Happy Sad Confused - Kevin Costner & the cast of HORIZON

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Kevin Costner has had HORIZON in his head for over 35 years and now he's finally ready to share it with the world. The legendary actor/director joins Josh accompanied by his cast (including Sam Worthington, Abbey Lee, and Luke Wilson) to chat about his epic Western saga. Recorded live at the 92nd Street Y. ⁠Subscribe here⁠ to the new Happy Sad Confused clips channel so you don't miss any of the best bits of Josh's conversations! SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! ZocDoc -- Go to ⁠Zocdoc.com/HappySad⁠ and download the Zocdoc app for FREE   UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS Daisy Edgar-Jones & Glen Powell (TWISTERS) July 18th in NYC -- get your tickets here   Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So we're here to welcome you to the Mad House Chronicles. It's a talk show with myself, Billy Morrison. And me, Ozzy Osbourne. This man, Prince of Darkness, and we watch and react to the maddest internet clips. What do we discuss, Ozzy? Drugs, rock and roll, aliens, all that kinds of shit. Drugs, rock and roll aliens and all that kinds of shit. Come and join Ozzie and myself, visit Osbournemediahouse.com to get special access to

Come on. What do you say? Do you think it's the wildest show on the internet? I make movies for men. That's what I do. But I won't make a movie unless I have strong women characters. And that's how I've conducted my career. And I think that's why I have a good following.

I thank you, women, for dragging your men here. It was a Western after. all. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Today on Happy, Say, Confused, we're live at the 92nd Street Y with Kevin Costner and the cast of Horizon and American Saga, everybody. You guys are in the right place. You have seen a sneak peek at this epic film. It is just the start of this huge saga, this huge passion project from the one and only Mr. Kevin Costner. I don't know if you're like me. You're probably like me for over 35 years. I don't know what it is to love film without loving Kevin

Costner movies. I love his big swings. Yes, come on. As an actor, as a director, and this one, as you'll hear in a moment, is a true passion project. As you can see, we have a bunch of seats out here tonight. We're going to celebrate this film big time with this amazing, an epic film needs an epic panel. So please join me in welcoming Isabelle Furman. Isabel, come on out. Luke Wilson everybody. Luke come on out. Ella Hunts. Come on Ella. Jenna Malone is here. Mr. Sam Worthington is here. Come on, Sam. Abby Lee is here and director, co-writer, producer, and star, Mr. Kevin Costner is here.

Welcome, guys. Hi. Congratulations. Congratulations to all of you. Kevin, congratulations on this one, man. This is a special one, I know. And it must be a special moment to see this cast here with you, because I know you've been traveling,

doing a lot of press on your own, but to do it with your cast tonight as a special moment, I would imagine. Yeah, it is. Number one, I thank him for coming so far. And I think a lot of us have the experience in the workplace where we see the people we work with every day, every day. And then sometime, some night you see them and they all kind of look like this. And you go, wow. Because I saw them in the dirt.

I saw them work so hard. I saw them bring their craft to this American Western, and not one of them flinched. It was a really beautiful thing to see young women. working at the top of their craft, and I really mean, I think you're going to see these actresses for a long time. I want to talk to, we're going to talk to all of you guys about your experience on this. But first, I want to just get a little sense of the history of this project. For those that don't know, this project goes back, and I'm not going to recite ages of cast members here, but this goes back further than some of these folks were even alive on this panel today, Kevin.

Is that true? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I had this idea. 1988. Couldn't pull it together in 2003 over money. I wouldn't let go of it. Nobody seemed that happy with the movie, so I thought I would write four more. And at that point, everybody thought, wow, he has lost it. And it took four years to do that. Nobody was jumping up and down to do it, except I felt like I had a secret for you in this movie. I've had four of them. And I thought, I know why I went to the movies to just be transported and to lean

into a movie and for it to take me somewhere. And if it was going to have something follow up, I hope it was as smart and as good as the first one. And so that was my intent. And I felt like I got there. I saw it on paper. It's not an illusion to me. I saw how it worked. And I was desperate to bring it. And eventually, you know, I had to look to myself. I don't know I might be the only person in Hollywood that pays to work. It's a ridiculous theme with me. But I turned the script over to these actors, and one by one, as they read it,

they said they wanted to be a part of it. And I took my confidence from the kind of actors that came. I knew we had something. I'm glad you saw it tonight. I'm glad you get to meet these people. So let's, yes, come on. So again, I'm going to do a little math here. A three-hour film that's probably about 180.

It's two hours and 51 minutes. Sorry, sorry, sorry. 100. Come on. You're going to drive people away. No, they're trying to drive people towards this film. I love a big swing, and this is a big one. Me too, but get it right.

51. Okay, here's my point. It's a lot of script. Do you all read all four scripts? Did Kevin present to you like 700 pages of material? Oh, yeah. They were. Yeah.

I read all four of them before we even had a conversation, yeah. So what struck you, Isabel, when you're reading this? We can see the passion when he's talking to you, but when you're reading the script, what jumped off the page for you? He created an entire world of so many different characters, and I think, you know, a lot of us know this history growing, I mean, I grew up in this country, I went to school here. And to really have an inside, an intimate look at what it was like for people on this journey, West, and how difficult that was. And getting really close up into it, that was something I hadn't really seen before.

And especially with so many women at the helm of that story. I mean, I think these are all stories that Eugenna has said this, that we know. And it's like a historian peeling back the layers to see what it was like for women on the road at this time. Luke, you've been directed by some of the greats. Still, when you get a call from Mr. Kevin Costner, that's a good day at the office, I would imagine. Is this an easy yes? What's the conversation when Kevin comes calling?

No, I felt incredibly lucky to get the chance to work with him, and not just the fact. I mean, I grew up being a big fan. I mean, he was one of those people where if he was in it, I wouldn't miss the movie. I mean, sometimes that kind of affected my concentration with him. It's hard to kind of take direction sometimes because I'd be thinking about these great movies. But, I mean, one interesting thing about, I mean, he wrote it and directed it, but also being an actor, you know, he's kind of aware of what actors are up to.

For instance, one time I was, he'd said, we're going to be doing a scene where I don't want you to be wearing your guns. And I said, okay, that sounds reasonable. And then the day rolled around and I didn't have my guns on and I'd been wearing them so much. I kind of, you know, I thought, God, I really don't. like not having them on. And so I went to the armor, and I said, Joey, what do you think? I mean, not wearing my guns. He's like, well, you look a little Amish, look a little like a farmer.

So went up to Kevin that morning and said, you know, I think since I'm going to be talking to all the pioneers and there are, you know, all these canyon walls, I think that I should have my guns on. And he just kind of looked at me. He's like, look, I have you looking cool in a lot of the movie. And then he just pushed me out of the way. to talk to like the 10 other people that were waiting behind me. But yeah, there was just so much great stuff that I got from working with them.

Was that Kevin or Hayes talking to Luke in that day? That's the question. Ella, you were telling me, we were talking about how you all got cast. Your casting stories an unusual one. What happened? So it was still in kind of late COVID time where most of the meetings were happening on Zoom. but I'm epically bad on Zoom and I really liked this character

and I just begged to meet in person and got told that that was very, very unlikely to happen and then at about 6 o'clock on a Tuesday evening got a call going, can you meet Kevin at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning at the Mandarin Oriental? And I was like, yes, I'll be there. And then we met

and had a wonderful conversation and immediately talked about the more delicate, scary elements of the character because Kevin wanted to make sure that I would feel safe and comfortable. And it was a pretty special hour talking. And then I thought that I was going to go home and do an audition for him. And then he said, so I'd very much like you to be my Juliet. and then kept on talking about what the shoot was going to be like and like showing me pictures of the set.

Meanwhile, I'm trying not to weep. Like, I was so excited. And then I got outside into Columbus Circle, wept, called my family from the back of a yellow cab, and was pretty giddy for about maybe a year afterwards. Kevin, I guess that's a bonus of being kind of, you know, co-writer, producer, director, essentially an independent filmmaker

the buck stops with you. If you want that actor you can stay in the room join me on this adventure. I didn't need to wait I didn't need to wait with you guys and I will just tell you about Ella how brave she was out there you saw and I will just tell you she is our generation's

Hepburn and she Audrey and I just I just thank her so much for being in this and bringing she was ferocious and what she was willing to do and surrender to all of it.

And you are an amazing, amazing actress. Someone on this panel will cry tonight. And if it's Ella, so be it. One thing I love about this cast is there are some folks that you've never worked with. There are some folks that you have worked with. Jenna, when did you first work with Mr. Kevin Costner? I, yeah, a long time ago.

For love of the game. Yeah, for love of the game. I was a teenager. I think I was like 13 or 14. It was an amazing time where I kind of just, you know, it was like a tiny roll, kind of just came in, did my stuff. And Kevin was like, wait, wait, hold on, you know, like kind of quieted things down. remember him giving me space and kind of treating me with a respect that I didn't even know I

deserved at that time. And it really made an impact on me on how to be a leader on set, even if you're not directing the film, but how actors can take care of other actors. It was a really inspiring thing. And then we did Hatfields together. Right. And I would imagine when you read the script and you read your character's entrance, you're like, oh, okay. This is a hell of a way to introduce a character. Yeah, a horse cart, a shotgun, and a baby. I was like, all right, well. Let's do this thing, yeah.

I'm ready. Mr. Sam Worthington. Another exceptional performance from you, sir. Your first time working with Mr. Costner, as I understand it. Talk to me about the challenge of this character. Like, emblematic of a lot of men of that era, perhaps a lot of men, period. A lot of internalized emotion,

maybe not the most emotive man, at least in the beginning of this story. What are the challenges, what are the inspirations when you, when you tackled this? I'm Australian, that's pretty easy. Like, you just got to trust your boss. That's how I look at it. And Kevin, you know, he's been doing this a long time. And he gives you great advice.

I just listen to him. That's all I do. What's the most frequent Kevin Costner direction on? I'm not telling you that. That's between me and Kevin. Oh. Anyone else want to weigh in on that? I would say that, shockingly, Kevin is like the Bob Fosse of Westons to me.

He's incredibly meticulous with his choreography. He wants you in constant motion, which feels so alive and real, but it's quite shocking because so often I think when a scene is being blocked, there's this goal to get it done in as few setups as possible, but that's not Kevin's goal. The goal is for it to feel real, But a lot of the time that means, I mean, we had scenes where we were like, I don't know where I'm moving next. Like really, really kind of gritty choreography, but delicious too.

Yeah, I would say, Kevin, none of the films you've directed are what I would call easy films. These are tough, arduous shoots, I would imagine. But clearly there's a comfort level at this point with a challenging piece of work, not just the scope, but there's not an easy day on. set, I would imagine, on a horizon. Or is there? There's not, and you just have to be in love with the chance that you have every day. I mean, we all beg for the chance to act our first time when somebody will allow us to. We dream of it, and we finally get a part, and I think to myself that I love this script so much. I love what the actors are going to do.

Every day is just something I'm excited about directing. There's no scene I don't want to direct. That's why my movies look like my scripts. Abby, I want to talk to you about, I mean, you can say a lot about an actor from the directors they've worked with. And I love the varied amazing, whether it's George Miller, Nick Reffen, Kevin Costner, great director seek you out and vice versa. So that speaks volumes. Marigold is a hell of a character, a hell of a treat I would imagine for an actor. she must pop off the page immediately.

What's exciting for you when you start to get into this character? She felt there was something I couldn't quite figure out about her when I first read it. And when I can't figure something out, it always makes me want to explore it because I feel like if I can get there, I can discover something really beautiful about her. But I think with Marigold, the thing is that she's almost like a victim of circumstance, which so many women were in those times. And that was really interesting to me. And so I did a lot of work to sort of to find out what it was really like for women of that time.

Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit BestWestern.com for complete terms and conditions. Okay, flights on Air Canada. Oh, wow. Myorka, that's new.

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Book it. Yes, chef. Wait, what about Lyon? Choose from our world of destinations if you can. Air Canada. Nice travels. And I found some really great pieces of writing and listened to some. really great people speak about what it was like for women.

And so that was really exciting for me. To get into the costume, we had a fantastic wardrobe department that made everything so real. It was real corsets, and our skirts were held up by rope. And, you know, honestly, you would take that wardrobe off at the end of the day, and you have almost rope burn on your hips and, like, marks where the corsets were. And you're in that all day. And you just feel the realness of being.

a woman in that hard time and how suffocating it was at times and how to try and like express yourself when you were just a victim of the times and i don't know that to me was really interesting about marie gold i'd never done that before i'd never done a period piece so for me this was very much a first in that i'd never done period and i'd never done a western either which was very excited and obviously i was in great hands so Rally the META Hut, My Box, the new Four Chiarat My Box,

to addle it on how you, and add on it with a few. I'll have my box today and let it on your dog. Pisa or Meltz, all by you, and the other part of your janeb either or a muchroop, your your not to end uptie. These are your and your

your churot your Pizzerot Hot My Box, the new bidsa Hut, my box, the rules, Pizzah hat, I'll tell today. I was going to ask, like, for any of the actors, like, what's a moment where you're like, oh, I'm in a, I'm in a Western. I'm in kind of a modern, classic Western, but I guess that's every single minute of every day when you open your eyes on a set like this. When we came on set for the first time, it was just incredible to see the world that all of our crew had created for us to play in. And then, you know, that moment for me was being on a wagon with this man on my left on a horse,

and this woman on a wagon on my left. And then Kevin is riding on his own horse out to us to give us direction. And that's when you kind of realize, wow, I'm in a Kevin Costner Western film. And what is he coming to tell me? Because he really would just, like, get up on his horse and come on out there. And it really felt playful at the same time as, you know, telling this story, you know, felt very important and precious. But it really felt like movie magic in its most innocent and beautiful form because it felt like we all just had this space to play in Utah. You know, I want to say this.

We have all the, you hear people a lot of times say, well, I haven't been in a Western, I really want to be in a Western. You kind of hear that a lot. But the kind of westerns that I want to make are Shakespeare. There's heavy on the Victorian language. Our movie depends not on our gunfight, but on a woman bathing who just wants to be clean. It depends on a character like Abby Lee, flirting, flirting at the end when it's about to fall apart. she changes directions like a 180 and says, I just want to be with somebody who knows something more about life than I do. So we might be a Western, but we are invested heavy in the literature of film,

in the literature of how people talk to each other. And I think that's the strength of Horizon is what people are saying to each other and how they're feeling. And when they're forced to talk, they are just as confused in their decade and their century as we can, be in ours. The only difference between the Western and what we can see in modern days is there was no benefit of anyone to arbitrate your problems. We didn't have police. We didn't have agents. We didn't have PR. We didn't have any of that. What was going on the West was what made it not a simpler time. It made it more complicated to figure out how to get through a day. And the women, essentially, for 200, 300 years, making this pursuit across this country,

work themselves to death, feeding their families, keeping them clean. And those ideas are the strongest ideas in Horizon. I will get you to the gunfight, I promise. And I will get you to the things that are things that we knew to happen during that time. But those things are not enough for me. and I had actors who could handle language, and I gave them language to speak. Danny Houston gets to explain Manifest Destiny in almost the same way that James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams explained baseball, a non-athlete doing what Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle couldn't do.

He talked about it. Danny Houston talks about our relentless march across this country. there was a promise in America and it forgot to mention that there were people who had been there for 10,000 years and there was a clash between people and the struggle that the great movement was is something I wanted to portray

and I couldn't portray it in a gunfight I needed to do it with humanity and with language and I thank the actress for embracing the language They never once said, this is too long. This is just, they just went at it like a play. They trusted it. It was the Bible. Do you, yes.

I mean, do you feel in some ways the custodian of the Western? I mean, you worked with Clint in one of my favorite underrated Clint East films of all time, I think, a perfect world. You had done that after dances with wool. I don't know if that was a conversation if you two bonded on that level but it feels like there was Clint there was unforgiven, the Sergio Leone Westerns and you have devoted

much of your career to keeping the Western alive. I don't like all Westerns. I don't like most Westerns because they just didn't feel authentic to me but I don't feel that pressure of keeping it alive I feel the pressure anytime I

work to deliver the drama in an authentic way. And so I don't feel like I'm reinventing history or I'm setting the record straight. I just direct Westerns the way I think people would react under intense situations. And the violence wasn't graceful.

It was awkward. It was sudden. It was violent. And the people 200 years ago were no different than us. They were just operating under different circumstances. So I find the drama in it, so that's why I'm drawn to it. But I don't feel like it's my job. I don't feel like I do it better than anybody else. I feel like I die trying to.

For your actors, what is the biggest prep for something like this? Is it simply just knowing the text, following the lead of your director, or are there skills to bone up on? What was the pressure you put on yourself before you stepped on? I found there was a lot of historical research that I wanted to do to understand America in that time and not coming from America, there's a lot that I didn't know. So just trying to inform myself as much as I could so that when I got there, that I understood the error that I was, that my character was alive in, to understand politically what was going on, what was happening to the land, what was happening to the people. I think that was very important for me.

For anybody else. How are the horse riding skills here? Every actor embellishes on their resume. Of course, I know how to ride a horse, of course. Do you guys actually know how to ride a horse? We do now. Yeah, you do now. Drive a cart.

I mean, that was a new skill. Yeah, same. Driving a wagon. We had to learn how to drive wagons with mules who only have one speed and it's slow, which means when Kevin's like, I want this moment where you're faster than everyone else. It means you're like shouting at the top of your lungs to get these mules moving?

You could be across the field and you would hear Ella and a scene going, get up there, get up there. Come on, come on, girls, get up there. They're all trained by these wonderful southern trainers, and they're trained on like, get up, get up. But I'm playing this upper-class English lady, so I'm like, step up, girl, step up.

I had a great horse named Charm, who I really got to like. I'd gone out a couple weeks early to start riding and had great wranglers led by this guy, Scott Perez, who really made it all happen with the livestock. But after about three or four days, I said to the real nice wrangler that was helping me, Donnie. I said, so you think Charm knows who I am now? And he said, you mean, does he like, know, you're famous? And I said, no.

That's not what I'm saying. And please don't go back to the guys and say that I was asking, did Charm know who I am? Did you sign a DVD for Charm, Luke Wilson? Is that what you're saying? Wow. I would follow a wagon train, Captain, by Luke Wilson. You fit into this environment for me.

This makes sense. Do you feel that way? Like, there are certain actors you can buy in a Western, in that environment, and there are certain actors that's a tougher fit. Before this had you, I know you were in 310 to Yuma, so you have some experience in this, but could you imagine yourself living in this time and place? Well, I did, and just, I mean, it kind of goes back to the writing and how interesting it was, just that, you know, my character, Van Waden didn't even want the job.

He was kind of elected to it, and he has that, you know, he has a line later in the second movie where he says, when he gets done doing this, he'll go back to what it is. he really does. But yeah, I think he was probably just someone that they saw that he was a family man and was relatively level-headed and could just try and get the people. You know, it was a proving ground, you know,

the West and trying to get across the West and I think it would bring out probably the best and the worst in people. And people, you know, on that wagon train probably saw qualities in him that they thought where he could kind of lead them. And I was thanked. for Kevin for thinking that I could portray that character.

And it was certainly interesting and rewarding to do. But I maybe disagree. I think any actor can sort of step into that world. I think it's just how well you prepare that world. And I think that we were very lucky to be in Kevin's world, which is more, you know, he built all of the worlds from the ground up and gave us all of the tools and all of the things that we needed. But, you know, we could learn anything, right?

I mean, there's lots written in history. I mean, the main word being his story. There's lots of stories of that time, but there's also so many voices that were never heard. And so we can't really ever imagine what it was like to be a woman at that time, not fully. But I think we're also living in a really beautiful time of discovering, like, epigenetics and, you know, carrying our great grandmother's trauma inside

of our bodies. And I think when you have a script that can transcend through language, you have to trust the language, because then you are in it. And there's some sort of healing mechanism of giving voices to even if these are fictive characters, they deserve to be sung, you know, and so it was nice to be singing in that way. Kevin, for you, I mean, yes, please. You know, we've talked about the wonderful different shades of characters, the different kind of experiences, particularly the women in the cast have in this depicting fully fleshed out characters that often aren't seen in westerns.

I mean, it sounds like that wasn't necessarily as much a mission statement for yourself as it just organically happened. Can you talk to me a little bit about how, any, your methodology, as you're crafting this, as this kind of goes from one film to four films, how you decided to depict all different strata of life in this environment. Yeah, well, whenever you start writing and all of a sudden, it would be like, you'd start writing and you'd go, where's the woman? It just drove the story in every plot line. It just seemed to me to be so easy.

I mean, I just hardly couldn't conceive. of a scene that didn't involve women or a young girl raised by a strong woman. You know, we got a missing person here, Sienna Miller, who was really a beautiful actress working at the top of her ability right now. I wish she was here, but I thought she was absolutely luminous in the film and she's raising a strong young woman.

And so as she continues, as this saga goes forward, I wish you could have celebrated her because we miss her. But I don't know, I see the one of the, if I look back in my career, the one thing I have, I'm asked, this is why my movies take long, try to explain stuff. I make movies for men. That's what I do. But I won't make a movie unless I have strong.

women characters, and that's how I've conducted my career. And I think that's why I have a good following. I thank you, women, for dragging your men here. It was a Western after all. But I just can't conceive of a movie without having that. It was effortless to work with Abby, the way she worked with Jenna, those two powerhouses on that hill. And, I mean, so giving to each other right down the line. And again, Ella, you know, is just, you know, is going to break your heart what happens. And, you know, I hope you find your way back. And you're going to find that Isabel goes from a sassy kind of late teenager

into somebody who's in control. And I love the guys in my movie. but it's for some reason the women you know have guided this process and they were not formidable in the 1988 script and these last four and you asked me you know how about doing four man it's pretty easy I just don't stop till I'm done and then I thought well it looks like four and that's how it worked that's about as complicated as I am it's I'm not that complicated So the good news is part two is in the can. It's coming very, very soon, actually.

I saw it Saturday. I saw it three days ago. I saw it. And I was worried when I watched it because I was wanting it to get to a place. And I will just tell them first, it's as good as the first one. It might even be better. And I was so happy that happened. Well, I'm going to put all the bells and whistles on it.

I'm going to make it look just right. But it's as good as the first one. can anyone tease about what's to come I'm not going to ask you you're not going to tell me anything about what's happening in the second one for any of the actors is there anything you're excited about

what do you think's going to happen I'm not going to chart it I'm not an interviewer not a writer we get to go on quite the journey with the wagon train you get to see Luke Wilson be pretty extraordinary as the leader of the wagon train and my character Juliet is tested over and over

again in some of the most brutal ways you can imagine a person being tested and we come together we do help each other in many ways and support each other during that time and the journey continues. I mean, you get to see Sam too. I mean, Sam plays a very ethical, moral person who makes choices, you know, about things that maybe we're saying no, no, no. But he has a North Star, he has a moral code, and he lives up to it. For, um, so two is in the can, Just for nuts and bolts, for those and don't know, you've already started to shoot part three. Yeah. There are four stories, as we've said.

So you are in what part of the process? You're looking for some help, as I understand it, to get this to the finish line, right? Yeah, I'm not going to listen, I have pushed my pile into the middle so often and not blinked because I'm not a bluffer, but I'm out there pretty far on a limb, but I know why, because we have a relationship. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety

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Smile, but not too much, that's weird. What if you aren't any good at your job? What if they dim out you instead? Okay, don't be silly, you're smart, you're driven, you're going to be late if you keep talking to the mirror. This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks, it's never just coffee.

And that is when it comes to you in the dark and the curtain opens, and God, I wish we had more curtains at the theaters. That used to be my favorite part as a little boy when it started to open, and I knew magic could happen. And too often it doesn't happen in movies, but sometimes it does. And so everything we tried to do in this one and in the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one, but will be an American novel for you. you. That's just how I thought of it. I didn't want to quit writing until I was done,

and now I'm done. And when I'm done with the fourth one, we'll live with them. And I think that probably the only thing that I really enjoy and I see happen universally is that you're able to share it. I think if Horizon is successful, it will because you're willing to share it, just like you heard the best song last night. You never heard it. You read the best book. You heard it so you want to tell somebody you heard the best joke. Sometimes we see a movie that touches us and everything we tried to do is to make a movie that you're not able to forget. Because when they're working at their very best, they are about moments, we'll never forget. I know that for sure.

Thank you. You've made dozens of examples of that and you've made dozens of examples of that in your career. That's why we're celebrating you here tonight Kevin. That's why we're celebrating you here tonight, Kevin. I'llie the humas with Minio Pizza Hut MyBox the new. Arbocker my box, to addle her how much, and add on it with a hodoox today and let it on thugue you.

Pizzza or Melt, it's all by kifk. And the other one, choose two or a mishroob, your not end-teteen tini. Okay, hey shurot of your he's your chiroot mybox, the new pizzas at mybox the new, by your and your howcum, pizza hat I'll tell today. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day, and face it,

between debates, polling releases, even court appearances, it can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey, I'm the host of Start Here, the day, daily podcast from ABC News. And every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. So, kickstart your morning. Start Smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. Some questions from the audience. What is your favorite? Western and why? Anybody want to

jump in? Favorite, besides Horizon, obviously? Unforgiven, because my dad's watched it like 50 times. Like, he's just always on. It's just, I just know it. Go-toes for anybody? Kevin, do you have a go-to that you always return to?

There's about three or four, but I'll say Liberty Valence was such a well-written story, and what made it so unusual, it was the first Western to be kind of shot on a stage. and not necessarily out, and it didn't rely on the actual locations, and it just proved to me that the play still is the thing. You don't have to have all the trappings. If the language is there and you put formidable actors, you had John Wayne and you had Lee Marvin,

you didn't have a buffoon for him to knock down. It was a formidable actor, and it made tension, and you had somebody like James Stewart who would break that tension, but it was the writing, it was the mythology. So I'm always going to chase that. As part of the prep, do you guys go back and watch westerns? Do you watch dances with wolves on repeats? What do you do? I watched dances for the first time. Yeah. Pretty good movie. It's a pretty astonishing movie. Yeah, yeah. I also had a wonderful time, and I know that you did the same. we read the diaries of women who'd been on the Oregon Trail. There are many diaries out there.

You can find them on Google very easily, and they're incredible to read. In some ways, they're so mundane, and in other ways you can't believe that these people are making these journeys, and that these women are giving birth on the trail, they are cooking on the trail, they are losing children on the trail.

It's crazy what they did. And that was a real treat for me. And honestly, something I would recommend it reading weirdly is go and read some diaries of women on the Oregon Trail. I'd always loved Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the Sam Peckinpaw movie with Chris Christofferson and James Coburn. That was always a great one to watch. But certainly now, working on the movie,

it makes it a lot more interesting to watch Westerns because you are thinking about the Wranglers. and the costume and the locations. And whether a windstorm is going to come in that day. The house is going to blow down and you're going to have to rebuild it. I mean, we had a really extensive, you know, extensive by the range of the rest of the film.

We had a week that we got to spend with Kevin before we did part two, where he had a whole table that had all these little wagons on them. And he were blocking out where they were going to be and we were in the backyard. with our scripts, running around and playing out all of the scenes that we were going to do

because we knew that we were going to be out there in the middle of nowhere, and we weren't going to have much time to get all of this on film. And, you know, in the meantime, our breaks were eating lunches while the TV was playing western after western in the living room. So, I mean, we really were, like, at summer camp. It really felt like that sometimes.

Here's another question from our audience. Both you, Kevin, and Francis Ford Coppola have massive epics in which you've envisioned for decades and invested plenty of your own money into it. How important is it in the current cinematic landscape that auteur filmmakers are given the chance to have opportunities like this? I didn't really understand.

I guess the question is, folks like you and Francis who have put passion projects that are putting their own money into it, Why is it important to see these things to fruition for the independent Autor to see it to the end? Why is that necessary an important? No, no, I just think it's important that you don't fall out of love with what you dream and what you see and there's plenty of people to try to talk you out of what you see for and they have really good reasons to do it and and just until I hear a good reason I I just I don't fall out of love that easy for the here's a broad question

for the cast from the audience favorite memory from filming the movie what's going to pop out into your brain if I'm talking to you 40 years from now hey what was it like shooting Horizon what's the day the moment that's going to jump out we had a sandstorm and we all were confined

to the great hall in Horizon and I played Sandstorm by Derrude on my phone. And we all danced like crazy while the entire building shook. It was amazing. It was incredible. It was also in the middle of an epic scene

that we'd been waiting so long to do. And we'd had an amazing morning shooting the beginning coverage of the scene. And then when the sandstorm came in, we just had to drop it and come back and start again the next day. That was actually something that Kevin warned us about right at the beginning of the shoot

is that Westerns are hard to make and they're hard because the elements will beat you. They are against you. Like, you are working with them and you have to accept that there are going to be days where you have to drop what you were doing and start again. And there's something kind of exciting

and primal about that experience. I guess that, sorry. Yeah, no, similar. we were my segment was sort of up in the mountains of Utah and it was about a two-hour drive just to get out to where the beginning of base camp was and from base camp was another 30 to 40 minute ATV drive and it started snowing. It was sort of it snowed a little bit overnight and we had a whole caravan of however many vans 20, 40, trying to make it down this mountain at like six in the morning, everyone's sliding out. I was like, wow, this is a real, how are we going to get to work, you know? Like, I feel like it was so exciting. But then we did it, you know.

I mean, I feel like nature is always going to be the loudest voice in the room, you know. And I love when films are not afraid of inviting nature in, whether it be taking them out of a soundstage, putting more, you know, elements of it in the story. I mean, we crave it as humans, right? We want that. We need it. I think it's also good. Look, Kevin's trying to make a hopeful movie.

When you went out into the frontier, they didn't really know what to expect, right? And so there's a lot of optimism. And when you work with Kevin, he's got this baggage of all these American iconography that he's done, from the westerns he's done to his baseball movies. The guy took on Al Capone. The guy was in JFK, all right? So he's telling stories of, in my belief, of a country that he respects and loves deeply and has an idealistic vision towards and a hope in himself of that story that he wants to tell about where this country is going.

And as an immigrant myself to this country, that's something that I'll stick with when I finish this, is that you're part of a guy's story, which as he said to me, we're just telling a, He just likes telling a movie, he liked movies being like sitting around a campfire. And he said to me, if you want to tell this story of me, which I've discovered is more hopeful than it was even written on the page, then, you know, that's something that I'll take away with. You'll hope that an audience takes away with it because that's a message that we need. I had a memory and it almost happened to me every night. and I'll just try to be quick, and it was just that.

I had these great parts, and I dreamed who was going to play them, and we would work these 14-hour days, and when we were driving home, and whether it was any one of these, I thought, we now have it forever. It was on paper. Suddenly they embodied it, and I was driving home, and I thought, man, I have a fucking secret. It's so good. I have a secret.

And that's what I was taken home with me, every night. I wasn't disappointed. It got better. It got better. And they embraced it. And I will forever be grateful for that. Another question from the audience about working with your son on the film. Your son's name, by the way, is what? Hayes. So, yeah, I know. It just goes on and on with this pushing rock up hill. But no, I, listen, I know how valuable parts are to people's careers, to their careers, to even young people, and I have these parts. And I don't just give parts out like their candy, because some people are drawn to acting and they're saying, man, I would have

killed to have that part. And so I have not pushed my own children into this thing, but there's a part that sometimes it's just small enough that I think I want one of my children close to me. And that's what I wanted. And he was the little boy that wouldn't leave his father. And that was a storyline that there was a lot of different emotions just in that one, which is his mother was frightened to death. We knew he should go there. And in the end, he said he would be with his father. And in the very end, we realized his face was shaking because he knew that he had made a fatal mistake. And I just can't help but believe that we were we loved him. We were proud of his decision, but we hated what happened. And I'm locked forever

with my son in that movie. He didn't have a lot of experience. He did even know what marks were on the floor. I explained to the cast. He didn't, he thought they were like second base and that he had to keep his foot on it the whole time. That might be the baseball. I'm sorry. But I loved him for not having all the experience in the world and for these guys to embrace him and when we would drive home at night he was very quiet and he would say did I do okay

and I would say you did well does a unique experience like this change you going forward all of you have had a remarkable different kind of varied experiences in your career what do you take from this job to the next I mean the whole experience

The scope of the film is massive The landscape was majestic Kevin is A true True hero on the set He's like a true leader So that is amazing The horses, you know

Learning to ride a horse Having an amazing wrangler Who spent such a detailed amount of time with me For like a week Really had the patience And the trust in me to teach me just enough to sort of let me take the reins, so to speak. And she really, I really fell in love with horse riding.

And that's like a massive, I really hope I get to ride more horses in films. That was a really big gift to work with animals like that. It's pretty amazing. Anyone, yeah. There was a day that Kevin said you should never, ever doubt. and let doubt be a part of any performance that you give. And since he said that, I've just decided that doubt doesn't have any space

when I come on set because I'm there for a reason. He chose me to be a part of this film, and I'm incredibly honored that I get to come back and do more, and we get to work on more films together. And it's really great to feel trust from a director that you don't have to doubt anything. You're there for a reason and just do your best

and make yourself and make him proud. Here's an important, provocative question for this panel of actors. We're all fans of Mr. Costner here. He's not a sequel guy. He's not generally. He hasn't been a franchise guy. I mean, Horizon, they're going to be,

hopefully, four of them. What's the film in his filmography? Kevin should have, could still make a sequel, What do you want to see another one? Oh my god, what's it called? The one on the water. What's the world?

Water world. 100%. Wait, wait. There was too much going on. You say Waterworld. It's got to be Waterworld. It's just great as well. I mean, it's deserving of a rewatch.

I watched it recently with my eight-year-old son, and he was blown away. He was so into it. And I was like, wow, this holds up. There's so many cool things. Like, I think you could dive in again. I think it's pretty cool there. And they got an update.

They got an update. update the Universal Studios experience, you know? If there's a sequel, they'll update the Universal Studios experience of Waterworld, and I think that that it's time. The webbed feet one more time, Kevin. Come on, for the audience. What? What? We want you to don the webbed feet to be in Waterworld one more time. What I'm going to say, number one, the way you were willing to watch movies tonight, our movie, and sit and listen to us talk, I'm going to bring this night to an end. This is long. My movies are long, but you're really long.

And I want to give this audience their chance to go home. But we have made this movie for you, and every day we did our very, very best. And the fact that you sit so quietly and listen to us and you show us a lot of respect. And that only supercharges me. Thank you. for coming tonight and honoring them and you honor me

and long live the movies congratulations spread the good word Horizon Part 1 June 28th everybody thank you Kevin appreciate it congratulations everybody and so ends

another edition of happy sad, confused remember to review rate and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley,

and I definitely wasn't pressure to do this by Josh. Goodbye, summer movies, hello fall. I'm Anthony Devaney. And I'm his twin brother, James. We host Raiders of the Lost Podcast, the ultimate movie podcast, and we are ecstatic to break down

late summer and early fall releases. We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Salome playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lanthamos' Bougonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar in The Smashing Machine. Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLuis's return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about two.

Tron Aries looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2, and Edgar writes, The Running Man starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.