63rd Academy Awards · 1991
Dances with Wolves
Directed byCooked up by Kevin Costner
“Inside everyone is a frontier waiting to be discovered.”
“Made friends with a wolf. Two Socks is the real MVP. 🐺”
The storyThe lore 📖
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
After the Civil War, soldier John Dunbar gets posted to a lonely fort out on the frontier. He befriends a wolf named Two Socks and gets to know his Lakota Sioux neighbors, learning their language and their way of life. He goes from outsider to family and gets a new name too. Highkey a story about respect and finding your people. 🐺🌾
What critics & audiences sayThe receipts 🧾
Tomatometer
87%
Fresh
#71 of 98 winnersFamous linesLines living rent free
My name is Dances with Wolves. I will not talk to you anymore. You are not worth talking to.
Dances With Wolves. I am Wind In His Hair. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?
John Dunbar: I've always wanted to see the frontier.
Major Fambrough: See the frontier--
John Dunbar: Yes, sir. Before it's gone.
But as I heard my Sioux name being called over and over, I knew for the first time who I really was.
The white man the soldiers are looking for no longer exists. Now there is only a Sioux named Dances With Wolves... Let us smoke a while.
It is the trail of a true human being. I think you are on this trail, and it is good to see.
It seems every day ends with a miracle here. And whatever God may be, I thank God for this day.
The strangeness of this life cannot be measured: in trying to produce my own death, I was elevated to the status of a living hero.
Nothing I have been told about these people is correct. They are not thieves or beggars. They are not the bogeymen they are made out to be.
I've just pissed my pants...and no one can do anything about it.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Filming locationsWhere they shot it 📍
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Triple U Buffalo Ranch
Fort Pierre, South Dakota
Hosted the bison hunt scenes and the custom-built Fort Sedgewick set.
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Badlands National Park
South Dakota
The Badlands were among the specific South Dakota locations used for the frontier landscapes.
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Black Hills
South Dakota
The Black Hills were one of the named locations in the largely South Dakota shoot.
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Sage Creek Wilderness Area
South Dakota
This wilderness area was one of the specific locations used in filming.
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Belle Fourche River
South Dakota
The Belle Fourche River area was among the film's specific shooting locations.
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Pierre
South Dakota
Most of the film was shot on private ranches near Pierre and Rapid City.
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Wyoming
A few scenes were filmed in Wyoming, with the rest of the shoot staying in South Dakota.
Fun factsFacts that go hard 🤓
- Studios turned the project down, citing the waning popularity of Westerns, the disaster of Heaven's Gate and the script's length, so Kevin Costner and Jim Wilson sold foreign rights country by country to fund pre-production before landing a deal with Orion.Wikipedia · Production
- Michael Blake's story began as an unsold spec script; Kevin Costner, who had starred in Blake's only previous film, urged him to turn it into a novel, which numerous publishers rejected before it came out in paperback in 1988.Wikipedia · Production
- Kevin Costner dropped out of The Hunt for Red October to make Dances With Wolves, his feature directorial debut, which went on to win him the Oscar for Best Director.Wikipedia · Production
- Lakota elder Albert Whitehat, a cultural adviser on the film, adopted Kevin Costner into his family, and other Lakota families adopted Mary McDonnell and producer Jim Wilson.Wikipedia · Reception
- Russell Means mocked the film as "Lawrence of the Plains" and said that because a woman taught the actors Lakota, which has male and female forms of speech, Costner and others spoke it "in the feminine way," leaving Lakota viewers laughing.Wikipedia · Reception
- Grossing $424.2 million worldwide, Dances With Wolves became Orion's highest-grossing film and the highest-grossing independent film up to that time.Wikipedia · Lead
- Michael Blake said the character Stands With A Fist was based on Cynthia Ann Parker, the white girl captured by Comanches who became the mother of Quanah Parker.Wikipedia · Production
- It was the first Western to win Best Picture since 1931's Cimarron, and its seven Oscars are by far the most ever won by a Western.Wikipedia · Accolades
- Much of the dialogue is spoken in Lakota with English subtitles, translated by Doris Leader Charge of the Lakota Studies department at Sinte Gleska University.Wikipedia · Lead
- On home video the film broke the rental record set by Ghost, at 649,000 units, and a 1992 McDonald's promotion let customers buy a VHS copy with their food.Wikipedia · Home media