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I'm not the guy to ask to write a sequel.
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I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.
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To get a film in Cannes is a real honor. To have it play and not get booed is a real relief.
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I had to push exposition through dialogue, which is really, really hard for an actor do.
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I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.
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I think that marriage of music and picture is so vital, especially in a film that's almost exclusively exteriors.
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My wife was pregnant, and I was doing the math, and I was realizing that I couldn't be living in a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood for the rest of my days. I didn't want to raise my kid there.
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I think I was a decent actor, but it took a lot of work for me to make a choice on how to read a line.
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I watched a lot of old movies. Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived.
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I let characters be human and flawed and relatable.
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I sent 'Hell or High Water' to Peter Berg, asking if he'd like to be involved.
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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.
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I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.
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The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.
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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.
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You know that saying, 'You broke it, you bought it'? With horses, if you don't make sure it's a good fit... they tend to break you.
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While I feel it's important for films to examine our society, I don't particularly like watching the films that do it.
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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.
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Part of our job as storytellers is to show people pockets of the world that they don't know. The more we understand, the more we don't judge.
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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.
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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.
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In 2005, I visited my home state of Texas, spending time on a ranch outside the town of Post. Then spending some time on a large ranch outside Archer City. I was taken by just how few young people I saw anywhere.
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In 2011, I was in Hollywood peddling 'Sicario' to constant and resounding 'no's. Texas was suffering the worst drought on record. Wildfires spread across West Texas, burning some 4 million acres and 3,000 homes. While the urban centers in Texas were experiencing an economic boom, West Texas was collapsing under the weight of drought and fires.
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Some of the most fascinating scenes in 'Unforgiven,' for me, is that scene with Gene Hackman where he's talking about the Duke of Death that Richard Harris played, and he's basically demolishing this myth of this man very unwesternly – not what you expect in a western.