Recapturing the American past
When Kevin Costner rang to tell him he wanted to make a film of his novel Dances With Wolves, Michael Blake had just lost his job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant in rural Arizona. The pair had met when Costner starred in Stacy’s Knights, a film written by Blake. Since then, the actor had become a major star while the writer had been reduced to living in his car in Los Angeles and had borrowed money to move to the desert town of Bisbee.
Costner played a part in the genesis of Dances With Wolves. Blake had come to him three years earlier with his story of a Union soldier exiled to the wilds of Oklahoma who befriends first the animals and then the Comanche Indians. Costner insisted it should take the form of a novel. ‘‘I said, ‘Wouldn’t that make a great movie?’’’ Blake recalled, ‘‘and Kevin said, ‘Don’t you dare write another movie,’ because I’d written probably 15 screenplays by that time.’’ The film was a roaring success, making US$424 million, winning seven Oscars, including best picture and best adapted screenplay for Blake.
Riding on this success, the novel went on to sell 3.5 million copies in 22 languages, a far cry from its earliest days when Blake had struggled to find a publisher. Eventually it was issued as a cheap paperback with a cover more suited to romantic fiction than the spiritual western he felt he had written. He earned an advance of US$6500, having spent two years working on the book.
Blake had been fascinated by Native American culture since childhood. ‘‘I picked up every book I could find, and every one broke my heart,’’ he said. ‘‘ Dances with Wolves is about my devastation to think that way of life is gone and we had no chance to learn from it.’’ According to his friend John Densmore, the rock musician: ‘‘He sat in the library and imagined a time when there were more buffalo across the country than ants on a picnic table.’’
Little was expected of the film. It was Costner’s debut as a director and financing a three-hour film with almost half its dialogue in a Sioux dialect was no easy task. ‘‘This story is so American we had to go to Europe to get the initial money,’’ Blake quipped.
In the end, Costner contributed US$3 million himself, and there was even a sale of props to help to pay the post-production costs.
Despite its relatively modest budget, it was an epic undertaking. In addition to playing the central role of Lieutenant John Dunbar, Costner had to marshal 250 Native Americans, 150 cavalry, 300 horses, and the privately-owned herd of 3500 buffalo resident on the 55,000-acre ranch where filming took place. They also added two tame buffalo belonging to the musician Neil Young, which were used as stunt animals for death scenes.
After the success of the film Blake demonstrated his commitment to many of its issues. He continued to write but now had enough time and wealth to spend most of his life devoting his energy to preserving the wide open spaces of the American west, and the wild animals that inhabited it. He created a shelter for wild horses in Arizona and became vice-president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros. Blake campaigned for 20 years against the Bureau of Land Management, which he held responsible for crimes against wild horses. He once hired a helicopter to fly over the Nevada desert so that he could count the wild mustangs, in order to challenge the official figure – an action that resulted in death threats from cowboys working on the land. He also lobbied for the creation of a buffalo reserve and for the reintroduction of wolves.
His desire to recapture the old America even extended to his family. His children, a son, Quanah, 18, who works with horses, and daughters, Monahsetah, 17, and Lozen, 14, were named after notable American Indians. He married Danish painter Marianne Mortensen in 1993, having met her through the actor Viggo Mortensen, her cousin. They all survive him.
He was born Michael Lennox Webb in 1945 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where his father James was serving in the army. The surname Blake was the maiden name of his mother, Sally, adopted by his own choice. At 17, he left home and lived hand to mouth, starting with a job packing shopping in a grocery, then two years later joined the air force. At a base in New Mexico, he was made assistant editor of the inhouse newspaper. Developing a taste for writing, he left the service and joined a journalism course but dropped out after a year to work for the Free Press, an underground weekly in Los Angeles.
He moved on to study film in California where he met Jim Wilson, who went on to produce Dances With Wolves and directed Stacy’s Knights. After that film, he wrote constantly but failed to sell another script until Costner, at Wilson’s urging, finally read his novel.
Blake, who died of heart failure, had undergone 16 operations, including a double heart bypass in 2004. He owned a buffalo skull that had once belonged to Sitting Bull, and had its image tattooed on to his chest ‘‘so it could rest next to my heart’’; before his bypass surgery, he made the surgeon promise the incision would avoid the tattoo.