“I have always changed dialogue slightly,” Luke Wilson explained. “I have done it so I can say things in a way I feel comfortable, but with this script, I went word for word. The way that Kevin Costner and John Baird had it written was, and I’m not being highfalutin here, like musical notes. There was just a real rhythm to it that I wanted to get perfectly. All that together made it a very exciting way to work.”
The actor plays Matthew Van Weyden, a wagon master who is the lead character in one of multiple narratives in writer, actor, and director Costner’s epic multipart Western epic Horizon: An American Saga. Spanning 15 years, it chronicles the pre and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West. Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter One is currently only in theaters and not available to stream. Chapter Two will arrive in theaters on Friday, August 16, 2024.
“Van Weyden was a really interesting idea to me. There’s this guy, the captain, the leader of the wagon train, and he was elected to this position, but he doesn’t even necessarily want it,” Wilson mused. “The other pioneers and settlers saw something in my character where they thought he’d be a good guy to lead this wagon train. My character has two young daughters and a wife. He’s trying to get across the country safely, but then suddenly he has other people, other families, children, and elderly people, and I thought that was a really interesting idea.”
“I also liked the idea that it does make my character fray at the edges; it does make him lose his temper. When these two guys watch Ella Hunt’s character, Juliette Chesney, take a bath, her husband comes to my character to deal with the guy and I say, ‘You wouldn’t talk to him yourself?’ Van Weyden has got an edge.”
Although Wilson, part of an ensemble cast led by Costner, Sienna Miller, and Sam Worthington, wasn’t on set for the entirety of the shoot and often not in the most extreme conditions, playing a wagon master traveling across harsh plains was far from a walk in the park.
“It was the only time I’ve ever dragged a chair into the shower after work and just sat there.” The Idiocracy and Legally Blonde actor said with a laugh. “It reminded me of those romantic comedies where someone’s just sitting in the shower, just letting the water hit them. I was lucky to be there in the most beautiful part of the fall, September and October, and then I was back in this beautiful part of the springtime.”
“I made the mistake of saying, ‘Gosh, this is so great. You guys are so lucky to be out here,’ and the crew said, ‘You have no idea what we’ve been through. We’ve been hot, there have been snow and dust storms, flooding, it’s been wild. It was not the longest shoot, but it was still 52 days spread out, and we did two movies in that time. They really did experience unbelievable weather, but I got lucky. There were a couple of times where these storms where you look out over these mountains and you see a storm coming and then ten minutes later it’s like ‘Boom,’ things start blowing, and you’ve got to head for the hills.”
Wilson and other cast members have been on a promotional tour since Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter One premiered with a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite less enthusiastic reviews and the film only grossing a lackluster $11 million during its opening weekend, the actor believes audiences will be drawn to Costner’s opus in their own way.
“I was doing press in New York last week, and on the flight home, I thought, ‘I’m going to put on an old movie while I read,’ and I chose Singin’ in the Rain,” he recalled. “I’m watching Gene Kelly, and he had such great expressions. Then I watched one dance number and was like, ‘This is unbelievable.’ That was when I realized I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid. Somehow, it got me thinking about Horizon. This series of films is one of Hollywood’s classic products. Even though Kevin obviously didn’t do it as a marketing ploy, what is different about Horizon is that he showcases the strength of the women in the West. You get used to seeing a male-dominated genre.”
“That would hopefully appeal to people that might not usually be into Westerns. Kevin always says, ‘People like to say the Old West was a simple time. They like to think it was like sunsets, native grasses, and nice wooden towns with little facades, but it was a difficult time. It was an unforgiving landscape and an unforgiving way of life.”
Despite a slow start, it’s hoped the July 4th weekend and the heatwave due to hit many parts of the US around the long weekend will tempt people inside and into multiplex seats. Wilson also believes that Costner’s drip-feeding his opus is an excellent antidote to the bingeing trend. Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter Two will land in movie theaters on Friday, August 16, 2024.
“I put a map on my phone and thought, ‘Okay, this is coming out. How many weeks will I have to wait until I watch the next one,’ I haven’t seen Part II either. I only have to wait six weeks, which is not too long,” he concluded. “It is interesting in this day and age where you get used to binge-watching stuff. It is fun to find something great, but this is such epic-quality filmmaking that it’ll be nice to let the first film settle in. It’s summertime, so going back to the theater, getting out of the heat, and watching the second part of the story is very appealing.”
“I was reading about someone who worked with a theater chain talking about the rhythm of going to the movies, and I thought, ‘That’s true.’ When I grew up, I was in a rhythm of going to the movies every weekend, finding out in the newspaper what was coming out, and being like, ‘Okay, this cop movie; I want to see that. It’s rated R. What theaters are playing in? How are we going to get into it?’ Hopefully, Horizon will help people get back into the rhythm of going to the theater.”
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