tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, part two of our conversation with kevin costner. more tonight on the roles in films that has made him one of the most recognizable stars of his era, including his latest project, it kicks off on the history series on may 28. part to with kevin costner coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

tavis: back now with part two of our conversation with kevin costner. starting this monday, may 28, you can catch his latest project, a three-night, six-hour miniseries for the history channel called "hatfields & mccoys." here is another scene from "hatfields & mccoys." >> witness on your bill of sale, 59. somehow, died and got himself buried in 1957. do you recall that? >> obviously, this changes things.

i renounce claims to write on your land and apologize for being hasty in putting forth this claims -- these claims three you should be compensated. i have $22 a year. -- $22 here. i must be entitled to have what is yours. at least what you inherit from your daddy. 5,000 acres. >> i do not hardly what land, just timber. tavis: this is like a reunion for you guys from the white for a movie. -- wyatt earp movie. >> that is right.

this has a cast, a lot of young actors that you will see for a long time now. after making that movie, you see they still want to be together. you do not see that a lot. occasionally, a movie will foster that type of relationship. tavis: a lot of americans know this story because it has become part of our lexicon. can you tell us how this became the quintessential example of family feuds in the country? >> 8 came after the awful civil war that we have never quite recovered from. people do not understand. 7000 guys and women killed in this middle east faint -- in this milly's thing. in the civil war, it was 500,000. this war touched everybody. you can see the people in the funny hats with the beards and accent's with their pipes and say they are easy to make fun

of. but these are serious people. they had to make a serious choice. very close to the mason-dixon line. some were going for the union and some are fighting for the south. the feelings that ran so deep, there were vengeance killings and there will be vengeance killings in libya, serbia, croatia for the next 50 years. we had the exact same thing. these were economics, not just people shooting across the fence. there were reasons why this was happening. i really love going into that aspect of understanding. suddenly, these families were expanding into the valleys and they had 13 children. if they all mary, i will have a value of 80 relatives. they need to go to the city. when they do not go to the city, what do they do? they go to town and they drink. when they drink, there is violence, anger, no employment.

you can replicate the same thing for young men around the world that cannot find their way. they use something like the civil war for an excuse to fight. you did something to my dad. there you go. these patriarchs, they fought in the civil war. it is unlikely to me that they wanted to keep fighting. but when you have lives taken and you live in a very biblical way, you have an eye for an eye. america was not a place where you could not always get justice. you had to mete it out your way. these were complicated times. tavis: i will make the assumption that there's something about these westerns that you like. what is it about these kind of timepieces that term -- that turn you on? >> we live in a society where, if you have a problem, chances are you're going to call your lawyer, call your agent, your pr

person. back then, you had to arbitrate your own problems. there was a real reality. too many of the westerns are not good. it is the black hat and the white hat. life is a lot grayer than that. because there was nobody to arbitrate or problems, they became life and death situations permit you had to be incredibly resourceful about how you would protect your family. in a well-written western, i can throw myself into it and go, i do not know how i would have reacted there. that is a dilemma for me. when you have a dilemma, you have drama. drama, by definition, is you do not know what you would have done. if you are sitting in the theatergoing, i do not know what i would have done if i was that guy as opposed to, i would have been heroic. how you know you would have been

heroic? with a dilemma, that is where trauma exists, in a moment where you do not know what you would do. tavis: i took your point last night when he said -- when you said the projects often call you and you do not go looking for them. since there are so many actors, a-list actors finding comfortable spaces on television to tell stories, what is it about this particular miniseries that you think works well in this format that might not have worked well as a movie? >> and you can tell right away, the length. it is not just the hatfields and mccoys got it is my uncles and aunts, my children. we were able to create a real community to try to understand how this thing actually happened. most people do not know that

westirginia and kentucky were ready to go to war over these families. tavis: the governor's got involved. that is how serious it was. >> you cannot arbitrarily come over here and try to haunt our people. we just came out of one more and now we are going to have a whole another one. guns are going off. there is a cliche. there is a notion of, is this a real story? tavis: when i went back and read this thing, it was mind-boggling to consider that two states about to go to war over to families. that is a serious thing. >> that is right. we are taught that we will go to war over one person. you see what is going on. in principle, that is who we are. tavis: what is your sense of the

role that we are playing in the world? whether it is the world's policeman, picking and choosing our battles, you frame it how you want to frame it. give me your sense of our foreign policy. >> obviously, a really big question. when the world comes in our house, comes through our tv, it is hard to ignore. meaning, when we see something happening somewhere where we think, that has got to be righted. it is right in our living room. we are thinking, why are we not righting this thing. where i am going with this is, it is hard to know what to do. america is a big, lumbering giant. if you need a light bulb, the big guy will put the light bulb in. you do that. that is your job, america. we can fix this and fix that. you need to sit down.

people look to us. the world is very complicated now. our problem is, the reason i think we cannot get to the truth of what we should do is we complicate it by having businesses in these countries, we have commerce. sometimes, our aim is not completely true. we are protecting our interests as opposed to being guided by our own moral code. we have industry in this country. we cannot afford to lose that. we have oil here and we cannot afford to lose it. the fingerprints of that have clouded our ability. it is called a conflict of interest. we hear that word all the time. we see it in legal terms. you cannot make a moral decision when you feel like the thing that you need is what is going to guide that. we have not done a good job of separating those ideas. and so our decisions, a lot of

times, seem arbitrary. i am proud of america in so many ways and i also understand that our fingerprints are in a lot of places. we have created difficulty. tavis: you use the phrase "moral code."i was whether or not we know what our moral code is anymore. >> is hard to govern. we have senators and congressmen. you become president and you think you can govern. it is hard to govern in america. it is hard to move america to the right place. we think that magically, a president can do that. then you run up against ego. ego biggest problem. it has slipped into our politics and it has not served us well. public service is just that. i think you should go into public service and by the time you get out, you should be cut -- you should be so tired that you do not ever want to run again. but someone says, you have to

run again because you are really good at this. he was really good at this, but he should go. but you are actually good at it. you should stay in it. to many people going to public service and they stay there. they should be exhausted doing the public's work. i have to do it this way because i do not do it this way, i will not get elected. if i get elected, i can fix it. that is the story we tell ourselves. that is the ally we tell ourselves. what happens is politics slipped into our moral code. they just do. our ego served us well. tavis: we talk about you in this conservative, baptist family. how much of those values, those morays still, impact your

decision making today? >> they do. i am not a rube. i am excited by things i see. my eyes are opened writ -- are open. i loved the fastness of the things in the world and being able to travel. it has grounded me in a lot of ways. i have not been able to live a perfect life, but i understand right and wrong. i get it. i do not know. i think religion is a funny thing. when you see somebody looking -- who can really break it down, sometimes it feels foolish, what you believe. science can break it down. i mentioned to my friend a couple of times, he has a very interesting take on things. the truth is, when i listen to him, i get it. i get what he is saying.

how is it that i can get what he is saying or what somebody else is saying and still have this silly belief? l maherdo not let bil see this. >> i do not know what my life has turned out the way it has, but it has been great. i have been bruised. but i have been able to walk on this world. and around the world. i cannot think it is just because i am lucky. i know i have worked. i know a lot. i feel like there is something guiding my life. there he goes again. this groupie faith may be. it is true, but i feel like it has protected me in some way. tavis: he has been on the show

1000 times and we have had these conversations. the more comfortable i get believing that these things can situate themselves inside each other. i do not think the science means that god does not exist. i think they can be complementary. >> i love his point of view. i am never driven crazy. it really makes a lot of sense. it does seem silly. but you believe. you believe that there is something guiding your life. tavis: what do you read? >> i do not read as much as i was -- as i would like. the last book read was "pebble in the white city. do not" read as much as i should. i just do not. tell me a tavis: about this cd -- tavis: tell me about this cd.

>> it is a concept record. i got deeper in this than i ever could. i came out with my band and wrote the song -- the theme song for the movie. i kept writing music. it is called famous"for killing each other -- it is called " famous for killing each other. tavis: modern west is the name of your bed. >> that was the worst part. there was one moment where we were playing and people wanted to pay money. they said, you need a name. i thought, what? there are was as an adult with my dad trying to think of a name for this band.

it was one of the low points in my life. there was a big long list of names. we finally came up with one. i actually do not even like it, but that is what it is called. i came up with modern west and the band said, costner and modern west. i feel like my head is out there to be chopped off. there it is. that was not a pleasant experience, coming up with a name. tavis: we talked about how your faith has impacted your life. how has music? >> music was the first thing that came. my grandmother played the piano. i was made to play the piano. i was a wise man when i was 7 years old the chris, this thing, you do not know where the north star is, it is over there. i am like, mom, pay attention.

we practiced this. music was first and i sang inquires and did musicals. -- in choirs musicals. then i went into acting and came back to music. it was just something i was really happy about. suddenly, we play all around the world. tavis: i did not think i was going to go here because i know that you have talked about this. i just figured that he has probably had enough of that. i was not going to traverse this territory until last night, when we played that wonderful opening clip of your body of work. we got to the scenes with which houston.

-- whitney houston swears. i saw you look away from the screen and utter these words, "what happened there?" do you have an answer to that question? >> i do not. i thought she looked so pretty and so alive and so real, such a big thing could come outside of that little body of hers to sing. it is weird when the world talks about someone that you have a level of intimate knowledge about them. i remember when it happened. i was watching on television and i was watching all of the programs that were suddenly talking about her. i'm sitting there thinking, how did i come to the point where i actually knew famous people? it is an odd thing to look at. to know that you had some kind

of intimate relationship with her, a professional one, and now the world is talking about this person. that was not my first instinct, was to come on your show or piers' show the show. dion reachne to me and said, would i come speak -- dionne reached a out to me and said, would i come speak? and i said that i would. i wrote a speech about commonality. it was supposed to be about myself, but i know myself. it was his fight night. you are going to talk about your career. i said, i think i will talk about this guy. tavis: how did you prepare for the whitney thing? >> i panicked. i could hear how broken dionne

sounded on the phone. i have spoken out one other funeral before and i did not know how to do it. i told my daughter i was going to be writing this. so i started. i just started and on the way, on the plane, i was writing the whole night. the light is turned on and i am writing all the way to the church. now we are at the church, i am always there early because i'm from a conservative background, and i said, right around the block, kept crossing out things. the hardest thing was what the window in was. how do you start talking about this little song bird? the idea that we have more in common than people might think. that is what allowed me to have

this thing with your community, where you ran around and got into trouble. my mom saying, you are playing in your church close -- clothes and now you are going to get a whippin i do notg. suits to this day. i remember how i felt. that is the way i feel right now. that is why i like to do cowboy movies and i do not like to do courtroom dramas. [laughter] what happened there? that is the question. we all feel like we think we know. she added big voice. she was a friend to me. we were not pen pals, we did not

enter into each other's lives. a few times during her life, her friends thought things were not right and ask if i would write to her. i always ask why me? the idea that i would speak at her thing was interesting to me. i did not realize that the world has connected us so much. i just thought she was a beautiful woman, the first woman i ever thought was beautiful was diana ross. it was never a shock to me when i asked whitney to be in the body guard. it was -- she was a statuesque to me. tavis: so we have you to thank for "i will always love you." >> we started looking for a song and it was down to three songs

and i said, that is the song. it was right. it was electric. she is a part of a lot of our lives because of that single thing, her voice. tavis: you were marvelous at her service, as you are in "hatfields & mccoys, and to the" tree channel on may 28, starring one kevin costner. there is a cd out as well. kevin costner and modern west. i am delighted. thank you so much. that is our show tonight. you can download are new app from itunes. , good night from l.a., thank you for watching, and as always, keep the faith writ -- keep the faith.

>> who is the new guy? >> he has white hair. >> he is very good writ -- he is very good. i do not trust you. goodbye, rachel. >> goodbye. should stay i would only be in your way so i'll go >> for more information onhi,

i'taviilm sms ey. join me next time for a conversation with -- janet evans that it. next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs. >> be more. pbs.