THE SEARCHER LOOKING FOR A HIT, KEVIN COSTNER RETURNS TO WESTERNS WITH `OPEN RANGE'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Say what you want about Kevin Costner - and you probably have - but the 48-year-old actor definitely marches to the beat of his own drum. He's a former A-list actor desperately needing a hit - nobody went to see his last four movies, ``For Love of the Game,'' ``Thirteen Days,'' ``3000 Miles to Graceland'' and ``Dragonfly'' - so what does Costner do?

He makes ``Open Range,'' a Western, a decidedly iffy genre these days.

``No one's actually said I'm in step with what's going on,'' Costner says, laughing. ``I get it. I get it. But you know what? I'd like to make another Western. In fact, I have another one ready to go.''

Costner has made four Westerns: ``Silverado'' (1985) and ``Wyatt Earp'' (1994) with director Lawrence Kasdan and the Oscar-winning ``Dances With Wolves'' (1990), which he also directed. Costner is back in the director's chair for ``Open Range,'' an old-fashioned story about a couple of cowboys (Costner and Robert Duvall) looking to settle a score with a wealthy cattleman.

``Costner has kind of become the standard-bearer for Westerns these days, along with Clint Eastwood and Tom Selleck,'' says film critic Leonard Maltin. ``And I say hooray for him for swimming against the tide. He likes movies told on a big canvas, and with 'Open Range' I think he's hit the bull's-eye.''

Adds David Valdes, who produced ``Open Range'' and Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winning Western ``Unforgiven'': ``There's nobody out there like Kevin. Westerns have almost been impossible to make for the last 20 years, and he's made four of them. This guy's not just a student of the genre. He could teach a university class.''

Eager for a little schooling, we spoke to Costner recently about Westerns and why he likes them so much.

Q: No studio would touch ``Open Range.'' You had to find the financing yourself, and then basically work for free. Why is it so tough to get a Western made these days?

A: There's just no confidence in the genre. There could have been no confidence in me, too. That's a reality. And unless you face reality, you're just kind of an idiot. If I had made a terrible movie and it had made $100 million, they'd have confidence. Go figure.

Q: But there are other iffy genres besides the Western that studios keep coming back to. Look at ``Gigli.''

A: I know. The Western isn't a simple genre and what happens is that people have a tendency to put hats on, grow out their beards and strap on the guns. It's like a costume party. They'd rather take six or seven young, hot actors and put them in a movie or have four women and call them ``bad girls.''

People are right to reject them. We've diminished the genre because we haven't embraced what is really great about it, which is, these are people just like us, and they had difficulties and they had dreams and they questioned things. It's all about the little moments.

Q: Like what?

A: Like in ``The Searchers,'' when John Wayne's character, Ethan, goes down that canyon and Jeffrey Hunter's talking to him and talking to him and he finally goes, ``Where's your jacket, Ethan?'' Whoa! That's a strong moment. And when John Wayne knows not to run his horse and the Hunter kid wants to run his horse and how he's not going to be able to get back there because he's exhausted the animal.

Things turn on a dime. I love the Western survival instinct, but most Westerns don't deal with those small things.

Q: What's the first Western you saw?

A: I saw ``How the West Was Won'' at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. I was 7 years old, and I watched this four-hour movie and never moved. I didn't leave for the intermission. I just sat there. So my love for the long-format movie was forged very early.

Q: Now we know where that comes from. What other Westerns were influential?

A: The ones that spoke to me were things like ``The Searchers'' and ``The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,'' ``Hombre.'' I liked ``Red River.'' I liked ``The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez'' very much. The violence and the friendship that occurs thrilled me. I like stories about friendship and the things that can threaten it or tear it apart.

Q: No Sergio Leone?

A: I was not a fan of the Leone films. They didn't vest so much in the writing as they did in the visuals. I didn't respond to them.

Q: Hawks or Ford?

A: I guess I would say Ford. But I would be pleased if either gentleman was directing one of my movies.

Q: What do you think ``Open Range'' brings to the genre?

A: Westerns are formula. And there's nothing wrong with formula. Every genre, inside the formula, has the obligatory scenes that make up that formula. The problem that most people don't deal with is how to take those obligatory scenes and make them become original.

Q: And what scenes did you feel obliged to include?

A: You have to have a gunfight. But in the gunfight, does the town magically clear out? Where the (hell) does a tumbleweed come from? You need to know that people of an IQ there will exit the town, the same way if you knew in high school that a fight was coming. Also, in the gunfight, if you know one guy is the deadliest of them all, why would you not want to kill him first? Why would you wait for him to draw?

Here's the biggest cliche and it's probably the smallest moment in the movie. When Sue (the nurse played by Annette Bening) says, ``We don't see a lot of people shot.'' (Laughs) Now that seems like a little thing to you, but to me, it's a big thing. It says, ``Yeah, people weren't being shot every day in the West. In fact, they weren't being shot at all. They usually went to the doctor to have splinters removed or broken legs fixed or because their teeth hurt.''

Q: Were you happy that the additional hour of footage you shot for ``Dances With Wolves'' finally came out on DVD this year?

A: I didn't participate in that. I find it hypocritical because while you're making a movie, you have people saying, ``Take it out! Take it out!'' and then before the print is wet, they're wanting you to put the scenes on the DVD.

I don't feel like I'm a baby very much in my life, but about that kind of thing, I feel like I'm a baby about it. I go, ``What the (hell) are you talking about?'' It bothers me a lot.

Q: Do you think you'd make it in the Old West?

A: I think about that. I stop and think, ``Am I that tough or am I a (wimp)?'' And a lot of times, I think I'm a (wimp). I don't know that I could be Lewis and Clark. I know that I would want to be, but when I measure myself against what they did, I am often in awe of that. I don't think I could be Shackleton.

And that's one of the reasons I love Westerns. You orchestrate moments where you privately as a man or woman go, ``God, could I have done that?'' The best Westerns I've seen all have those moments, and I can't get enough of them.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

Westward ho!

After Clint Eastwood's ``Unforgiven'' won the Oscar for best picture in 1993, producer David Valdes remembers reading all the stories talking about the rebirth of the Western. Ten years later, he and Kevin Costner had to beg, borrow and steal $20 million to make ``Open Range,'' mostly because everyone thought Westerns were dead.

What happened?

``Too many Westerns with Armani sunglasses,'' says Tarzana resident Valdes, on the phone from Hawaii. ``The bastardized versions killed the genre.''

But as film critic Leonard Maltin notes, ``You can chew the genre away, but it keeps coming back.'' And Westerns do seem to be enjoying a bit of a revival these days.

Witness:

Disney will be remembering ``The Alamo'' this Christmas with director John Lee Hancock (``The Rookie''), Dennis Quaid (Sam Houston) and Billy Bob Thornton (Davy Crockett).

Ron Howard, who dropped out of ``The Alamo'' when Disney wouldn't let him make the movie with an R rating, has finished ``The Missing,'' with Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett playing an estranged father and daughter in frontier New Mexico. The two put aside their differences to ride after a bunch of army deserters who have kidnapped Blanchett's young daughter. The movie opens in limited release Dec. 10.

``Lord of the Rings'' star Viggo Mortensen has made ``Hidalgo,'' an epic Western set in the Arabian desert, due out next March.

There are also remakes of the CBS-TV series ``Have Gun Will Travel'' and Sam Peckinpah's 1969 bullet-fest ``The Wild Bunch,'' although the latter will have a contemporary setting that probably rules out horses and campfires. A ``Lone Ranger'' feature remains a possibility, too.

``There's still a huge audience for Westerns, particularly on cable TV,'' Maltin says. ``It's a staple, something Hollywood will always come back to every few years.''

- G.W.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

(1 -- cover -- color) BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN 

Kevin Costner returns to the West he loves in `Open Range'

(2) Kevin Costner directed and stars in ``Open Range,'' opening Friday. He found it difficult to secure funds for the low-budget film, which he attributes to his recent box-office track record and studio trepidation toward Westerns.

(3) Robert Duvall, left, and Annette Bening star with Costner, right, in ``Open Range.'' ``We've diminished the genre because we haven't embraced what is really great about it,'' says Costner.

Photo illustration by Shane Michael Kidder/Staff Photographer

Box:

Westward ho! (see text)