I'm a big fan of period pieces, and I'm a big fan of the old-time westerns.
'The Virginian' has a very important romantic story line that you don't find in a lot of Westerns... At the heart of the story is quite a bit of pain and a sense of loss.
I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.
I had done some work when I was starting in with photography on westerns, and photographing them was the greatest pleasure I had. If I was ever qualified for anything, it would have had to do with making westerns. But as I started working on pictures with people like Katharine Hepburn, I got further away from the thing I really liked to do.
I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors.
I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.
Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns.
The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.
People are always asking me why they don't make Westerns like they used to.
I've always been a fan of Westerns, but my favorite kind of Westerns mostly were Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, and they mainly took place in the West that was changing.
