We tend to do period stuff because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality.
We wouldn't have done it if we didn't think we could have fun with it.
When the movie's done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.
There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?
Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.
It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser.
It's not that I don't like TV. It's alien to me. I haven't watched a television show in decades.
People respond to real problems from the heart.
Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.
Whenever you're specific with ethnicity or religion, people find reason to take offence.
There's something strange - not in a bad way - about going back to where you grew up or recreating where you grew up. It's strange and stimulating.
We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.
Whatever faith you have, you have that crisis: what am I doing?
When you're younger, you kind of assume you'll be fine at whatever. Then you get older, and you're either unsuccessful and you wonder why, or you're successful and you wonder why.
'Once Upon a Time in the West' is a great movie.
Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.
'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.
It was never an ambition to grow up and win an Academy Award, so when it happens, you go, 'Weird!'
Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing.
We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.
