I've been fortunate to work with partners like Weinstein and John and Art Linson in developing 'Yellowstone' and am grateful that it has found a home in the Paramount Network. The show is both timely and timeless.
I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.
I thought of Jeff Bridges in 'Hell or High Water' and Ben Foster, and I kept trying very hard not to, because you're terrified you're going to write this thing that then feeds specifically to this one person that then won't do it.
I broke a lot of conventions. Look, I spent a long time as an actor. I spent a lot of time playing pretty ordinary arcs.
I'm a big believer in,'If anyone can understand my politics, I've failed.' If you can get a sense of which side of the fence I'm on, then I'm not doing a service. I'm preaching, and that's not my job.
If you're going to make a sequel to 'Sicario', you have to - you know, you've got to go beat a brand new path.
'Sicario' was successful, but it was successful because Denis and the producers were, you know, they were very lean. It was very lean filmmaking.
I'm not the guy to ask to write a sequel.
I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.
I've been in some bad TV shows and suffered through so much poor writing.
You set something in modern-day Texas, which is so identifiable as the Old West, and everyone's wearing guns, so it looks like it's going to be, by default, partially considered a western.
For me, the greatest thing a movie can do is rivet you while you're watching but also give you something to chew on for days and weeks after you've seen it.
I wanted 'Hell or High Water' to feel like a road movie and an exciting, fun film - until it's not.
I had a one-year-old son. How will my failure or success limit what he becomes? I was trying to write screenplays. It doesn't pay very well until you sell one. I was poor.
I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.
It's very hard for me to go to the movies because I know all the tricks, and I know everybody. I don't watch many at all. And the ones I do watch are generally much older films.
To me, 'Unforgiven' is one of the best films ever made. Aside from the fact it takes the genre and kicks it between its legs, it's this fascinating deconstruction of the myth of the West.
Where having been an actor was extremely helpful to me was in casting. That's where I think a director who has acted can really shine, and casting is the most important thing you do.
I think 'In The Heat Of The Night' was one of the most influential films on me. Looking back now, I can see how influential it was on my screenwriting because here you have what looks to be a crime procedural, and it's actually a study in race and loneliness, and a perception of an era.
To get a film in Cannes is a real honor. To have it play and not get booed is a real relief.
