During an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show (2013), Sir Anthony Hopkins revealed that he had sent fan letters to Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall after seeing the film, paying both men compliments on their performances.
At first, Touchstone Pictures billed Kevin Costner above Robert Duvall, but Costner requested that the studio give top billing to Duvall instead.
Kevin Costner declined the part of Bill in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) in order to appear in this film.
Robert Duvall was the only actor Kevin Costner had in mind for the role of Boss Spearman. He said that if Duvall had declined the part, he might not have made the film at all.
Robert Duvall was thrown from a horse and sustained six broken ribs while practising his riding for the part.
Robert Duvall holds Kevin Costner in high regard. He is an avid admirer of Dances with Wolves (1990), and he was pleased that Costner gave him top billing.
The filming location was so remote from civilisation that they had to spend $40,000 on constructing a road merely to reach it.
The screenplay does not specify where the story is set, but Kevin Costner insisted on seeking out landscapes where 'you couldn't see a fence, road or another person'.
Near the end of filming, Kevin Costner and a few friends paid a surprise visit to a large pow wow at Morley. Chief Ernest Wesley honoured Costner for his work with the Lakota people and for using the Sioux language in Dances with Wolves (1990).
Kevin Costner keeps a prop from every film he works on as a memento. For this particular film, he retained the bottle of chloroform.
Tig wasn't just the name of the dog in the film; it was also the name of Kevin Costner's production company. Tig was additionally the name of Kevin Costner's grandmother.
Robert Duvall agreed to take on the part of Boss Spearman within 24 hours of reading the screenplay.
Kevin Costner was thrilled that Robert Duvall ad-libbed some of his lines. "It's easier if you feel as though the words you are saying are going to live on forever."
At just 2 hours and 19 minutes, this is the shortest of the three films directed by Kevin Costner himself. They average three hours apiece.
Dean McDermott secured the role of Doc Barlow, as he was the only actor to audition with a limp.
To produce the flood, the crew pumped 32,000 gallons of water down the street each minute. A massive holding tank at the bottom then recirculated the water back to the top via underground pipes.
Kevin Costner was particularly fond of the line "country's fillin' up". By the 1880s, the US population had risen to more than fifty million people.
The crew planted a solitary tree so the audience would later recognise a particular spot.
Kevin Costner said shooting the dog's death scene was tough for him, because he is 'a great lover of animals, particularly dogs.'
The producers Kevin Costner, Jake Eberts and David Valdes personally financed nearly half of the film's budget.
Kevin Costner deliberately filmed the shoot-out using extremely wide, panoramic shots.
Kevin Costner was delighted with the film's costumes, saying they 'captured the period' without being 'flashy'.
While filming, a young Native man, Romeo N. Ryder, had been engaged to carry out extra security duties; he was fatally stabbed in the nearby town of Morley on 20 August 2002. His brother, Zach Ryder, was working on the set as a production trainee.
The boss repeatedly refers to Percy as 'Old Man'. However, Robert Duvall was 21 years older than Michael Jeter, and Jeter was just 50 when the film was shot.
Only a single section of the gunfight was filmed in slow motion. Kevin Costner sought to avoid slow motion, as he felt it detracted from the realism of the gunfight.
The filmmakers were disappointed that the film was assigned an R rating. Kevin Costner has suggested this was because the film's violence was 'original'.
The firearm Charley employs in the gunfight is a Winchester Model 1873 sporting rifle.
Robert Duvall spent 13 weeks shooting the film in Alberta, but reportedly did not enjoy the experience. "I prefer not to work in Canada," the 72‑year‑old actor said, "I prefer to work in my own country. There are better actors down there. That's why they have to import so many actors for their Canadian productions." He insisted that his next picture, Secondhand Lions (2003), be filmed in Texas. "I said I wasn't interested in shooting it in Canada." Duvall later apologised for the remark, saying in 2007, "I just want to say to you guys, that I told people in Canada that I eat my words when I say there are no good actors in Canada. After I worked there, I retracted what I said because we found wonderful actors."
'Hunting' horses were employed for the duration of the gunfight because they didn't flinch at gunfire. Cinematographer J. Michael Muro said it lent the film a 'documentary' quality, as though 'you were there'.
The production team spent in excess of $1 million constructing a Canadian town from scratch, as Kevin Costner disliked every town available.
Kevin Costner remarked that Michael Jeter brought to mind character actors from Westerns, notably Walter Brennan and Ward Bond.
Kevin Costner spotted a location one day whilst riding his horse during a break from filming.
Annette Bening was obliged to wear a corset whilst she remained in character.
It was an actor auditioning for the film who suggested that Marshall Poole play the violin.
The hefty revolver that Boss Spearman favours is a Remington Army, model 1875.
During the filming of Open Range (2003), professional wranglers looked after 225 head of cattle on set.
Although this is an American western, the entire score was recorded in Prague by an orchestra most of whose members did not speak English.
Night-time filming posed a challenge, as darkness lasted for only five hours before the sun rose.
Annette Bening described Sue as 'a woman of genuine substance and simplicity'.
Before filming commenced, Stoney elder Dale House conducted a private spiritual ceremony for Kevin Costner. Footage of the event is included on the second disc of the Open Range DVD release.
This is the second film in which the character portrayed by Kevin Costner kills the character portrayed by Kim Coates; the first occurrence was in Waterworld (1995).
Set in the Old West, the film-makers recreated the fight using computer-generated models. It is meticulously choreographed. Kevin Costner even described it as 'a ballet'.
Near the end of the film, when Sue uses Charlie's full name — Charles Postelwaite — Charlie calls Boss "bucket mouth", the same phrase Kevin Costner used about his father (Ralph Waite) in The Bodyguard (1992), during a scene in which his father is recounting stories from Costner's childhood.
Tig, Charley's dog, was portrayed by a crossbred terrier called "Chester". The dog that Charley rescued from the floodwaters was actually played by two terrier mixes, "Goldie" and "Boomer". Two dogs were used so they wouldn't become too tired or cold from repeated takes.
Cliff Saunders (Ralph) impressed Kevin Costner with an audition captured on videotape. Before the recording had finished, Costner said, "he got the part."
No animals were harmed in the course of filming.
The film's director of photography, J. Michael Muro, was personally selected by Kevin Costner. Costner took a gamble on Muro after he had worked as a camera operator on Dances with Wolves (1990).
Clayton Lefthand, a member of the Stoney (Nakoda Sioux) community, served as the film liaison for the production.
The screenwriter Craig Storper sought to make a film examining the evolution of violence in the West.
Michael Kamen was brought in to replace Basil Poledouris as the film's composer; contrary to popular belief, Poledouris never composed a score — he withdrew after seeing the film temp-tracked with music akin to his work on Starship Troopers (1997).
The DVD release includes a deleted scene titled "Mose's Story". It’s only a rough cut, and it shows that in some shots the picturesque sky and clouds were composited into the footage using chroma key. In this rough edit no attempt was made to synchronise the sky with the camera movements, so the effect is plainly visible.
In a 2003 interview with Jimmy Carter, Kevin Costner set out why he chose a deliberately measured tempo for the film. He said he wasn't trying to make it slow so much as to give it a different rhythm — he didn't want people to go to the theatre and be bored. Pace, he argued, can be as important to a film as the dialogue or the way the characters look. The picture, he noted, gradually gathers momentum; it's much like the first 100 pages of a novel. We've all probably lent a book to someone and found ourselves saying, 'The first 100 pages are a bit slow, but then it really kicks in.' We say that as a kind of reassurance — 'this book is very good, don't be put off by that section.' In that sense the film may well have benefited from those opening 100 pages, as the book does; but once it snaps into gear you can't put it down. He believes audiences should be braver with films and not always rush to the end, allowing themselves to savour the experience. It's not that people don't enjoy car crashes or action — everyone does — but you want to be in the middle of it, not watching from the outside.
The dog is called Tig. Kim Coates portrayed a character called Tig in the series Sons of Anarchy (2008).
In a sequence excised from the film, Charley had already killed one wounded man.
Charley's surname, Waite, is also the surname of Ralph Waite, who portrayed Herb Farmer, the father of Frank Farmer (played by Kevin Costner), in The Bodyguard (1992).
The first time Denton Baxter is shown in Marshall Poole's office, a wanted poster above his left shoulder bears the name Lloyd Buckley. Gae S. Buckley served as the film's production designer.
Kim Coates and Michael Jeter both featured in the film Waterworld (1995), alongside Kevin Costner.
Charley served in the Civil War, but which side he fought for is deliberately left ambiguous. From what he tells Spearman, he was a guerrilla operating behind enemy lines, killing soldiers and those 'without uniforms'. While that could be interpreted as murdering civilians, it could equally mean he was targeting other guerrillas, who typically did not wear uniforms.
Although the production was shot on Super 35, the closing credits list it as "Filmed in Panavision".
James Russo and Kevin Costner were both cast in The Postman (1997).
Kevin Costner felt it was important to follow the principal shoot‑out on the high street with an examination of the aftermath. "There are consequences to violence. Horses are killed, people are injured, the little girl with her father talking to her — there are psychological repercussions that come from violence, and while conventional wisdom is 'come on, let's move on,' I wanted to address it."
This marked Michael Jeter's final on-screen appearance in a live-action film; however, his ultimate film credit was The Polar Express (2004), a project he was working on when he died.
Kevin Costner loved the moment when Boss fires at the villain through a wall, the blast propelling him several feet into another wall. "It was very important for me to have him twitch when he hit the ground. Probably the best single kill I've ever seen in films."
Kevin Costner said he was surprised and disappointed that the film was given an R rating. "It didn't contain any sexual content, it didn't have a language issue. I suspect they made that decision because of our shoot-out, which, I believe, isn't even as violent as many other films," he said.
One aspect of the screenplay and the film that appealed to Kevin Costner was that it captured a short window of time when the two cowboys actually spoke to one another. "Given the circumstances, they probably spoke to each other more over those last three or four days than they had in the nine years they'd been riding together. The circumstances forced it."
Kevin Costner deliberately opted not to include any Native American characters in that town — and therefore not in the film Open Range (2003) — because he felt the town and its racist residents would not even permit a Native American to be seen walking its streets. "It wasn't an omission."
"I've always been particular about how reloading is handled in films," Kevin Costner says, and he dislikes when characters fire more rounds than the gun actually holds. That said, he admits that at the start of the gunfight Charley empties a man by "fanning" his revolver and firing more than six shots. "Fanning is such a mythical element of the western, and I hadn't seen it for so long that there was no way to justify it other than, hell's bells, I wanted to do it."
"I adore this small actor," Kevin Costner remarks about Michael Jeter, who portrays Percy. Jeter, sadly, passed away before the film was released. "He genuinely comes from the finest tradition of supporting actors. You could place him right up there with Walter Brennan or Ward Bond, and if you know anything about films you'll know that John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper wouldn't have made a picture without people like this in it — they were so colourful and added so much to the film, enabling Cooper and Stewart to be more laconic because those performers were effectively doing that dance."
Kevin Costner sought to record the small particulars that interested him, notably the specifics involved in setting up a camp.
At the six-minute mark, one of Kevin Costner's favourite shots in the film occurs as Charley Waite approaches a horse holding his hat in his hand.
The horse Kevin Costner rides is called Baby — the very same horse he rode in Wyatt Earp (1994). 'She's just a favourite little horse of mine, an absolute joy to ride,' he said.
"No-one likes this sort of thing," Kevin Costner remarks about the revelation that Tig has been killed. "Nor do I — it's not easy for me, and thematically I've covered this before in Dances with Wolves," he adds. That prompts him to discuss test screenings, where audience members left feedback about what worked and what didn't, which ultimately led to changes in the film. "I somewhat disagree with that; I'd rather people saw what I want them to see and felt what I want them to feel," he says. At test screenings for Dances with Wolves the only negative comments concerned the deaths of the wolf and the horse (and the scene with the chap using journal pages as toilet paper). Studio executives suggested cutting those three sequences to make, in their words, "a perfect film," but Costner refused, saying he wasn't an idiot.
At around the four-minute mark, Kevin Costner wanted the cinematographer James Muro's credit to appear over that particular shot, "that's a really pretty shot", but it didn't make it into the final edit. Curiously, the on-screen credit at that moment instead belongs to editors Michael J. Duthie and Miklos Wright. Costner first met Muro when the latter was working as a Steadicam operator on Field of Dreams (1989), "and I said, 'Look, I'm thinking of making this film [Dances with Wolves], and if I do I'd like you to come along.'" Muro repeated his Steadicam duties on that production, and when Open Range came about Costner opted to give Muro the chance to handle the cinematography.
Fifteen minutes in, the profile shot of Boss was merely 'just a grab' — Kevin Costner had spotted Robert Duvall standing against the light and asked him to move up to a horse.
Kevin Costner employed the river and the valley as geographical reference points so that viewers could gain a clear sense of the space and how the different parties were positioned relative to one another. Likewise, the tree seen at 28:05 was deliberately relocated to that spot to act as a marker that "always lets you know where you are when you see it."
Around the 10-minute mark, Button initially muttered "f*ck!", but "everybody wanted to move away from that word," so they opted to add an ADR line rather than have him use a much milder expletive. "The scene never played quite as well," Kevin Costner said.
Seeing the doctor's house with its white picket fence, Kevin Costner remarked that whereas Native peoples traditionally lived "very light on the land," European settlers arrived and took the reverse approach, laying out roads, founding towns, erecting buildings and putting up fences. "They staked out their territory; it's a different mentality that came to this continent and changed it for ever," he said.
Okay, on the commentary track, Kevin Costner publicly praised production designer Gae Buckley for her outstanding work on a very limited budget. "She simply hit the right balance between minimalism and practicality."
In Open Range (2003) the major shoot‑out towards the end of the film was shot over several days, and to avoid continuity issues the production composited digital clouds into the blue sky.
Kevin Costner believes that one of the aspects of western films that most impresses audiences is the music. "Whether it's The Big Country or The Magnificent Seven, the great westerns all feature that splendid music," he said.
. "There she is, there's our girl," Kevin Costner remarks in the commentary as Annette Bening appears. "She is Susan Hayward, she is Maureen O'Hara, she is Kathryn Hepburn, she is Diane Keaton — she embodies all the greats. And clearly I have missed some names, so if you are watching this and you are a great actress, I take my hat off to you and I apologise."
Kevin Costner described the scene in which Charley stoops to pick up the mud he'd tracked into Sue's house and only then catches sight of her in the mirror as the film's sex scene.
An Italian censorship visa bearing the number 97813 was issued on 20 February 2004.
At the 56-minute mark, the man who takes their plates is portrayed by Herb Kohler, the highly successful head of the Kohler Company. He and Costner were friends. Kohler died in 2022; he came from a family that emigrated to this country, founded a company and carried it on as an independently owned firm renowned for the opportunities it offered its employees.
On the DVD commentary, Kevin Costner said he cast Abraham Benrubi as a way of apologising for Benrubi having been cut from The Postman (1997).
Kevin Costner asked for several buildings to be set very close together so the gaps between them were kept to a minimum — this, in turn, produced far more striking visuals when the bad guys came pouring through, and later, where Charley hustles through. Some crew members opted to widen the gaps, thinking they were doing him a favour, but he promptly put them right.
The line about Charley and Boss being unable to fit their knuckle into the teacups came from Kevin Costner's recollections of his father, who was forever talking about bare-knuckle bouts or warning the young Kevin that he might lose a knuckle if he reached across the dinner table once more.
Kevin Costner said he wanted audiences to settle into the film and its setting, and to allow themselves to absorb its rhythms — the rhythms of the period — when commenting on Open Range's (2003) unconventional pace.
(At 8 minutes) "The film is probably never as happy again after that particular moment," Kevin Costner said. "I asked Michael Kamen to unashamedly hit it that hard."
There was consideration of inserting a flashback at the point where Charley is asleep and perhaps dreaming in the doctor's house, but "I haven't found many flashbacks that work in my film career." Kevin Costner adds that, in his experience, flashbacks are typically employed to paper over gaps or issues in a film.
At one audition for the role of Sheriff Poole an actor arrived with a fiddle and played during the audition. Although Kevin Costner ultimately cast James Russo in the part, he incorporated that musical trait into the character. Costner says he believes the actor was Ted Demme, best known for directing 2001's Blow, but even if that were the case Demme would not have been able to take the role: he died of a heart attack in January 2002, and filming on Open Range commenced in June of that year.
Number of fatalities: 12.
The dog is called Tig — the same name as Kevin Costner's production company, Tig. It was named for his grandmother. He was brought up believing her name was Tig, but that turned out to be only a nickname; her real name was Lily. By coincidence, Costner had already named his daughter Lily before he discovered the truth. Costner tries to slip Tig's name into his films whenever it can be done naturally. He even worked it into The War (1994) as a verb when he describes a character's hair being pulled straight up — "tigging it up."
The valley shown in the film's opening was surveyed by Kevin Costner from the air, and because there were no access roads in or out, getting crew and kit in during filming proved a considerable logistical task.
Kevin Costner said he regretted not capturing a particular shot — one of Boss from behind as he looked down over the horses — but "it's so difficult to get those damned horses to stay on their marks." Each take caused difficulties when matching one shot to the next. "That's the big difference between making a cartoon and making a film."
Kevin Costner commented, 'I think this is ninety-five per cent of what I wanted,' adding that he couldn't imagine living with himself if it were any nearer to sixty.
Kevin Costner offered some reflections on screenwriting, saying that in his collaborations he isn’t concerned with who supplied which beat or who added the strongest scenes. He regards the script as the priority and advises concentrating on crafting the best possible screenplay and fully realised characters, because that increases the likelihood of attracting the finest acting talent in the world. "That makes your job [as director] so much easier."
. "We had to decide where to invest our money," Kevin Costner said, adding that two of the main concerns were the town itself and the flood sequence down its High Street. The latter cost them in excess of $300k.
Some advised Kevin Costner to cut the sequence after the fight in which Sue heads to the saloon to see Charley, but it wasn't Costner's first time in the director's chair.
The outhouse killing in Open Range (2003) serves as a small tribute to Clint Eastwood, and Kevin Costner has said that the sequence in Waterworld (1995), where his character dangles from the side of a boat, stretching his body out, was a nod to the highly acrobatic Burt Lancaster.
"In the course of making a film, numerous people can offer their views, and perhaps one of the trickiest issues in American cinema today is working out how to bring your film to a close." Kevin Costner remarked that there were likely several alternative moments at which the picture could have concluded, but "I preferred actually seeing the two of them together rather than merely imagining them together."
The opening storm introduces a subtle motif that Costner sustains throughout the film concerning "certain sounds that startle you." Here it’s thunder, and gunfire follows later.
Kevin Costner tends to take one or two items from a production as keepsakes; on this occasion it was the chloroform bottle from the doctor's house. "I also kept my guns," he said.
In the sequence where Boss and Sue Barlow are talking about Button, Kevin Costner remarks that sometimes, while watching a scene, he finds himself swept up by the strong performances. That is generally fine, but every so often it occurs when he is in the scene too, and he later realises you can see him nodding in approval at the acting. "Of course I can't use that take."
"Kevin Costner admits he's a slow learner as an actor," saying he isn't particularly quick at picking up his lines. He realised that the last thing he wanted while directing the film was to be worrying about his dialogue, so he made a point of learning every line before filming commenced.
"This is where the film shifts," Kevin Costner observed about half an hour into the commentary, noting that, for him, "the first hundred pages of the book have only just occurred." He likened it to the way people often reduce a novel's difficult opening — the first hundred pages — to groundwork that one does not always enjoy in the moment while waiting for something "to happen." He says it is a battle he sometimes faces as a filmmaker as well.
At 1 hour 34 minutes, Kevin Costner had to ADR his own dialogue after losing his voice for more than a week "though people listening to this DVD might not believe it because I never stop talking," and he hates the result.
Kevin Costner says that watching the film makes him think about things he might have done differently, "but in the heat of battle, trying to meet the deadlines, trying to be punctual, you make decisions under a certain amount of pressure, and I generally don't leave anything that I'm not genuinely happy with." He adds that it's likely a feature of everyone's life — believing at the time that the choices made were the best possible, only to look back later wishing there had been more time.
The earliest verbal cue in the dialogue about what Open Range ultimately addresses arrives when Boss Spearman tells Button, "A man's trust is a valuable thing, you don't want to lose it for a handful of cards." Costner has said the film is about the "kind of integrity that one needs to try to conduct himself with."
At 1:20:54, Costner reproves Duvall for his grumpy ad-lib, saying, "You're beginning to enjoy that bit, aren't you?"
