A: Two days ago, in fact. We called wrap on Saturday for a while, and we’ll come back to it in August. We were filming down in this incredible box canyon, the kind of landscape I love to set drama against. In Utah, out of St. George, about two hours north of Las Vegas. I’ll finish Part Three by the beginning of October. And then I’ll figure out how to make the fourth one.

Q: First time I saw you in a movie was “Silverado,” in 1985. I remember the audience really responding to what you were bringing to it, just the glee and the —

A: The juice! It was a flashy role, so it was good for me. I didn’t really know how to play it at first. I knew I’d make Westerns someday; somehow, in my own psyche, I just knew it. I figured I knew how to play the laconic Scott Glenn role, or one of those other roles. But this one, this kid was literally swinging on the bars (in a jail cell), just full of juice. At first I thought, god, I didn’t know how to do this. But I figured it out. I loved being in that movie.

I think Larry (Kasdan, the director, who cast Costner in “The Big Chill” but cut his part out of the final version) was a big foundation for me. The rehearsals he did, the room he afforded his actors, and how gracious he was with them. He’s such a skilled writer. Between him and (writer-director) Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham,” “Tin Cup”), there was a lot to appreciate just being around them. Quality people. Decent men, who happened to be great storytellers.

Q: And it was just three years after “Silverado” that you started thinking about what became “Horizon”?

A: Right, 1988. I actually commissioned the story through his brother, Mark Kasdan. He wrote the first version, called “Sidewinder.” And I liked it. And I couldn’t get anyone to make it. But (years later) I was working on it with a friend of mine, Jon Baird, who said he wanted to just keep writing. And he wrote four more.

There was something wrong about the first one. Not wrong, maybe, but originally the town of Horizon was already there at the start. I started to think about that, and the idea that all these towns in America started with somebody putting a stake in an ant hill and saying “This is mine.” On the frontier there was a lot at stake when somebody said that. So I thought: What if we explored how these towns came to be?

There’s been a lot of scripts I’ve liked that (took years to sell). I walked the street with Ron Shelton trying to sell “Bull Durham.” “Field of Dreams” was a really difficult movie to sell.

I’m about as mainstream as you can get. But I do believe in the nuances of subplot, and I try to invest in character. With “Horizon” what came to dominate, really, was the women in it. The more we wrote, the more central they became. But it doesn’t keep me from the action, or eliminate the gunfights.

Q: Let’s talk about “How the West Was Won” (1962), which is a big influence here.

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