After becoming homeless, Dances was rescued by Kevin Costner, screenwriter of Wolves

Kevin Costner signed his first production, Dances with Wolves, which aired tonight on France 5, has become a great classic of American cinema since its release in 1991.

A triumph in cinemas, the film was crowned with seven Oscars, including Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter Michael Blake. A well-deserved award for a concerned person who sadly passed away in 2015 aged 69.

Blake was a longtime friend of Costner’s. They met in 1981. Moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, Blake was making a living selling his screenplays. He would have to wait until 1983 and the release of Stacy’s Knights, starring Costner, to finally see one of his scripts brought to the big screen.

Their relationship became strained as Costner’s fame grew. To help his friend, Costner arranged several meetings with big Hollywood names for Blake, but nothing positive came out of them; Especially since the feedback from these various interviews, which reached Costner’s attentive ears, did not paint a bright portrait of his friend, who turned out to be difficult and difficult.

“I’ve sent him on a lot of errands and all I’ve heard is that he annoys everyone.” Kostner recalled, told an anecdote of the program The Graham Norton Show in 2016.

The tension is rising…

Nevertheless, the tension between the two even became physical: “He crossed the red line with my friend and I don’t know exactly what happened, but I taped it to the wall.

And I said to him: Can you stop humiliating everyone? Stop writing 120 page articles! If you really want to write, write something with 88 pages, or maybe 888! I realized I was telling her that when I had my hands on her. At that moment I thought our friendship was over.”

Logically appalled, Blake still asked if she could stay with a friend to accommodate him; Which Costner got. Wanting to devote himself 100% to writing the screenplay, Blake also couldn’t afford the rent…

Almost two months passed, during which Blake barely left the room, constantly writing, even reading what he had written to Costner’s daughter. But the actor’s wife finally asks Blake to leave the house. Kevin miserably asked his friend to leave.

Blake left the last script he had written on his desk and moved to Arizona, where he found a job as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. At that time, the unfortunate man was homeless. Although Costner sent him some money, Blake kept asking if he had read the script left for him.

Persisting, Costner finally relented and finally read the script: that was it dances with wolves. “I’ve never been so proud of anyone” Cowardly, emotional, Costner, in the show.

But the battle to get the film signed was just beginning. At that time, a Hollywood producer would not bet on a Western; A genre widely considered dead and box office poison.

It was then that Kevin Costner and the film’s producer, Jim Wilson, suggested that Blake turn his script into a novel and publish it before it could be adapted for the big screen.

The book, which was first sold in airport bookstores, quickly became a bestseller. Costner was able to acquire the rights to adapt his old friend’s book, while also having to dig deep into his pocket to convince the decision-makers to produce a film that almost no one wanted. The rest is history…