Today, we focus on films released October 19-December 5, which means we're focusing on Dances with Wolves.
This is why we're here, after all. You voted for me to watch Kevin Costner's directorial works and the films they were released alongside, so here we are. And Costner's first go in the director's chair was also his most successful: it won Best Picture, entered the lexicon, and secured his place in Hollywood, making his subsequent projects possible.
The film started as a spec script by writer Michael Blake, who had only one successful screen credit to his name: Stacy's Knights, a 1983 film about card-counting and revenge featuring, guess who, Kevin Costner. In interviews, Costner paints Blake as talented and temperamental, a man who had trouble selling his work because he entered every interaction with execs and developers with a "fight me" mentality, bemoaning the stupidity of Hollywood suits, refusing to compromise his vision, and overall, just being difficult. But talented! When Costner read Blake's still-unsold screenplay for Dances with Wolves in the 1980s - not because Blake offered it, but because he left it around the house while living with Costner - he immediately saw the appeal...and why studios were nervous about it. It was he who suggested Blake turn in it into a novel and sell that first, which might make it easier to sell the "adaptation" to studios.
Published in 1988 by Fawcett's Gold Medal imprint (meaning straight to paperback), the film rights were immediately snatched up by Costner, by then a star thanks to Silverado, The Untouchables, No Way Out, and Bull Durham, hoping to make it his directorial debut. You had an uncooperative writer, an untested director, and a genre - epic Western - that had dried out, especially since the notorious flop of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Not to mention half of it wouldn't be in English at all, but in the Lakota dialect! Just as they balked at the script, studios balked at the package. Eventually, Costner and his producing partner Jim Wilson secured foreign investment and a deal with Orion Pictures. Costner also paid out of his own pocket when production started going over budget, one of those things that immediately made people raise their eyebrows, smirk, and call the movie, Kevin's Gate. Filming in private ranches and national parks, Costner and crew wrapped up in late 1989. A year later, the film was released, limited on November 9th, wide on November 23rd.
And it was a smash hit. While never, not once, claiming the #1 spot at the box office, it had staying power. By the end of its run, it was the third-highest-grossing 1990 film in the United States, the fourth highest in the entire world. Accolades came from all over the world: the Berlin International Film Festival gave Costner the Silver Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement, the Japanese Film Academy named it the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, France's César Awards nominated it for Best Foreign Film, and the Golden Globes gave it three awards, including Best Motion Picture - Drama. It cleaned up stateside too, named among the best of the year by guilds for the Cinematographers, Editors, Casting Directors, Directors, and Producers.
All on the way to its big night at the Academy Awards, of course, where it won seven of its twelve nominations. Among them: Blake for Best Adapted Screenplay (they'll forgive anyone if they succeed) and Costner for Best Director and Best Picture.
Not bad considering some of the competition it was up against at both the box office and the awards run. Among which were these films:
