For whatever reason, people in the film and television industry seem inclined to give Kevin Costner a ten-gallon hat and give him a ride. Okay, if we're being real, he's the director of Dances With Wolves, who often makes himself play a cowboy, just like he did in the feature films Open Range and Horizon: An. American Saga – Chapter 1.” You can actually trace the “Yellowstone” veteran's connection to the Western genre back to the early days of his career when he starred in Lawrence Kasdan's 1985 Oscar-nominated Silverado. Almost a decade later, the duo ” Wyatt Earp” reunion didn't fare much better in comparison, though Costner has always defended the three-hour saga.
Ironically, Kasdan's 1994 film (which also took the ill-advised step of coming 6 months after the George P. Kosmatos shooting, Wyatt Earp-centric classic Tombstone hit theaters) was even Costner's longest-standing not a movie. The Old West. That would be “Hatfields & McCoys,” a three-part History Channel miniseries in 2012 that reunited Costner with “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and “Waterworld” helmer Kevin Reynolds. In addition to being the project that finally took Reynolds out of directing after 2006's Tristan & Isolde (A period piece that flopped despite Sir Ridley Scott being credited as producer), a dramatization of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud, also saw Costner go up against another actor who appeared and sounded in a cowboy hat: the late, great Bill Paxton.
Hatfields & McCoys pitted Costner against Paxton in high ratings
Unfortunately, what became mainstream Western medicine was, as Costner himself explains, “born in the inner city, Compton, California.” Collider In a 2012 interview while promoting “Hatfields & McCoys.” According to the Oscar winner, you can draw a line between his personal love of the genre and his experience watching Jimmy Stewart in a Canoe in the 1962 Western How the West Was starring John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall. Victory” when he was just seven years old. This, in turn, fed his love of US history, so he knew all about the bloody, brutal, years-long conflict between the Hatfields and McCoys before signing on for Reynolds' miniseries.
The actor only continued to explore the events that led to William Anderson's “Devil Anse” Hatfield and Randolph “Randall” McCoy (played by Costner and Paxton in “Hatfields & McCoys”) and their respective clans—from dear friends. After joining the show, bitter enemies that began near the end of the US Civil War. Based on his reading, Costner attributed this to intergenerational trauma and post-war “incredible anger” rather than hatred between the Hatfield and McCoy patriarchs. You can probably also trust that he knows what he's talking about, given his rigorous preparation for the role. That extended to choosing just the right hat for Devil Anse, a process that Costner assured Collider was “a huge undertaking.”
Critics were relatively complimentary of Hatfields & McCoys (also produced by Costner), though they felt it was a little too tight-lipped for its own good. Willa Paskin, Writing for the salonagreed very much with this sentiment, writing: “There's law and lawlessness that wash it out against a backdrop of grime, guts and gritty sounds, but it's all delivered without humor and loaded with self-seriousness.” Regardless, viewers turned out in droves to see Costner and Paxton take nasty jabs at each other, with the miniseries premiering at the time as the most-watched non-sports program in ad-supported cable history, and comfortably established. A record for the History Channel.
It turns out Kevin Costner and TV Westerns are a dynamite ratings combo – who knew?
