DANCES WITH WOLVES
DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY KEVIN COSTNER
TIG/ ORION PICTURE CORPORATION
Information From IMDb
Plot Summary
Lt. John Dunbar is dubbed a hero after he accidentally leads Union troops
to a victory during the Civil War. He requests a position on the western frontier,
but finds it deserted. He soon finds out he is not alone, but meets a wolf he dubs
"Two-socks" and a curious Indian tribe. Dunbar quickly makes friends with the tribe,
and discovers a white woman who was raised by the Indians.
He gradually earns the respect of these native people, and sheds his white-man's ways.
Written by Greg Bole
Full Cast
Kevin Costner ... Lt. John J. Dunbar
Mary McDonnell ... Stands With A Fist
Graham Greene ... Kicking Bird
Rodney A. Grant ... Wind In His Hair
Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman ... Ten Bears (as Floyd Red Crow Westerman)
Tantoo Cardinal ... Black Shawl
Robert Pastorelli ... Timmons
Charles Rocket ... Lieutenant Elgin
Maury Chaykin ... Major Fambrough
Jimmy Herman ... Stone Calf
Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse ... Smiles A Lot
Michael Spears ... Otter
Jason R. Lone Hill ... Worm
Tony Pierce ... Spivey
Doris Leader Charge ... Pretty Shield
Michael Horton ... Captain Cargill - extended version
Tom Everett ... Sergeant Pepper
Larry Joshua ... Sergeant Bauer
Kirk Baltz ... Edwards
Wayne Grace ... Major
Donald Hotton ... General Tide
Annie Costner ... Christine
Conor Duffy ... Willie
Elisa Daniel ... Christine's Mother
Percy White Plume ... Big Warrior
John Tail ... Escort Warrior
Steve Reevis ... Sioux #1 / Warrior #1
Sheldon Peters Wolfchild ... Sioux #2 / Warrior #2 (as Sheldon Wolfchild)
Wes Studi ... Toughest Pawnee
Buffalo Child ... Pawnee #1
Clayton Big Eagle ... Pawnee #2
Richard Leader Charge ... Pawnee #3
Redwing Ted Nez ... Sioux Warrior
Marvin Holy ... Sioux Warrior
Raymond Newholy ... Sioux Courier
David J. Fuller ... Kicking Bird's Son
Ryan White Bull ... Kicking Bird's Eldest Son
Otakuye Conroy ... Kicking Bird's Daughter
Maretta Big Crow ... Village Mother
Steven Chambers ... Guard (as Steve Chambers)
William H. Burton ... General's Aide
Bill W. Curry ... Confederate Cavalryman
Nick Thompson ... Confederate Soldier
Carter Hanner ... Confederate Soldier
Kent Hays ... Wagon Driver
Robert Goldman ... Union Soldier
Frank P. Costanza ... Tucker
James A. Mitchell ... Ray
R.L. Curtin ... Ambush Wagon Driver
Justin ... Cisco
Teddy ... Two Socks
Buck ... Two Socks
Jim Wilson ... Doctor Who Examines Dunbar (uncredited)
Writing credits
Michael Blake (novel) (screenplay)
Produced
Bonnie Arnold .... associate producer
Kevin Costner .... producer
Jake Eberts .... executive producer
Derek Kavanagh .... line producer
Jim Wilson .... producer
Original Music
John Barry
Cinematography
Dean Semler
Trivia
* In the opening scene where two doctors are examining John Dunbar, the man on the table is Kevin Costner's stand-in. The two people playing the doctors are actually the film's producer, Jim Wilson on the left and director/star Costner on the right. The voices were dubbed by other actors.
* Graham Greene, who plays Kicking Bird, also plays Edgar Montrose in "The Red Green Show" (1991). In one episode of that series, Edgar mentions "Dances With Wolves", and says the "native guy" (Kicking Bird) should have gotten the Oscar.
* With the exception of the opening Civil War scenes (which were shot last), the film was shot in sequence because of the weather. They needed it to correspond with the time sequence in the film because of so much outdoor shooting. Most films are not shot in sequence.
* The feasting scene after the buffalo hunt, where Dunbar and Wind in His Hair become friends and exchange their gifts, was actually shot indoors inside a Quonset hut because it was so cold outside.
* Filmed during a drought, water had to be trucked into the Fort Sedgwick location to fill up the pond.
* Two Socks was played by two wolves. One was called Buck and the other was called Teddy, and both were kept on set at all times.
* Approximately 25% of the dialog is not in English.
* Many of the native Indians were visibly moved by the scene where the Sioux encounter a field full of dead, skinned buffalo.
* The buffalo herd comprised 2000 animals, the largest herd in America.
* Only one take a day could be made of the buffalo stampede as the animals would often run a distance of 10 miles. It would take the wranglers all day to round them up again.
* Fort Sedgwick actually had a floor that could be lowered several feet for doing low-angle shots.
* Paint was used to create the effect of a swathe of land flattened by buffalo.
* For the scene where Two Socks is being shot at by the soldiers, the wolf was actually hemmed into a small pen with puffs of smoke popping off around him. The animal was chained within the pen to prevent him escaping.
* Close to a million feet of film was shot in total.
* 9 cameras were utilized in the buffalo hunt.
* The man seen initially telling the wolf to go home when Dunbar is riding out to visit his friends is actually the trainer. He was bitten in the leg when the wolf chased him, so Costner had to run himself during the next shot. He kept throwing pieces of raw meat to keep the wolf from biting him.
* There were two wolves used. One had to have the milky white socks painted on him.
* The scene where we see Cisco jumping around in the corral just before the Sioux party steals him was a 'stolen' shot. The horse was just letting off steam, and they caught part of it and slipped it in because it looked so good and fit the scene.
* Graham Greene's character, Kicking Bird, is supposed to be the adoptive father of Stands With A Fist, played by Mary McDonnell; however, in real life, McDonnell is actually 2 months older than Greene.
* During the scene where the buffalo is charging at the young Indian, the buffalo is actually charging at a pile of its favorite treat: Oreo cookies.
* Viggo Mortensen was originally cast to play John Dunbar.
* The buffalo hunt and several other sequences were filmed on the 55,000-acre Triple U Ranch owned by Roy Houck, who had served as South Dakota's lieutenant governor in the 1950s; he gave the filmmakers considerable assistance in managing the logistics of the sequence.
* Two of the domesticated buffalo used in the production were borrowed from singer Neil Young.
* Because of budgetary overruns and general industry reluctance to invest in a Western, Kevin Costner was forced to dig deep into his own pockets to make up the film's $18 million budget. As it then went on to gross over $100 million, he himself earned an estimated $40 million from his original investment.
* To add realism to the movie, a language coach was brought in to teach Lakota to cast members who did not know how to speak it. Because of the difficulty in learning the language, the "gendered speech" aspects of the language were omitted from the lessons. When native speakers of Lakota saw the finished film, they found it amusing to hear Lakota warriors talking like women.
* To prevent any possible animal cruelty Kevin Costner's Tig Productions spent $250,000 on animatronic buffalo to be used in the climactic buffalo hunt.
* Michael Blake wrote a spec screenplay in the early 1980s. When Kevin Costner came across the project in 1986, he suggested to Blake that he should turn it into a novel, thereby increasing his chances of getting it made into a film. Blake did so and, after many rejections, found a publisher in 1988. Costner immediately snapped up the movie rights with an eye to directing it himself.
* The highest grossing Western of all time, with a domestic take of $184 million. It achieved this figure without ever reaching #1 on the box-office charts.
* Filmed in South Dakota, which is mainly wide-open rolling hills. The cornfield at the beginning of the film had to be specially grown, and the few trees that were on the chosen location had to have their leaves painted different shades of red and brown to signify fall.
* Pope John Paul II once mentioned that John Barry's score was one of his favorite pieces of music.
* Kevin Costner originally considered casting Marlon Brando in the role later played by Maury Chaykin.
* That is Rodney A. Grant's real long, flowing hair. He does not wear a wig in the film.
* As a joke, most of the cast and crew assigned each other Indian names. Editor Neil Travis was "Over the Hill" and the script supervisor was "Sand In Her Teeth" because she used to smile a lot.
* Those are actual dead deer that Kevin Costner pulls out of the river. To look authentic the carcasses had to be heavy, so animals killed on the highways were collected for the scene.
* Robert Pastorelli wore a slightly raised breastplate for the scene in which his character Timmons is hit by arrows.
* Cinematographer Dean Semler's daughter was a horse wrangler on the film. She broke both of her wrists when the horse she was riding was suddenly spooked and threw her.
* The studio wanted the final cut to be 2 hours 20 minutes. They had to settle for Kevin Costner's cut of 3 hours.
* This is the last movie that editor Neil Travis cut using physical film. He has since moved on to digital editing, using Montage and Avid.
* Graham Greene's first reaction when he learned that most of the film was going to be in Lakota was, "I don't speak that".
* Kevin Costner's spreading out of his arms while doing his suicide run at the start of the film was a completely spontaneous gesture that took his stunt coordinator by surprise.
* John Barry agreed to score the film immediately after reading the script.
* Dean Semler first had an inkling about how important his Oscar win was to his native Australia when he was on a night flight to Sydney and the stewardess asked him if he had it with him and if he would mind showing it to the passengers.
* Kevin Costner's daughter Annie Costner, playing Stands With A Fist as a child, is seen running away from the Pawnee party that killed her family in the dream sequence. She looks back over each shoulder as she runs because Costner told her to look over her right shoulder and she didn't know her right from her left - she was only 6 years old at the time.
* Director Kevin Reynolds received "special thanks" in the credits due to his helping Kevin Costner direct the famous buffalo hunt scene.
* Michael Blake initially intended the story to be a screenplay, but after working with Kevin Costner and producer Jim Wilson on an earlier film, he was convinced by them to write it as a novel first - both to ensure the story would be told completely without having to work within the bounds of a standard-length script, and also because they believed the story would be more easily sold as a novel than as a screenplay.
* The film ran over budget, forcing Kevin Costner to make up the overages personally. That caused rumors that the film would be another out-of-control, disappointing western like Heaven's Gate (1980). In fact, some studio people were referring to it as "Kevin's Gate". It went on to win the first Best Picture Oscar for a western since Cimarron (1931), over 50 years before it.
* The very last scene shot in the film was the one where Kevin Costner rides in to tell them the buffalo had arrived, one of the few out-of-sequence shots in the film. While the cameras were on him, riding only in pants and a shirt, the cast and crew were in heavy coats because of the freezing weather.
* Lt. John Dunbar carries two guns in the film--a Henry 1860 rifle made specially by Uberti and a Colt 1851 Navy cap-and-ball revolver.
* The liver that Wind In His Hair proffers to Dunbar after the buffalo hunt are actually made of cranberry Jell-o.
* Just as Timmons bids farewell to Lieutenant Dunbar at Fort Sedgwick, he commands the two lead horses (of four horses in total) to a start with a "Jake n' Jim!" Jake Eberts and Jim Wilson are the names of the film's Executive Producer and Producer, respectively.
Goofs
* Continuity: The canteen tied to Cisco's saddle.
* Continuity: Pickled egg on the face of Dunbar's wagon driver.
* Continuity: The size of the jerky that Dunbar is offering to the wolf. Alternately, he may be holding it in a different way.
* Anachronisms: The flag that John Dunbar was flying when meeting with the Indians was of the wrong era.
* Crew or equipment visible: One of the wolves can be seen wearing a choke collar.
* Factual errors: The tribe members do not use proverbs or formulaic expressions, which characteristically function to preserve knowledge and tradition in an oral (pre-writing) culture.
* Anachronisms: An elder at the fireside can be seen wearing a modern day collar underneath his costume.
* Factual errors: Three birds flying over are identified as geese. They are, in fact, cranes.
* Anachronisms: A dove in an old fort is a Eurasian collared dove, nonexistent at that time in North America.
* Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the beginning of the great buffalo shooting you can clearly hear someone shout, "Here we go" while the camera is focused on Dunbar. (This audio track can be heard on the European (4 hour) version)
* Crew or equipment visible: When the Sioux and John Dunbar are going on the buffalo hunt and they come upon the slaughtered/skinned buffalo, a crew member can be seen lying down on the ground in the background behind the Sioux passing on horseback.
* Revealing mistakes: Outlines of the disks anchoring the prop arrows can be seen under Timmons' shirt when he is on his back after the attack.
* Revealing mistakes: When Dunbar is shooting the 1860 Henry rifle, the cartridge indicator is seen in its rear-most position - indicating empty - and remains there throughout the entire action sequence.
* Continuity: The window in front of which Fambrough is standing, opens and closes a couple of times before and after he commits suicide.
* Continuity: At first, John Dunbar's flag is ripped like a forked tongue, but then is not ripped later on. It goes back to ripped near the end of the film.
* Continuity: Throughout the movie, Lt. Dunbar wears the yellow shoulder boards of a cavalry officer on his army jacket. In the scenes leading up to just before the Sioux war party leaves camp to attack the Pawnee, Lt. Dunbar has traded this jacket with Wind In His Hair for a breast plate. In the next sequence, the Sioux war party is leaving camp to attack the Pawnee and Wind In His Hair is seen wearing this jacket while on horseback, but the shoulder boards on it are now blue, the color worn by infantry officers.
* Anachronisms: Electric power lines are visible during the buffalo hunt.
* Revealing mistakes: After the Sioux rescue John Dunbar at the creek, one of the Sioux walks past the dead Spivey, splashing water in his face and Spivey blinks.
* Anachronisms: During the Pawnee raid on the Sioux camp, a Pawnee can be seen wearing a Pattern 1883 cavalry greatcoat (distinguished by the yellow lining of the cape). Greatcoats in the 1860s had no yellow lining.
* Revealing mistakes: When Dunbar and Timmons are leaving for Ft. Sedgewick you can see a second set of reins leading back underneath the wagon seat. There is also a curtain under the seat to conceal the real driver. In later scenes the curtain is gone.
* Continuity: When Dunbar first inspects the two buildings which are Ft. Sedgewick, his beard stubble is extremely short. As he goes from one building to the next, his beard is suddenly at about a 3-4 day growth.
* Errors in geography: When Kicking Bird takes Dunbar to the "Sacred Place" (which in the "The Making of 'Dances With Wolves'" is said to be the Black Hills) Mount Moran (The Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming) stands prominently on the right side of the panorama.
* Continuity: A noticeable dorsal stripe on Cisco the horse's back disappears and reappears throughout.
* Revealing mistakes: When Dunbar hears a noise outside and runs to the door hitting his head on the door-frame, he falls down unconscious. When coming to, the blood has run down his face instead of across his forehead.
* Continuity: When Sgt Bauer is running away from the river fight, he is holding a Remington Model 1858 Revolver, but when he encounters Smiles A Lot on the bank of the river and tries to shoot him (the gun misfires), he is holding a Colt 1860 Army revolver
* Continuity: When Dunbar arrives back at the battlefield from the surgery, there is an apple which goes from half eaten to barely started.
* Anachronisms: The apple beside Dunbar at the battlefield, after his return from the surgery, is a variety that had not been developed at that time.
* Continuity: Having unloaded the wagon at the fort, Dunbar pauses for a moment and glances down. There is a rag or cloth at his foot which disappears a moment later.
* Continuity: When remembering her family was killed by the Pawnee when she was a child, Stands With A Fist clearly has no marks or scars on her wrists. She had slit her wrist only a short period of time before.
* Anachronisms: When Dunbar is dragging a dead deer out the pond at Ft. Sedgwick, there are tire tracks in the hillside in the background.
* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Ten Bears was a Comanche Chief not Sioux
* Anachronisms: When Kicking Bird flees from a naked Dunbar on their first encounter, modern building structures can be seen on the horizon, to the right of the picture.
* Anachronisms: In 1863, General Tide is shown wearing the three stars of a lieutenant general. There were no lieutenant generals in the United States Army at that time.
* Continuity: When Lt Dunbar first encounters Stands with a Fist grieving over her dead husband, the length of her hair varies from scene to scene.
* Anachronisms: The flag flying at Ft. Sedgwick is the flag with 50 stars rather than the flag used during the Civil War.
Memorable Quotes
Filming Locations
Badlands National Park, Interior, South Dakota, USA
(Fort Hays to Fort Sedgewick Wagon journey)
Belle Fourche River, South Dakota, USA
Black Hills, South Dakota, USA
(winter camp)
Fort Pierre, South Dakota, USA
(buffalo scenes)
Interior, South Dakota, USA
(Fort Hays to Fort Sedgewick Wagon journey)
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA
(2nd unit photography - landscape)
Jackson, Wyoming, USA
(2nd unit photography - landscape)
Pierre, South Dakota, USA
(near) (buffalo scenes)
Rapid City, South Dakota, USA
Sage Creek Wilderness Area, Badlands National Park, Interior, South Dakota, USA
(Fort Hays to Fort Sedgewick Wagon journey)
South Dakota, USA
Spearfish Canyon, Black Hills, South Dakota, USA
(winter camp)
Tomahawk Drive, Fort Hays, Kansas, USA
Triple U Standing Butte Ranch - 26314 Tatanka Road, Fort Pierre, South Dakota, USA
Wyoming, USA
She is well aware of that, and that's fine.
She thought everyone was moderated at this board. If that's not the case for all on the board, it's a surprise to her, but it's certainly acceptable. She is always on her best behaviour everywhere, and hopes that you will forgive her speaking of herself in the third person just this once.
