I like to describe 'Yellowstone' is 'The Great Gatsby' on the largest ranch in Montana. Then it's really a study of the changing of the West.
People in Texas wear cowboy hats; they're good at keeping the sun off your neck and face.
If you want to get an email to Robert Redford, you send it to his assistant, and she prints it out. And then he will write you a letter, which is incredibly rare and incredibly classy. Unfortunately, I can't be that removed from technology.
When I write a movie, I write it for me.
Bad people sometimes do good things, and good people do really bad things or do something the audience disagrees with.
My education - my Ph.D. in storytelling - comes from having worked on it, being a lover of film and watching them, from working with some great writers and some very good TV directors and then working with some who weren't.
Until you've been to Cannes, it's hard to describe to someone the magnitude of that festival.
In the late '90s, I spent a lot of time on reservations, and there was a level of poverty and injustice that I had not witnessed before. I was shocked by it. This is federally controlled land, and there was an insidious mix of apathy and exploitation.
I think my mission, if I could call it that, as a storyteller is to try and find ways to show how similar we are and not how different we are.
As a television actor, I was held to a tight, rigid structure.
Sugarcoating doesn't do anybody any good.
Unfortunately, there is still much to mine in this world and explore creatively.
You've been entrusted with a lot of money and a lot of careers, and a lot of people put their faith in me, and every director goes through that every time.
With 'Wind River,' I became fascinated with the notion of how you overcome a tragedy - accepting it, making whatever peace you can with it - without ever knowing what really happened.
You can really examine the suffering and consequences that happen when there's a loss in a family.
I look for absurdly simple plots so that I can simply focus on the characters. Having an understanding of what dialogue's easy to say and hard to say - I think that that's helpful, too.
Every writer has written a spec. It's the first thing you write, and it basically stands as a means of, 'Here's an example of how I tell stories.' It's almost like a business card.
I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.
I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.
I can recognize a good actor. I can recognize someone that can convey emotion and that has the essence and not get lost in the minutia of, 'Well, that person's got red hair, and so does the other.' Some of the decisions in casting that seem so important at the time, until you get on set and you're starting to shoot.
