I write a number of screenplays, and I've never really come up with a part for a movie star.
Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.
Once you do something violent in a film, you don't have to do too much. You do it once and the feeling of violence just stays there, do you know what I'm saying?
Actors have either got to play something that's close to them, or something that's the complete opposite.
When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.
I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.
I actually don't like westerns much. I like good westerns, but it isn't my preferred genre. There are all kinds of westerns: acid westerns, '70s westerns, Nicholas Ray's neurotic westerns. The ones I tend to like are nutso westerns.
There's been about 75 movies about Jesse James, and I've seen about four of them. He's usually portrayed as this plucky rebel who's got no choice but to turn to crime, because the railway's hassling his mother. But he wasn't like that.
Americans are not renowned for having a sense of irony.
In Australia, we point out a person's weaknesses as a way of saying 'I see you and I accept you'. If you do that with Americans, they instantly take offence.
