Kevin Costner opens up about his passion project, "Horizon: An American Saga"
After almost four decades as a leading man, Kevin Costner knows how to shine on the big screen. He has played a wide range of incredible characters, from aging baseball players to mob fighter Elliott Ness.
But his most memorable roles seem to happen when he's in a saddle.
At his core, Costner is a storyteller. And that's what he's doing with his latest project, "Horizon: An American Saga," a multi-faceted, four-part story about the settlement of the American West.
For Costner, it's a labor of love that started with an idea he had more than 35 years ago. Costner sat down with CBS News Texas to discuss it all in perhaps the most appropriate of places: a hat store in the Fort Worth Stockyards, "Where the West Begins."
"Every town was barren at one time until somebody comes across and says, 'I'm going to claim this', and that's what white people did," Costner said. "That's what immigrants did. Boom -- in the ground. And it's almost the equivalent of that first image you see in the movie when they stick a survey thing in the ground, and the ads come out. We satisfied our own hopes, our own dreams and our own resources to go out there and make something out of nothing, when it was just perfect for the people were already living there. And that was kind of symbolic for man. So, the idea was, 'OK, well maybe let's make a story where we can reverse engineer and get to the story we had in 1988.' But how did we get there? And it took four movies to get there."
"Horizon: An American Saga" follows several different story arcs involving settlers trying to reach a fledgling town in Apache territory, and the Indigenous people who are trying to keep them away. It's beautifully crafted and emotionally compelling.
Costner said that despite all of the success and accolades in his career, the project had been "gnawing away" at him. He was so passionate about it that he not only wrote, directed, and starred in it; he financed it himself.
"I felt it was really entertaining. And I don't do things the way other people do. I don't think what I do is that different but it's like, you know, just make these four movies. I won't make one movie and see if it works and then, 'Oh. I'll make another movie or make a movie that I like and people like, and, oh geez I can make a second one. My mind doesn't work that way. So I make these stories until they're done in my mind."
The first two films will be released separately this summer. The third one is a work in progress.
When CBS News Texas met up with him in Fort Worth at The Best Hat Store, he was about to get fitted for two new hats of his own.
It may come as no surprise that Costner, who is a man of many hats and talents, had adoring fans eager to meet him and take pictures.
Costner has a lot to keep him busy these days: writing, directing and acting. Just don't ask him which aspect of the business he likes most because after all these years, he still loves it all.
"I love the writing part because when it worked, I knew it and so I can move on," says Costner. "I love the directing part when I see it shot and I think, 'God, it looks so much like what I imagined it to look like.' That part gets really exciting to me because, you know, that script, I know it works and so does the cinematography. So, I just felt it working the way I wanted it to. Now, how that works with anybody that sees it, it's just not mine anymore. But it's a movie I wish someone would have made for me."
The first chapter of "Horizon: An American Saga" will be released in theaters on Friday, June 28. The second chapter comes out seven weeks later, on August 16.
