The Santa Barbara International Film Festival celebrated a huge get for its 40th anniversary: the U.S. premiere of Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2” on Friday, February 7. The screening is five months to the day after it premiered in Venice last September, marking the second installment of Costner’s planned four-part Western epic. Following the screening, festival Director Roger Durling held a Q&A with Costner, costume designer Lisa Lovaas, and composer John Debney.
Costner immediately started talking about what initially drew him to wanting to bring this story to the silver screen, before putting an emphasis on finally giving women their deserved spotlight in the genre. “We were told if we could get across that Atlantic Ocean, there was a place. It was like the Garden of Eden, and if you were mean enough and tough enough, you could make it yours,” Costner said.
“That dream that brought people across the Atlantic was a nightmare for the people who had been here for 15,000 years,” he continued. “This land was contested all the way across America. It was a bad ending for the Native Americans who existed here, but I’m not embarrassed about that, I’m just disturbed that we don’t know more about it. And I was always bothered that we didn’t have more women in our Westerns, because there was no Western without women.”
As Costner began co-writing the project with Jon Baird, the desire to put women at the forefront became clearer and clearer. “For us to think that a woman couldn’t be co-opted right in front of a group of people, I think we’re kidding ourselves. It’s happening now, all around us across the world. When we started writing, we could not keep women out of it, and they just kept running down the themes of all our story lines. It was just easier with them in it,” he said. As he repeatedly emphasized throughout his answers, women bring a much-needed humanity to the story, one that Costner felt “obligated” to share.
“I think I’m obligated to try to find those things because if we’re not, we’re just bashing along,” he said. “It’s the little things in our life that catch us, that we never forget, but movies are the same way. They’re about details that somehow you never ever forget. You try to build them in. Just stick with behavior, it’s pretty damn entertaining.”
Moderator Durling went on to share his praise for the way Costner portrayed the role of commerce and the corresponding violence within the film, something that he couldn’t recall Westerns doing so well before. “There’s salesmen in every century. There’s liars in every century. There’s heroism and there’s cowardice in every century,” Costner reflected.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that we’re not too different than these people. When you see Sienna Miller, the incredible Sienna Miller, finally realized that she had a home, even though it’s in the dirt, someone built this woman a home,” Costner said. “There was a struggle. It was not a land in Disneyland. It was a struggle, and there was beauty and there was heroism and just the sheer act of raising your children was heroic.”
At the end of this second installment, Costner seems optimistic for his planned next two chapters of the saga. “I started this in 1988. I couldn’t make it then and it didn’t seem like anybody liked it too much, so I thought ‘Fuck it, I’m going to write four more.’ I love Hollywood. I’m a romantic about what we can be and what we are,” he said.
Costner bringing his film to Santa Barbara was something that seemed at least a couple years in the making, something he thanked Durling of. “I would also like to just say to you thank you for honoring film and filling this theater,” Costner said. “I want to thank Roger, who said he would help me two years ago and he brought film from around the world here. This is where I make my home and you made me feel like a giant tonight.”
