Kevin Costner Directed A Legendary Musician's Pet Buffalo In Dances With Wolves

Call it a bad habit or a bulletproof recipe for procrastination, but I'm one of those cinephiles and TV junkies who loves to go down rabbit holes and find trivia about beloved classics. Whether it's something I haven't discovered yet, despite it being out there for years, or a fresh anecdote from a favorite actor or director of mine, I always fall for these bits hard. In fact, I have a tendency to spend an entire afternoon googling stuff and watching old interviews just to learn more background info about a throwaway line or a brief story — like the one thing Danny DeVito required for his role on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," for instance.

So, if you're anything like me and have watched Kevin Costner's magnificent "Dances With Wolves" numerous times (including the four-hour-long director's cut), I've got just the thing for you today.

In the summer of 2019, while appearing as a guest on People and Entertainment Weekly's talk show "Couch Surfing," Costner chatted with host Lola Ogunnaike about his biggest roles while watching iconic scenes from movies like "The Untouchables," "Field of Dreams," and "Dances With Wolves." Touching on that last one in particular, Costner went on to reveal an amusing tidbit: a pivotal buffalo from the film's epic "hunt" scene belonged to none other than music legend Neil Young.

According to the actor-filmmaker, Young's tamed buffalo was kind of "paranoid" because he wasn't raised in a herd and felt uncomfortable around the 3,500 wild buffalo roaming beside him. In addition, Costner's character, Lieutenant Dunbar, also kept chasing him around, which rattled the animal so much that he kind of flipped out and needed something to calm him down. Funnily enough, however, Young told Costner (then still many years away from playing the Dutton family's patriarch John on "Yellowstone") that his pet could be calmed down with one simple thing: cookies. As Costner recalled:

"He [Young] said, 'Look, he'll actually come if you shake a box of Oreos.' So, we set him out there, put the camera right here, and then we have the Oreos, and we shake them. And then when we let him go, he comes running for them."

Well, given the final outcome (namely, the breathtaking sequence in "Dances with Wolves" where Dunbar and several Native Americans manage to shoot a handful of buffaloes dead), we can confidently say that the Oreos worked like a charm. It's the moments like this that make Costner's movie such an immersive, poignant, and mesmerizing experience. No wonder the film took home seven Academy Awards for its efforts in 1991, including the prizes for Best Director and Best Picture.

And now, excuse me, I need to find three free hours in my schedule to re-watch this beast.