Talking to Kevin Costner about 'Horizon': He's bet everything, will it pay off?

A: That was the first time I fell in love with the West at the movies, starting with that opening image, and Spencer Tracy’s voice, and James Stewart dressed in skins. Not the Jimmy Stewart we knew. I remember that birch bark canoe with the tar. I was seven, and I was transported.

Q: Did you see it in Cinerama?

A: Yeah, at the Dome! (To note: The Hollywood Cinerama Dome theater is scheduled, after renovations, to reopen in 2025.) I was seven or eight. At the time my feet were dangling about this far off the chair (demonstrates, smiling). I didn’t leave for the intermission; I didn’t want anybody to take my seat. I was there for a little boy’s birthday party, but I was by myself. The other kids were fartin’ around, running around. I don’t think I left my seat.

Q: Your family moved a lot when you were that age, is that right?

A: My dad worked for Consolidated Edison. His family had lost everything in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, just like “The Grapes of Wrath,” and they had to come to California. He had one job and never looked for any other opportunity because he was afraid that job might be taken from him.

We moved quite a bit, when I was in ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th grade. That was a difficult time for me. I think I started to lose a lot of confidence. Just trying to fit in, not being able to fit in. I had it better than a lot of kids, ‘cause I could play sports, so I could get on a team, find some friends. A little bit. But I was kind of undersized, and my brother was over in Vietnam. A complicated time for me.

Q: Do you recall the first time you rode a horse?

A: Second or third grade. This kid I knew had a horse, and sometimes kids with horses just don’t want to ride them anymore. But I did, so I’d come over and ride. I remember being underneath trees, and I’d jump up and hook my arms under a tree limb and (hang there), hoping the horse would go by past me, and imagine the bad guys riding underneath me, and I’d whistle for my horse to come back. Of course he wouldn’t come back; he was a mean little horse. So that part of the movie in my head never happened for me. There I was, up in the tree, seven, eight years old, making stuff up. This was up in Santa Paula in Ventura County.

Q: How did you and your “Horizon” work together on the screenplays?

A: Well, Jon (Baird) is a bigger research guy than I am. I’m a human behavior guy. It just goes back and forth between us. I just put another sequence into Part Two when we filming Part Three (the other week), a five-scene sequence I felt was necessary. I wrote it, gave it to Jon, he did his thing to it, and we got what we wanted. Just trading back and forth. He’s the strength of our writing team; I round out a lot of things.

On “The Big Chill” and “Silverado,” we had anywhere between two and four weeks of rehearsal time. That’s just not a given anymore. All my other movies I’ve directed, I’ve tried to do two or three weeks of rehearsal because I believe so much in it. My actors in “Horizon” have not had that. “Horizon” we shot in 52 days. “Dances with Wolves,” we had 106 days. When I did “Wyatt Earp” with Larry (Kasdan), that was 113, 114 days. My dp (director of photography J. Michael Muro) couldn’t sit around waiting for perfect light. We just kept going.

Listen, I’ve got so much at risk on this. It’s the price you pay to do the story you want to do, if you believe in your connection to the audience. And yeah, I’d like to get my pile back. But not so much so that I’d want to spit on my life, and not do what I wanted to do.

“Horizon: An American Saga” opens in theaters June 28.

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