The great thing about Stephen is that he sees the movie as a separate thing, I think. He wants it to capture the essence of the book, and if he feels that’s been done, then he’s not too particular about the details. I think that’s why he’s happy.

The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western – just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly – it’s almost the antithetical of what’s currently going on in the movies, you know.

The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies, and thrillers, and Kurosawa films, you know, where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.

You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.

What you hope for, like Unforgiven did a lot to give you a chance to do it again sometime.

I mean, the trouble with some of the kind of relationship movies I’ve done, is there’s only so many ways you can shoot a conversation. I was really tired of talking heads.

Any story that Billy Wilder told, you can tell in a Western.

That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.

But, I think that the reason I responded to this book, sort of paradoxically, is that it starts out like The Big Chill, sort of. Four friends, who are not quite happy with their life, and every year they get together for a week and look for some comfort from each other.

You know, Stephen says, in the movies no one ever goes to the bathroom. They shave, they brush their teeth. He goes right at this sort of funny taboo we have about the bathroom, and he turned it into this nightmare, you know, your worst fear of what’s in there.

Almost every other Western in the last ten years has failed, since Dances with Wolves.

I didn’t really want to do another sequel. I go to those movies, and I just sort of enjoy them like a viewer.

I really liked Carrie a lot. That was one of Brian De Palma’s best movies.

It’s hard enough to get any movie made, and when you take on these tough genres – and I’ve done it a couple times – it just makes the whole struggle more.

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

The great thing about Stephen is that he sees the movie as a separate thing, I think. He wants it to capture the essence of the book, and if he feels that’s been done, then he’s not too particular about the details. I think that’s why he’s happy.

I haven’t seen Clones, which has been during this period when I haven’t seen much of anything, but I did see Phantom Menace, and see my feelings about it – see, first of all, I think that when you make a lot of movies, your attitude about the movies changes.

And you know, when you take on something like this, you read a book like this, you know that it’s going to be an adventure. That’s part of what draws you to it.

But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn’t want to.

I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.

I loved Alien, and I loved Carrie, and I loved The Exorcist – those were big movies for me. They were just brilliantly done, and unusual, and they all took horror to some new place.

With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it’s empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.

I tell you, I feel like a real novice as far as horror goes.

I mean, I really liked those guys and the experience of doing Raiders was really good for me, but I did not really want to be involved – I only did Jedi, as I really owed George a favor.