Most people have heard of the iconic Kevin Costner movie, “Dances with Wolves”. “Dances with Wolves” was a western adventure movie that was released over 30 years ago in 1990. The movie stars Kevin Costner as a Civil War soldier that develops a relationship with a band of Lakota Native Americans. After spending time with the Lakota, Costner’s character, Lieutenant Dunbar, decides to leave the life that he knows behind and travel with the Lakota. This iconic movie was originally set to be filmed in Kansas, but after the director and producers saw the buffalo at the Triple U Buffalo Ranch in central South Dakota, they changed the filming site.

In the latter part of the 1980’s, Earnest Rouse was in his mid 50s and living in Fort Pierre. He had been living in that area for forty years. Seven or eight of the local men would gather every morning for coffee and conversation. At one of these regular morning coffee sessions, someone brought up that there was going to be a movie made near the Fort Pierre area and that there was a casting call for Native American men who had their own horses and trailers. After hearing the exciting local news, Earnest had no interest in being a part of the casting call or movie. Rouse felt that he was not a good candidate for the film as he did not own his own horse or trailer.

In June of 1989, the movie finally held its casting call on the Fort Pierre rodeo grounds. Rouse had no intention of going until one of his friends came by while on his way to the casting. He was able to persuade Rouse to come with him to the casting call. Each person interested had to fill out a paper with their name, phone number and address on it and then wait for their turn to audition. During Rouse’s audition he had to ride a horse in a pole bending pattern while wearing a paper with his name on it. To Earnest’s surprise, he was cast as an extra.

From June of 1989 until November of 1989, Earnest filmed every day. While filming there were always eight cameras going at the same time and Rouse never really knew where they were all located. He spent the majority of his day on a horse and would sometimes have to do 14-15 takes of the same scene in order for them to match the vision of Director and actor, Kevin Costner. When asked how he felt about being cast in the movie, Rouse replied that he did not really know what to think; he just did what the producers told him to. Even though Costner was surrounded by body guards, Earnest did have a chance to personally meet Costner. Rouse describes Costner as very down to earth. Costner even gave everyone on the cast a nickname. Rouse’s nickname was “Luke Warm Water”.

Costner took this movie and the message behind it very seriously. In order to keep the movie as historically relevant to the life and times of the civil war era, four historians were on scene daily.

Earnest was amazed at how Costner did all of his own stunts, going through all of the scenes himself. Costner was constantly falling off of his horse during different scenes, but that never stopped him. He would continue to try a stunt until he was able to successfully complete the scene. It did not help that the horses were more easily excited and bucking the more action that was being filmed around them. During a particular scene, Rouse recalls Costner getting bucked off of his own horse, knocking himself and another actor off of his horse. Costner instinctively grabbed another horse and finished the scene without a second thought.

Rouse’s favorite scene was the buffalo chase. The buffalo started off as a big group before they started running. This scene could only be filmed once as no matter how hard the crew tried there was no way to get the buffalo herd back together. This was the same scene that Costner was bucked off of his horse and quickly grabbed another one in order to finish the scene.

The film garnered an amazing 20 awards, with seven of the most prestigious being Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Writing (Adapted Screen Play), Best Music (Original Score), Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. Rouse is very proud to be a part of such an iconic movie. Earnest felt that the message behind the movie, Dances with Wolves was that the Native Americans lived a hard life out on the plains and were at the time a part of a starving nation until they came across the buffalo herds.

Earnest Rouse was born in Nebraska but raised south of Wagner in Rouse township with his closest neighbor being Ralph Koupal. He attended school in Lake Andes. After the movie’s filming wrapped, Earnest was asked to speak to a classroom at Fort Pierre. He then asked to speak to the entire school and several of the surrounding schools as well about his experiences working on the movie. One message that Earnest wants to pass on to today’s youth would be that even though everyone dreams of being a movie star, there is so much more to making a movie than one can ever imagine. The hours are long, the stunts are dangerous and a majority of the time filming conditions are not ideal. The real reality of acting is that it takes an incredible amount of dedication and hard work.

Thank you, Earnest, for sharing your “Dances with Wolves” movie experiences with the local communities and giving us a peak into what being a part of a movie really looks like.