Horizon: An American Saga — Part 1 is only his latest high-stakes gamble.
Everything you have read about Kevin Costner putting up his own money to make Horizon: An American Saga — Part 1 is true.
Well, almost everything.
During our interview for the cover story of our current issue, the former Yellowstone star indicated that most of the stories about his movie — which opens June 28 at theaters and drive-ins everywhere — actually underestimate his investment.
“I mean, I see where it says something like I have $20 million into the film, right?” Costner said. “Well, it’s not — it’s $38 million, okay? Cash. It’s $38 million. And if it has to be, it will be more.” A lot more, probably, since he has already completed Part 2 of what he has envisioned as a four-movie epic — the second film opens Aug. 16 — and Part 3 currently is in production. “But it’s not an easy task to go out and find that kind of money,” he said, adding with a laugh, “I’ve run out of property I can mortgage.”
That won’t stop him, however.
“[I]t’s like, I will look and see what I own and maybe keep a few things that I won’t forfeit, but I don’t want to hold onto things so tight that I can’t accomplish the things I want to accomplish.
“Maybe the reason I have some nice things that I could risk is because this is the life I chose, and so I can identify the amount of things I need, what my family needs. But some of these other things, for as much as I’ve worked for them, and hard, I’m also not going to be a slave and hold onto them and let something else that I’m trying to do suffer when they’re sitting right there. You could, biblically speaking, look at them and go, that’s why they were there.”
Then, referencing a key moment from Part 1 when the commander of a far-flung 1860s Army post (Danny Huston) describes the dangers facing westbound pioneers, Costner promised: “I’m going to make it. I’m going to look at those graves where those people are on the side of the road, and I’m not going to be with them, Joe. I’m going to get there.”
Speaking as someone who has interviewed Costner periodically over 35 years, I feel reasonably safe in agreeing. He will get there. And take us with him.
The long road for Kevin Costner began in Lynwood, California, where he enjoyed a relatively comfortable upbringing as the youngest of three sons born to William Costner, a utilities company executive, and William’s wife Sharon Rae, a welfare worker. During his high school years, young Kevin was, at best, an indifferent student. But he was a quick study while receiving his first acting lessons at First Baptist Church in Paramount, California.
“That’s where it all started for me,” Costner recalled during our interview for another C&I cover story back in 2008. “Back in that old church in Paramount. At 7, 8 years old, being one of the Wise Men with the fake beard in the Christmas pageant. When I said, ‘Hark, there’s an angel!’ — I could hear my mom whispering: ‘Perfect!’”
Costner also sang in the church choir, an experience he remembers fondly. “Performing has always been a very strong urge for me,” he said, “And music was there well before acting. In fact, for a long time, I had a story I was working on called My Cuba, which I thought was a great opportunity for a Broadway musical. And I studied classical piano.”
But music wouldn’t be his major in college. (Decades later, of course, he would pursue that particular dream as the frontman for the country-rock group Kevin Costner & Modern West.) And a BA in theater arts wasn’t an option.
Instead, Costner majored in business while attending California State University, Fullerton. And he appeared destined to pursue a decidedly unglamorous career path when, shortly after his graduation in 1978, he landed a position as a marketing executive. But dreams die hard, and detours can be reversed.
The marketing job lasted scarcely a month. Why? Because by that time, Costner had decided to put the lessons he learned at First Baptist Church to practical use. And the daily white-collar routine didn’t allow him enough time to take acting classes and attend auditions in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, his ambitions required him to take a few postgraduate courses at the School of Hard Knocks.
“I didn’t have a pedigree to get things going for me,” Costner said. “My dad would have done anything for me, but he didn’t know the first thing about the movie business. And I didn’t have an uncle or a cousin to give me advice. I would drive into Hollywood and literally sleep in my truck by a phone booth — right on the corner of Sunset and La Brea. And I would nap all the time. Why? Because I had nowhere to go. I would just daydream. But something told me I had to be there.
Early on, Costner realized he could afford little time for merely wishing and hoping. When acting jobs proved scarce, he sought other sorts of employment to survive.
“It’s a good thing that I’ve always been a worker bee,” he said, recalling that back during his hungry years he worked on fishing boats, framed houses, and drove trucks. To this day, he likes to think of himself as a “blue collar” kind of guy — which may partly explain how credibly he came across in The Company Men (2010) as the owner of a small construction firm that builds one house at a time. He reluctantly hires his brother-in-law (Ben Affleck), who can barely tell one end of a nail from another, only because the guy has been recently downsized from his high-paying corporate job.
“People who just look at me now and can’t look back at my life will never understand: I used to be the guy who put the 40 sheets of plywood up on the roof.”
At one point, Costner was barely scraping by as a stage manager at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. He often worked 14-hour days and was grateful for every penny of overtime. To get ahead, he knew it would not be enough to work hard. So he worked smart.
“When they were done after shooting a commercial, I would ask, ‘How many guys are you going to use from the wrap to take down the equipment?’ And they might say, ‘Well, we’re going to send two electricians and two grips.’ ‘Well, how much is that gonna cost you?’ ‘Twelve hundred bucks.’ ‘Yeah? Well, I’ll take this all down for $600.’ And that’s just what he did — along with two day laborers he paid $100 each.
“I did that a lot,” Costner said. “Hey, that’s how I bought my first house.”
Costner laughs, but does not smile, whenever anyone questions his blue-collar cred while he makes movies or performs with Modern West. Like the time a critic dismissed “Sure Could Use Some Rain,” one of his Modern West songs, thusly: “What would Kevin Costner know about just having barely enough?”
“Well, I know a lot about that,” Costner told me in 2008. “I remember seeing the food truck pull up when I was framing houses, and I would have to decide whether I got a sandwich, a Hostess Ding Dong, or a glass of chocolate milk. I couldn’t afford all three — one of them had to go because it always seemed like I always had $2.50 for lunch.”
Then, smiling slightly at the memory, he added: “You know how they ask, ‘How do you know when you’ve made it?’ Well, I know how I knew I’d made it: I could order whatever I wanted on a menu. That was my thing. It wasn’t cocaine, it wasn’t a fast boat, it wasn’t Ferrari. It was when I went to a breakfast place, and I wanted three side orders of bacon — and I would get it.”
It wasn’t long after his breakthrough performance as a rowdy young cowboy in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1985 Western Silverado that Costner could start living high on the hog. One thing led to another, as his fame (and bankability) increased exponentially with successive starring roles in The Untouchables and No Way Out (both 1987), Bull Durham (1988), and Field of Dreams (1989). And he rarely shied away from taking chances on either side of the camera.
Under the direction of Clint Eastwood (who also co-starred) in A Perfect World (1993), he played Butch Haynes, an escaped convict who wasn’t always able to tamp down his tripwire temper. “When they first started talking about Kevin’s playing Butch,” Eastwood told me during the on-location filming in Austin, “I started thinking, ‘Well, this doesn’t seem like his cup of tea, normally.’ But maybe that’s when actors get their best breaks.” Better still, screenwriter John Lee Hancock noted: “Kevin understood from the get-go that this is a bad guy. This is not a guy who is able to live in a normal society with people.”
“It’s not anything that I bring to the role,” Costner insisted. “As written, this character is likable in many ways. Very likable, very charming. But if you take his cookie, he might kill you for it.”
Costner has returned to the dark side periodically throughout his career, undercutting his nice-guy image by playing everything from the psycho leader of casino-robbing Elvis impersonators in 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001) to a Portland businessman who moonlights as a serial killer in Mr. Brooks (2007). But you could argue he has taken even bigger risks as a director, starting with the Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves (1990). Costner had to put up some of his own money for that film as well, inspiring some cynical naysayers to predict the epic Western would be known as Kevin’s Gate — a reference to the infamous 1980 flop Heaven’s Gate.
On Oscar night, Costner had the last laugh.
Costner enjoyed another success as actor-director in 2003 with Open Range, riding tall alongside Robert Duvall in a drama about cattle drivers pitted against the corrupt town boss in 1882 Montana.
You could say that, in between that film and Dances with Wolves, he hit something of a speed-bump with The Postman (1997), a post-apocalyptic neo-Western that was poorly attended and harshly reviewed. But even that film has benefitted from years of reappraisal by critics and audiences, and now seems largely worthy of Costner’s initial enthusiasm.
It’s tempting to believe that Costner isn’t cowered by any challenge, and fears nothing man or fate can toss his way. Truth to tell, however, it appears that, even now, there’s one thing that still scares him.
Back on the location for A Perfect World, Costner only half-jokingly described a childhood trauma: Watching Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, the 1964 gothic thriller starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland — and, in a fleeting supporting role, Bruce Dern, who meets a bloody end early in the flick. “As soon as that head started bouncing down the stairs,” he said, “I started screaming.” And then he fled in terror from the movie theater.
Flashforward to 2018: Costner is busy filming the first episodes of Yellowstone in Park City, but he graciously takes time to chat for yet another C&I cover story. Near the end of our conversation, I give him a tongue-in-cheeky gift, a DVD of Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte. He receives it gingerly, but offers polite thanks.
So when we touched base again six years later to talk about Horizon: An American Saga — Part 1, I had to ask: Did he ever view the DVD?
“Hell, no,” he replied with a hearty laugh. “I would go back into bleeping therapy. Even Bette Davis scared me in that one. And I don’t want to need a nightlight in my room anymore.”
And then he laughed again. But, it should be noted, he quickly changed the subject to something less frightening. Like mortgaging his house and risking millions to make his Horizon dreams come true.
