Trivia / Dances with Wolves

• Acting for Two: One of the doctors ready to amputate Dunbar's leg in the opening scene, and whose face is never shown, is played by Kevin Costner (though his voice is dubbed over with another actor). The other doctor is Costner's producing partner Jim Wilson, and the man on the table is Costner's stand-in.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: John Barry agreed to score the film immediately after reading the script.
• Directed by Cast Member: Besides directing the film, Kevin Costner portrayed John J. Dunbar.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Rodney Grant (Wind In His Hair) really did have hair that long and didn't require a wig like some of the other Native actors.
• No Stunt Double: Kevin Costner did all his own riding, including bare back and shooting his gun without holding the reins, during the buffalo hunt.
• Real-Life Relative: Kevin Costner's father plays the Union soldier who kills the Confederate sharpshooter drawing a bead on Dunbar on his last ride across the field. His 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. The children playing with the chickens and puppies in that scene are Costner's other daughter and his son.
• Self-Adaptation: Michael Blake wrote the screenplay from his 1988 novel.
• Throw It In!: 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.
• Troubled Production: The film faced a series of uphill battles. All in all, Kevin Costner spent five years and thousands of dollars of his own money working on the film, having to turn down multiple major film roles while facing ridicule for what was seen as a vanity project. Among the issues the production had to deal with: Costner couldn't find a suitable director, so he decided to do it himself. His inexperience as a director caused early shooting delays. The major studios wouldn't provide the proper funding. They took issue with the script's length and the amount of subtitles - the latter something that Costner and crew would not budge on - on top of the film being a western. New Mexico proved to be not an ideal filming location, as very few bison existed there and it was difficult to find people who could speak Comanche. South Dakota proved more suitable, so the Comanche were swapped out for Lakota, whose language was more widely spoken. Many of the actors (particularly those Indigenous actors who were not of Lakota heritage) had trouble learning their lines in Lakota. Costner threatened to fire them if they couldn't. The production ended up way over budget and over schedule. The first rough cut of the film ended up being five and a half hours long, requiring massive cuts.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Viggo Mortensen was originally cast to play John Dunbar. Mortensen will, however, be playing John Dunbar in the sequel to this movie, The Holy Road. Tom Berenger was also considered.
  • Kevin Costner originally considered casting Marlon Brando as Maj. Fambrough, but Brando's reputation as a diva gave Costner pause, since he only had two days to shoot those scenes.

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