It takes a truly patient individual to hold onto a friend that has shown that they’re not bound to change that much, especially when the person has already admitted that they don’t like that friend any longer. Let it never be said that Kevin Costner just threw away a friend that easily since screenwriter Michael Blake, one of Costner’s old friends, and someone he’d been trying to help, was given chance after chance to prove that he could change and go with the flow. Obviously, that didn’t happen right away, even when Costner was procuring writing jobs for him. Apparently, Michael was not a pleasant person to work with and ended up pissing off a lot of people, with Costner being one of them after a while. When Kevin allowed Michael to stay at his home things didn’t get any better since he wouldn’t read any of Blake’s work and things weren’t going in the direction they needed to. One mistake that Blake made, which would no doubt upset a lot of parents, was to start reading his material to their daughter, which might not have been too bad if the child had asked to hear some of his stuff, but simply reading to a child in their room, when you’re not their parent or relative, and don’t have permission, is enough to get a lot of people kicked out of the house and possibly have the police called on them.
At one point Michael went on to wash dishes as he was still sending material to Costner in an attempt to get him to read it. Kevin was of the mind that he didn’t want to read anything at that time, but he kept taking care of his friend all the same, until one day when he finally relented and read something that Blake had written. The whole ‘killing raccoons’ aspect came from a job detail that Blake had described, as he was expected to kill raccoons that were found digging the trash at his work, which might sound brutal, but if anyone’s ever lived in an area infested by raccoons then they might realize why some measure needs to be taken at times in order to keep the furry little buggers from marking their territory in a disturbing manner. Killing them is a bit extreme to be realistic, but the point is that killing raccoons is a part of this individual story that would be remembered once Blake’s screenplay was picked up and Costner presented it to the right people to get the movie made. That movie was Dances With Wolves, and as many people likely know at this time, the movie would go on to receive quite a few nominations and win several Oscars in its time.
It’s easy enough to mention that the whole ‘white savior’ aspect of the movie is something that many people might roll their eyes at and the claim is typical of such a movie, but if anyone really wants to take a good look at the movie, they might realize that calling it a ‘white savior’ movie is kind of extreme. Not only was Costner’s character out of his depth, but also did his best to be a decent neighbor to the tribe that would eventually take him in, and was set upon by that same tribe before they finally realized he could be useful. The movie definitely shows the degradation of the land and the traditions of the tribe by white settlers, as it was more than a little saddening to see how the movie painted many people, but it was also a masterful tale that went on to tell the story of a man that felt as though he didn’t belong to one world or another but was more than willing to coexist between the two, eschewing the more negative aspects of the world he’d come from in order to pass along the positive and useful parts that could help the people that eventually showed faith in him. There’s no getting away from the fact that white settlers did a great amount of damage to the lands they would eventually colonize and disrupt, but the idea of living together, of finding a balance between different people, is an idea that has a great deal of merit and is still an aspect of the story that is intriguing and more than a little positive.
To think that Costner almost passed on this story because he was simply tired of dealing with his friend’s nonsense is kind of funny really, and it’s enough to realize that sometimes friends can be the biggest impediment to a friendship. But thankfully Costner didn’t just give up on Blake, since taking the time to read one of his scripts was enough to bring one of the greatest movies of all time to life.
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