The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1.
What draws you back to these Western stories? What is it like when you develop a project over the course of many years, as you’ve done here?
Kevin Costner: I think it’s the idea that this world we’re showing is not a part of Disneyland: it was part of our history. It was 200, 300 years of struggle. We can get across the country now in a plane—have a meal, watch a movie, take a nap, secure our seatbelt for landing. This was… it was so different back then. The struggle was so great. And it’s an opportunity to explore the literature of how women had to exist with men who drug them out there often without them wanting to be there.
Why are we out here? Why? It was the big question. It was just the promise of America that if you could go, if you were resourceful enough, if you were tough enough, if you just… if your dream was big enough, that you were going to realize them no matter what. And you could hold on to it: it would be yours. It just never dealt with the other side of the coin, which is where people have been for thousands of years, and the collision, the cataclysmic thing that happened when two cultures met.
It was an unfair fight. They didn’t stand a chance. But for 200 years, they did… Before sheer numbers would overwhelm them. Technology would overwhelm them. They fought for their way of life. And there’s a big difference about their anger versus ours. They weren’t fighting for a flag. They were fighting for their neighbor that slept next to them, for their religion, for their children. We were fighting for something that somebody promised us in Chicago that this was land and we could… you could have a home here.
Let the story be the star
The character of Ellen Harvey feels like one we really haven’t seen before. Jena, can you talk about your approach to her?
Jena Malone: Well, a script is sort of this beautiful DNA for a character, you know, and you’re sort of getting to work and sweating and breathing and building it into existence.
And it’s a really lovely gift of an opportunity, when a script has not only authentic, interesting characters, but also truth and lyricism. Things that lift. We don’t know all of the stories of the women that lived in these times, but we also maybe have inherited some of their trauma, you know? Like there might actually be parts of them still living today inside of us, you know, right here with us in this room, you know?
And so I felt very connected to her, and I wanted to step into and dive into her as deeply as I could, and Kevin allowed that. Because it felt like a… a healing space. You know, and I’ve done a few period pieces, and this felt different to me. It felt like I was accessing a true thing that happened. I don’t mean that my character was a real person; I don’t know, I don’t think she was. But it felt like a really healing experience, for me.
Sam, when we meet your character, it’s a beautiful sequence because you’re on horseback and you’re trying to reason. You’re trying so hard… but you’re coming up against the realities of being a lieutenant.
Sam Worthington: That’s right. I think every character on the front is trying to forge their own way and believe in their own path. I think that’s what this script’s creating, these characters that hope they can find somewhere to settle. Whether they’re in the military, or in the wagon train, or they’re one of the hunters, or one of the indigenous. But I think that even the indigenous to some extent are trying to find a bit of peace themselves.
They don’t know who these strangers are, you know, to use strange words. But it’s, I think, out of that search for hope they’re always going to hit these obstacles. The catalyst for drama is conflict. The great thing about the script that Kevin offered us was that this idea that it kind of elevated, it wasn’t just a fight that we’ve seen a million times before in westerns or in films where it’s straight one on one.
His script does a beautiful job of showing how the arguments can go around each other, like they’re dancers, that’s what these scenes were. It’s kind of interesting to play these scenes in a 2024 context, because there’s an… I wouldn’t say old fashioned, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect, but there is a romantic quality to when you’re doing these scenes. The scene of Kevin going up the hill, that’s essentially a romantic scene between these two killers, and we know what’s coming, and we’re just waiting for that button, but it’s a dance between these two men. And that whole script was built like that. I think that’s what I found very unique about it. There’s a poetry to it that I haven’t seen ever put on screen, and least of all in a Western.
The characters in this film feel seem as though they’re still trying to figure out what, exactly, their responsibilities are. Van Weyden, for instance, is almost a reluctant leader.
Luke Wilson: Yeah, I mean, one of the original things that Kevin told me when he hired me was that he didn’t want it to be a black hat and a white hat western. He didn’t want there to be clean lines between who was good and bad, and that’s something I kept in mind. Another thing Kevin told me at the beginning was that the town of Horizon is a lie… and I just thought that was such a cool idea, that this town that everybody’s banking on doesn’t actually exist.
I mean, it reminded me kind of elements of Chinatown: like, there is no Chinatown for J.J. Gittes. It’s just this kind of idea. In the scene where I get introduced, I’m talking about a young kid who has given a horse too much water, and how he can make the horse sick, doing that. It’s just interesting things like that, that you might take for granted. And also going back to what Sam was talking about, how Kevin would add in small things, like he added in a thing about “he’s just helping my daughter into the back of a wagon.”
It was a scene that wasn’t written, and we just kind of popped it off. Just these little elements that help, you know, of course they help me as an actor, but I also think they help an audience kind of get a sense of who somebody is. And, yeah, in terms of being the captain of the wagon train, I say to Ella’s character that it’s not a job I wanted, and I feel sick and burdened that, you know, I was elected to this job. You know, I didn’t run for it like I’m running for office. I got voted in by the other pioneers to take this job.
Ella Hunt: I think I was really drawn to playing this woman who on the face of it is a little bit unpalatable and difficult to like. When we meet her, she seems like such a product of her upbringing and so at odds with the West. She’s in this incredible yellow gown that Lisa Lovaas, our amazing costume designer, has constructed, that she ends up wearing it for the entirety of basically both movies. But, yeah, I was really drawn to that, although on the face of it she is forthright and protective of her husband even though he doesn’t understand the rules of the wagon train, and even though she’s also a woman who has probably been convinced by her thoroughly naive husband to travel west.
She has no idea about the journey they face. And at the end of the day, she just wants to wash it all off, and she can’t wash off the struggle of this journey. And we have this scene that ends kind of tragically with her bathing, but Kevin and I talked a lot about the beauty of the scene too, and the power of seeing this kind of prolonged moment of her allowing herself the time to try to wash off the place that she’s in. And she can’t, but it’s this beautiful moment until it’s ruined by the reality of the journey west and what the west is for people. That’s the truth of these movies and that’s just like scratching the surface of Juliet’s journey. It’s kind of all downhill from there.
How did you select your Director of Photography? It seems like a real challenge, given the scope of the project, and the scope of what is actually shown on screen.
KC: I’m really glad you asked that question for a couple of reasons. And I want the cast to hear this too, because maybe it’s never been articulated. It took me 106 days to shoot Dances with Wolves. And about 113 for Wyatt Earp. I shot Horizon in 52 days. Arguably as big as both of those movies. And so, how did I pick? I picked a DP who had enough confidence in themselves not to be put off when I said, “you’re not going to be able to wait for the light. We’re going to depend on our story.” So in a way, some of their art was going to be sacrificed. Meaning, even though he could do what the other guys do if he had the time, we just didn’t have that same time. I said, “we’re going to depend on our story, Jimmy.” [J. Michael Muro]. And he was my steadicam guy in Field of Dreams. And he was a steadicam guy in Dances with Wolves.
And I gave him his first DP job in Open Range. So, I needed a person who loved his art, but was willing to protect the story just as much. So he sacrificed something as a DP. But his imagery stood out. It didn’t become so precious. I said, we’re gonna film this and I’m gonna take you to beautiful locations.
Let the story be the star. I will give you as much as I can. But he didn’t have nearly the tools that you’ll see a lot of DPs have. He was out there and he was inventive.