When was open range filmed

Kevin Costner was thrilled with the costumes for the movie. He says they "captured the time" without being "flashy". But Duvall was 21 years older than Jeter, who was only 50 at the time that this movie was made.

Only one part of the shoot-out was shot in slow motion. Kevin Costner tried to avoid slow motion because it took away from the realism of the battle. At only 2 hours and 19 minutes, this is the shortest of the three movies Kevin Costner self-directed. They average 3 hours each. The filmmakers were disappointed that this movie earned an R-rating. Kevin Costner speculates it was because the violence in the movie is "original". During filming, a young Native man, Romeo N.

Ryder, was hired to do extra security work: he was stabbed to death in the nearby town site of Morley on August 20, His brother Zach Ryder worked on the set as a production trainee. The rifle that Charley Kevin Costner used in the shoot-out is an Winchester sporting rifle. Kevin Costner found a location while riding on his horse one day in between filming. Night scenes were difficult to shoot because the sun rose after only five hours of darkness.

Clayton Lefthand of the Stoney Nakoda Sioux worked as a film liaison. Cliff Saunders Ralph thrilled Kevin Costner with a videotaped audition.

Even before it was over, Costner said, "he got the part. Towards the end of the movie, when Sue uses Charlie's full name, Charles Postelwaite, Charlie calls Boss, "bucket mouth", the same thing Kevin Costner called his father Ralph Waite in The Bodyguard , when his father is sharing stories from Costner's childhood. Stoney Elder Dale House performed a special spiritual ceremony for Kevin Costner before filming began.

Even though this is an American Western, the whole score was recorded in Prague by an orchestra that mostly couldn't speak English. Screenwriter Craig Storper wanted to make a movie about "the evolution of violence in the West. Annette Bening had to wear a corset the whole time she was in character. Tig, Charley's dog, was played by a mixed-breed terrier named "Chester". The dog Charley rescued from flood waters was actually played by two terrier mixes named "Goldie" and "Boomer". They used two dogs so they wouldn't get too tired or cold from doing multiple takes.

Michael Muro was hand-picked by Kevin Costner. He took a chance on Muro after he worked as a cameraman on Dances with Wolves Michael Kamen replaced Basil Poledouris as the composer, and contrary to general knowledge, Poledouris did not do a score, backing out after having seen the movie temp tracked with music, like his work from Starship Troopers There was a time when western films dominated at the box office almost more than any other film type per Screen Culture.

Its popularity swayed from time to time, but up until the s, it was the foundation of Hollywood and created stars like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. By this time, however, audiences had all but abandoned the genre. It was also fairly popular with critics, who praised it for the chemistry between Costner and Duvall, its scenery, and how it captured the classical feel of older westerns via Rotten Tomatoes. For him, this is perhaps the first good woman he has known. The movie wisely doesn't push them into a quick kiss, but underlines their awareness and reinforces it with some quiet conversations, shy and painfully sincere on Charley's part.

I can see what Costner is getting at here, and I admire his reticence, his unwillingness to push the romance beyond where it wants to go, and yet somehow the romance itself seems like an awkward fit in this story. Only a few days are involved, violence and illness overshadow everything, and it's clear that this visit will end in a gunfight.

The romance, sweet and well-acted as it is, seems imposed on the essential story. The town is thoroughly cowed by Baxter. But the townspeople behave differently than they do in many Westerns, where gunfights are treated as a spectator sport.

People in a settlement this size know everything that's going to happen, and as the showdown approaches, they get out of town, climbing the hill to the safety of the church. Afterward, they gather again to study and deal with the dead bodies; Costner says he saw that detail over and over in old photographs, although in many Westerns, bodies seem to disappear after they serve their purpose as targets. Most gunfights consist of the two sides blazing away at one another until the good guys win. The gunfight in "Open Range," which is the high point of the movie, is different.

Charley has been under fire, has killed, knows how men respond to the terror of being shot at. Although he and Boss and their few confederates, including an ornery coot played by Michael Jeter are outnumbered, Charley thinks they have a chance. In the movie's most intriguing speech, Charley outlines for Boss how Baxter's men are likely to react under fire: Who will freeze, who will run, who will shoot first. All of the elements involving Boss and his men and the showdown with Baxter are achieved with skill of a classic Western.

But again at the end, the relationship between Charley and Sue seems a little forced. They have two scenes of leave-taking when one would do, possibly because their romance even at this point seems undefined and incomplete. We suspect they will meet again, although that doesn't belong in this story; for the purposes of "Open Range," their time together is either too much or too little, and their bittersweet parting seems unsatisfying.

That is not to fault Bening and Costner's acting in their scenes together, which is as convincing as the material permits--maybe more so. There is a lovely scene where she serves them tea, and Costner's fingers are too big to fit through the handle on his teacup.

But to bring a woman into this story at all seems like a stretch, even though I can see she's supposed to underline Costner's uncertainty about his two sides, the killer side and the Boss-following side. It is Boss, after all, who sends Charley back for a proper farewell: "She's entitled to more than just your backside, walking away.