Kevin Costner will never forget the greatest movie moment of his life, which saw him beat out Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola for Best Director

Kevin Costner is now known for his role in the neo-Western Yellowstone. However, the legendary actor has had a rollercoaster of a career since the ’80s and ’90s. From his iconic role in the sports drama Field of dreams to his disastrous magnum opus Water worldCostner has seen it all.

However, his greatest success came with his directorial debut Dancing with wolveswhich was not only a commercial success but also earned him an Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture. The actor spoke about a particular scene that was extremely difficult to execute and took six days and a huge favor from a former governor to perform.

Kevin Costner won an Oscar for his directorial debut

The year was 1991 and Kevin Costner made his directorial debut Dancing with wolves had twelve nominations. It was nominated in many of the major categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, and more. For Costner, his competitor was Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Part III and Martin Scorsese for Good guys.

While Coppola had already won his previous editions, The godfather movies, Scorsese’s Good guys is still considered one of the greatest gangster films of all time. Starring Ray Liotta and Robert DeNiro, the film was based on the true story of the New York Mafia and was one of Scorsese’s career-defining films.

Others in this category were Stephen Frears for The deceivers and Barbet Schroeder for The tide is turning. At the 63rd Academy Awards, Costner’s Dancing with wolves won seven awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Costner later told GQ about the process of choosing the film,

Well, I asked three pretty prominent directors to maybe think about directing it, and they all had something they would do differently, something they didn’t agree with in the script… I said, ‘Oh my God, I think I really should direct this,’ not because I think I can make it better, but because I think it will be more what it seems on paper.

The film became only the second Western to win the B-S Picture Award and was credited with reviving interest in the genre. Films such as Unforgiven And No country for old men were the only two other westerns to win this coveted award.

Kevin Costner described the challenging scene in Buffalo in Dancing with wolves

Kevin Costner’s epic western directorial debut Dancing with wolves followed the story of a labor leader John Dunbar who is sent to the American Frontier and befriends the local Sioux tribe. The film shows him mingling with the tribesmen and understanding their culture, while realizing the threat they face from his kind.

One scene where he becomes one with the tribe is the buffalo hunting sequence. The epic sequence reportedly took six days to film and involved over 3,500 bulls. Costner described the painstaking process of filming the scene to GQ,

I was so grateful that (the bison) even existed, and then I had to second-guess the rancher, ‘Can I hunt them?’ He was the former lieutenant governor of the state, so he was a pretty educated guy, but he said, ‘Do you want to hunt my bison?’‘

And I was young, and he finally said, ‘Okay, we’re chasing them, we’re chasing them,’ and that son of a bitch, I’ll love him forever. He’s about 80 years old, he got in his truck, he got five other trucks, he got a helicopter, and we started chasing them for six days.

The actor said that they couldn’t do many shots on the first day, but he figured out what to do with the actors and then they created an incredible sequence. He also said that after six days, the buffalos were done and even charged the helicopter to express their anger.

Dancing with wolves is currently available to stream on Fubo TV.