- 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.
- Descended Creator: Doris Leader Charge was the Lakota language coach, and also played Ten Bears's wife Pretty Shield.
- 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.
- Enforced Method Acting: Graham Greene put a slice of bologna in his shoes to help portray a middle-aged man with bad comportment, feeling that the unpleasant sensation would add to his awkward posture.
- Meme Acknowledgement: Smoke Signals has a reference to the in-joke that Dances With Wolves was always on in a Native American family's house during the 90s.
- Never Work with Children or Animals: For the bison stampede, only one take could be filmed a day, because the animals would run up to ten miles and it would take the wranglers the rest of the day to round them all up.
- 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.
- Referenced by…:
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Odd, Odd West", when Timmy as the Masked Stranger takes on Vicky the Kid in a showdown, Wanda appears as his Native American sidekick, Dances With Wands.
- An episode of Home Improvement is titled "Dances With Tools". In this episode, Tim gets Jill ballroom dancing lessons as a present for her birthday.
- Mouse: P.I. for Hire: One side mission has Jack Pepper search for Cameron Bozo's missing friend, whom he finds sleeping in bed in an underwater cave surrounded by fish. The guy is even referred to as "Sleeps with the Fishes", a spoof of the film's title and the nickname the Lakota community gives to Lt. John J. Dunbar in said film.
- Night Court: Roz mentions seeing the film on an airplane trip and Eating the Eye Candy.
- Northern Exposure: Several episodes make passing mentions of the film (Joel saying it taught him about the oppression of Native-Americans in "Thanksgiving" and a German clockmaker quoting the film when he meets Tlingit Ed in "Nothing's Perfect", etc.).
- The Red Green Show: The Expert Portion
of the episode "Men's Night on the Mountain" has the explosives enthusiast Edgar K.B. Montrose (played by Graham Greene) mention that he has seen this movie. While he feels that "the Native guy" should have gotten the Oscar for his performance, he otherwise thinks the movie was boring and needed more explosions. - Rugrats: "Family Feud" begins with the Pickles and DeVille families playing a game of Charades. The movie Stu tries to act out is Dances With Wolves, and he gets frustrated when Howard fails to guess it (since he never saw that movie).
- Serge Storms: The Maltese Iguana: Serge is aroused by how Cinnamon, the final Girl of the Week, has cheekbones that remind him of Stands-With-a-Fist.
- The back cover for Sparkster (SNES) describes Colonel Wolfheim's soldiers as "A tough pack of wolves that aren't here to dance!"
- Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Weekday Afternoon Live", one of the films Hamton and Dizzy review in the "Samurai Film Critic" sketch is Dances With Lobsters, which is about a man who quits the navy to live among crustaceans.
- Retroactive Recognition: Wes Studi plays the leader of the Pawnee two years before his Star-Making Role in The Last of the Mohicans.
- Self-Adaptation: Michael Blake wrote the screenplay from his 1988 novel.
- Shoot the Money: In order to prevent animal cruelty, $250,000 was spent on an animatronic buffalo for the climactic buffalo hunt.
- Star-Making Role: Mary McDonnell was a twenty year veteran of the industry by the time she did this film, but it was her Oscar nominated performance here that marked her proper breakout.
- Graham Greene found regular work after this.
- 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.
- The shot of Cisco jumping around on his own just before the Sioux party steals him was the camera just catching the horse letting off steam, and so they left it in.
- 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.
- Underage Casting: Graham Greene plays Stands With a Fist's adoptive father when he's in fact two months younger than Mary McDonnell. Tantoo Cardinal likewise is only two years older than Mary, while playing her adoptive mother.
- Wag the Director: The love scene between Dunbar and Stands With a Fist was toned down at the request of Mary McDonnell, who was nervous about performing it.
- 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.
- Larry Sellers, a veteran Native American actor, best known for playing Cloud Dancing in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman had to turn down a role because of schedule conflicts with a Sundance ceremony in South Dakota.
- Basil Poledouris was originally asked to score the movie before John Barry was signed. Poledouris' loyalty to John Milius meant he dropped out to score Milius' Flight of the Intruder.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DancesWithWolves
Go To