History Channel presenta la serie documental "Kevin Costner's the West"; Costner Advierte: "Hay una tendencia... que la historia no sea el lado del ganador solamente, pero hay una tendencia a que eso pase".
00:09American West conjures wonder, possibility, opportunity.
00:15The West is a place where anything is possible.
00:18It is the essence of the American dream.
00:23But many people have to pay the price of ambition and westward expansion.
00:30And everyone is willing to fight and to die for it.
00:35Gracias por estar aquí en M2, mi querida Yvette Salgado. ¿Cómo estás?
00:38Muy bien, Susi. Muchas gracias por traernos esta gran historia.
00:44Es que sí extrañábamos a una figura importante dentro del cine.
00:48Esa es Kevin Costner.
00:49Kevin Costner, que ha tomado decisiones súper interesantes en su trayectoria óptimamente.
00:55Que haga lo que haga, sabemos que se va a meter con todo, ¿no?
01:00Históricamente Waterworld, pero hace cosas fantásticas también.
01:04Field of Dreams.
01:06Y ahora, este hombre, pues que lo hemos visto además en Yellowstone, ¿no?
01:10Ajá, exacto.
01:10Y hay hecho cosas...
01:11En tantas cosas.
01:12En tantas, tantas cosas.
01:13Estaba haciendo junto con la ganadora del premio Pulitzer, grande historiadora de los Estados Unidos, Doris Kearns, una serie documental en History Channel que habla del oeste, el viejo oeste.
01:28Y tú me preguntabas, pues, ¿de qué va el viejo oeste, no? Y va mucho más allá de lo que llamamos...
01:33De lo que conocemos en las películas, señor Wayne, me llama mucho la atención que justamente se va al origen y a descubrir y a revelar esos mitos de los pioneros, pero también de muchas cosas que ocurrían dentro de la frontera.
01:49Y creo que eso nos conecta muchísimo con el contexto...
01:52Que la frontera era otra, por cierto.
01:54Con el contexto actual.
01:55Todo ello, la simbología que tiene el oeste así de Go West Young Man, el tema desde religiosos hasta políticos, pero también emocionales y de familia.
02:05En fin, nos fuimos a platicar con ellos a Los Ángeles, no exactamente el viejo oeste, pero por ahí pasaron.
02:12Y eso nos dijeron.
02:13First of all, I think there's a lot of tropes about history. One of them is that only the winners get to tell it. Would you agree with that about the West?
02:22No, but I think I understand what you're saying, that for a long time, that's how it lasts. But, you know, the truth prevails if we're willing to search it out, if we're willing to go deeper and not accept just one person's version.
02:38So I think you're half right. And we've experienced that. And because you're half right, I think we're obligated to go, wow, we can't do that.
02:48Winston Churchill once said, history's going to be kind to me because I intend to write it.
02:52So people who wrote about the West in the last centuries wrote it from the perspective of the winners. But we're trying to say, and that's why we have a whole range of historians and a range of experts who've studied it.
03:07We have Native Americans speaking and we have the storytelling speaking. Hopefully that it's telling all sides of the story and not the winner's side only.
03:15But there is a tendency for that to happen.
03:18There is. And another thing I realized, I mean, I went to school in Mexico. I got the California story totally different.
03:26I mean, now I see all perspectives with this and I love that it's there.
03:30It's the first time I see something made here that tells the rest of the story.
03:36We are linked. Our country, there aren't real borders. We just made them up.
03:40But what people were, you know, I mean, if you think about California, it was the Native Americans.
03:49Then it was the Spaniards came and then the Mexicans and then the Americans.
03:59And the whole time it was Native Americans land.
04:04Isn't it amazing, though, how somebody can be like a great legend in the country?
04:09I'm thinking of Joaquin Murrieta and maybe like a villain in another history.
04:17So I think this makes us more human to understand that everybody gets their own perspective through their experiences.
04:25Is that one of the reasons you wanted to tell?
04:27Well, that story is so fascinating because this Joaquin Murrieta was considered the Robin Hood, in some ways, a hero.
04:33And then he's a serial killer in another place.
04:37And they finally kill him or think they do.
04:39And how those tales can be told in different ways.
04:42That's part of there's something about the West that generates tall tales.
04:46And it always feels when you talk about history that you're constantly just scratching the surface.
04:54It really is.
04:56We're telling this story.
04:57But the whole world swirling around this moment affected the moment just as much as the individual acts.
05:05Sure.
05:06Can you tell, do you remember the moment that the West caught your attention for it to be such a recording topic in the way you tell stories?
05:15I kind of remember feeling, being affected when I thought the costumes looked right and the landscapes looked right.
05:25Not repeated like our little Western towns and our Chatsworth and blah, blah, blah.
05:30When I, even as a child, I felt like I could tell the difference of something that felt authentic.
05:37At least coming away with it.
05:38It might be horrific.
05:40It might be something that makes us ashamed.
05:42But, boy, are we in a better position to make decisions about anything when we have good information.
05:49And that is the hardest thing for us to get right now in the world we're living in.
05:54Let it not be the hardest thing for us to get when we're in the classroom trying to teach people history.
06:01That's amazing because it's true.
06:03There's so few places left that we can really know that we're not getting the algorithms version of things.
06:09Or whatever is going to make you mad and enraged.
06:13This is one of the places I know I can come to.
06:16History Channel and obviously with you in the helm.
06:20With both of you in the helm.
06:20God forbid we shortchange history.
06:23And we take a shortcut on it.
06:24And we don't tell the truth.
06:26It's so easy.
06:27There's nothing at stake telling the truth about history.
06:30Why not get to it?
06:32And the thing is, if you tell it the way it was, you're learning.
06:35You're learning from mistakes.
06:36You're acknowledging them.
06:37You're growing.
06:38You know, you can't grow from something static.
06:40And we can look back at these periods of time and say, what went right?
06:43What went wrong?
06:44Could it have been different?
06:46But history gives you empathy.
06:47It gives you understanding.
06:48It gives you hope.
06:49It gives you solace.
06:50I mean, I'm so sad about it not being taught as well as it was in the old days.
06:55It's less, you hear about classrooms teaching it less in high school.
06:57But the great thing about a documentary form is that you've got a whole way in which to
07:03engage.
07:03It can visually engage them.
07:04The music can engage them.
07:06The words that the historians are saying can engage them.
07:10So essentially, it surrounds you in a way that, I mean, even though I spent my life reading
07:14and writing books, that that doesn't quite do in the same way.
07:18So that's why I've loved getting involved in this in the later stages of my life.
07:21I love it.
07:22And you're being there.
07:24You're narrating.
07:24You're hosting.
07:25That's engaging.
07:26That's really engaging.
07:29Now, do you realize the impact that this will have on new generations that probably wouldn't
07:34get the story this way if you weren't in it?
07:37If somebody like you with your prestige and career.
07:41Thank you.
07:42Well, it's the truth.
07:42Well, I think we earn our place somehow.
07:53And if it's a place where people have a level of trust, it's because you had to try to create
08:01that trust and been consistent with it.
08:03And, you know, I really don't know how to answer.
08:08I was flattering.
08:09Well, so just smile pretty and then look good.
08:13Well, okay, Doris.
08:16Watch this.
08:16You two have a great friendship, right?
08:24It's been wonderful working with them.
08:26Absolutely.
08:26You can imagine.
08:27I can immediately tell.
08:29But also, I think that there's something very interesting about the way you tell these
08:33stories because we go with, like, real people.
08:37And I think that's so important.
08:38Sometimes we just hear, like, the overall and we're like, well, I can't relate to that.
08:42But you talk about specific people, young people, older people, natives, the people who
08:48are coming in and we hear their names and their reasons to be where they are.
08:53Was that a choice or was there no other?
08:56I mean, that's the way history should always be told.
08:58I mean, I think if history is told, right, everybody would love history.
09:01I mean, it's about people who lived before, who had conflicts, who had dreams, who had hopes.
09:05People say you just memorize names or facts.
09:08Facts matter, but not unless they're in a context.
09:11So you care about the people and then you'll care about when it occurred.
09:14So what I'm proud of in this series is it goes for a long period of time, a whole century
09:18from the 1790s to the 1890s.
09:21But it's told by individual stories so that you're captivated.
09:24And then each story builds on the other.
09:26And suddenly you've gone through a century.
09:27If you try and tell it as a broad thing and people are talking in abstractions, it's not
09:31going to hit the emotions.
09:32And you've got to get people's emotions to get them interested.
09:35But good history does that.
09:37Yeah.
09:37Yeah.
09:38You see injustices, you know, in our stories and maneuvering.
09:44You see it all.
09:45And you're seeing a single story.
09:47But what you realize that that story, because it happened millions of times over and over
09:53and over again, like a bad joke, over and over.
09:57Or the same story we just watch of somebody who's marginalized, somebody who was accused
10:02of something they didn't commit because somebody just coveted their land.
10:06And then in history, they go down as somebody that had to fight for the rest of their life.
10:10And then there's a version of who they were.
10:13That myriad, it was a version on both sides.
10:16He had, there was two ideas about who this man was.
10:19We can learn about what's going on today, comparing it to this, because I saw a lot
10:24of parallels.
10:25Not to go with a specific theme on the news now, but I saw so many parallels.
10:30Have we learned anything?
10:31I think what we learn is empathy.
10:33It's the quality that feels like it's missing most in America today.
10:37An understanding of other people's point of view.
10:39We look at people that are different from us and they seem like the other rather than us.
10:43And if you look at this series, you're going to feel empathy for all the various people
10:47involved.
10:48You feel empathy for the settlers who go there not thinking they're going to be involved in
10:52a conflict with the Native Americans.
10:53They're going there to make a better life.
10:55And yet they get caught in it and they want the land.
10:57You see the missionaries, they dream that they're going there to Christianize the people.
11:02And then they end up getting killed, some of them, for what was happening.
11:05And then you see the soldiers.
11:06And you see them from all different points of view.
11:08That's why a collection of stories, I think, creates empathy.
11:11And I think we need that in this country more than anything right now.
11:15It's a big problem.
11:17The governor creates the rangers.
11:19Their principal tools are violence and murder.
11:23If America is moving west, there's a scene that opens up between the free states and the
11:28slave states.
11:32It's a defining moment in the history of America.
11:36These stories will captivate us and shock us.
11:41Now it's time to come face to face
11:44with the real story of our wild past.
11:49A privilege.
11:52A privilege.
11:53Gracias.
11:53A history channel.
11:55La verdad es que es un placer poder tener estas pláticas con tiempo, con calma.
12:02Exactamente.
12:02Aprender.
12:03Y con qué figuras.
12:04Y con qué figuras.
12:05De verdad.
12:07La fama puede ser muy interesante.
12:09Pero lo que hace la gente con su fama, creo que eso es lo que vale la pena compartir.
12:12Y aquí con quien está compartiendo precisamente, wow de mujer.
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