Back in the mid-1980s, Kevin Costner shopped a spec script called Dances With Wolves around town, but Hollywood wasn't buying.
Westerns were mostly extinct thanks to the 1980 debacle Heaven's Gate. But in 1988, Costner — then 33 and a major star after turns in The Untouchables and Bull Durham — convinced Orion Pictures to fund his first directorial effort.
It was the Civil War story of a Union soldier (played by Costner) stationed on the Western frontier, where he befriends and is accepted by a Sioux tribe.
Graham Greene, who earned an Oscar nom for playing medicine man Kicking Bird, the adoptive father of white tribeswoman Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell), remembers being blown away by Michael Blake's screenplay. "I went, 'Holy wow..
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