Don't bang your head against the wall about what you can't do.
The mountain music... is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities.
What is striking in Minnesota is the invisible horizon line. On a grey day, when there's snow on the ground, the sky and the ground are one tone. Everyone appears to be hanging in mid-air.
Being non-commercial is never an ambition. Movies come together at different points for fortuitous reasons. You do them as you get the opportunity, as opposed to doing them when you choose to or design to.
There is some pleasure in doing a movie and problem solving on a specific movie and getting a movie made, but once they are done, we don't look at them again, much less relate one to another.
Of course, 'True Grit' is a Western, but we never considered our film a classical Western and honestly never thought about genre at all. We didn't talk about John Ford or Sergio Leone, even though we like their films. Really, we were driven only by our enthusiasm for Charles Portis's book.
We don't outline, so we don't have prospective tasks to divide up. It's just, we start at the beginning and talk the first scene through, write it up, proceed to the next.
That's interesting: people deriving their identities from their music.
That cowboy look - the hat and the bandana - that's not a fashion statement. That clothing is purely practical.
Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.