away from him he’s untouchable.’
I’m thinking, I hear it too, I hear it too.
Costner credits the film’s success to his costar and the script.
“She’s just a great dance partner,” he says of Allen.
“She found that bitterness, and she could be a little abusive as a character.
It was really very astute writing.”
“And I’m like, ‘Wow, really?
Is that the conventional wisdom right now?’
I said I won’t do it unless every scene is put back in.
In the end, the series spanned three two-hour episodes and aired over three nights.
Costner says he was more mesmerized than challenged by Sorkin’s notoriously loquacious dialogue.
So there was a logic to it,” he says.
No pressure, right?
“[Sorkin] came at so many things sideways, but yet they were so understandable.
I’m going to give you three years in three minutes.
But don’t call it a Western.
“The themes out in the country will always be a draw to me.
It’s not ‘Here he goes again.’
That area of our country is still alive [and] contemporary.”
