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The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western – just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly – it’s almost the antithetical of what’s currently going on in the movies, you know.
I mean, the trouble with some of the kind of relationship movies I’ve done, is there’s only so many ways you can shoot a conversation. I was really tired of talking heads.
I haven’t seen Clones, which has been during this period when I haven’t seen much of anything, but I did see Phantom Menace, and see my feelings about it – see, first of all, I think that when you make a lot of movies, your attitude about the movies changes.
You know, Stephen says, in the movies no one ever goes to the bathroom. They shave, they brush their teeth. He goes right at this sort of funny taboo we have about the bathroom, and he turned it into this nightmare, you know, your worst fear of what’s in there.
The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies, and thrillers, and Kurosawa films, you know, where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.
I really liked Carrie a lot. That was one of Brian De Palma’s best movies.
I loved Alien, and I loved Carrie, and I loved The Exorcist – those were big movies for me. They were just brilliantly done, and unusual, and they all took horror to some new place.
I didn’t really want to do another sequel. I go to those movies, and I just sort of enjoy them like a viewer.
I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.
What you hope for, like Unforgiven did a lot to give you a chance to do it again sometime.