“Open Range” – Trivia from Kevin Costner

Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects posted 45 Things We Learned from Kevin Costner’s ‘Open Range’ Commentary. (Sadly the piece is no longer available.)  Open Range is one of my favorite westerns.  But here are three of my favorite pieces of trivia from the piece and my comments on each…

He (Costner) likes to keep one or two things from a production as mementos, and here it was the chloroform bottle from the doctor’s house. “I also kept my guns.”  (I think it’s cool Costner keeps momentos from his films. It’d be interesting to see what he kept from each movie on his resume. – Craig)

“I’ve always had a thing about reloading in movies,” he says, and he hates when characters shoot off more shots than the gun actually holds. That said, he admits that the start of the shootout sees Charley unload on a guy by “fanning” his revolver and firing more than six shots. “The fanning is such a mythical part of the western, and I hadn’t seen it in such a long time, that I had no way of justifying other than hell’s bells I wanted to do it.” (I agree that heroes that never reload can be irritating, but I absolutely agree with Costner’s choice in this instance.  I’ll bet most folks didn’t even notice. – Craig)

One of the things he felt was important was to follow the main street shootout with a look at the aftermath. “There are consequences for violence. Horses get killed, people are injured, the little girl with the father talking to her, there are psychological repercussions that come from violence, and while conventional wisdom is ‘come on, let’s get on with it,’ I wanted to touch on it.”  (Movies that have a lot of violence without showing the consequences become cartoon-like.  Costner made an excellent choice to give the movie gravitas. – Craig)