The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [100]
In the pivotal scene, Billy allows himself to be humiliated by the sheriff rather than allow his friend to be arrested. That played so against your established image, it must have been fun to do.
Really fun. It was suggested that Billy come back at the end and punch this guy out. That would have ruined the picture, the whole theme of loyalty. Billy doesn’t approve of this kid being a deserter, and he doesn’t know enough to intellectualize what his friend’s feelings were about the war in Vietnam. He just knows he doesn’t approve but he’s going to stick by his friend. Now if Billy had come back and kicked the crap out of the sheriff at the end, it would have wrecked all that.
There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial. It’s not Dirty Bronco Billy.
‘Honkytonk Man.’
Red Stovall is based a bit on some self-destructive people I’ve known. He’s wild and funny, but he’s been a coward in his time. He won’t face up to his ambitions. He’s not that great a singer, but he writes some interesting things. When he gets his moments, he’s already destroyed himself.
And the studio suggested that it might be a good idea if Red didn’t die in the end?
I resisted that.
Your new one, ‘Pale Rider.’
It’s a western. One of the earliest films in America was a western: The Great Train Robbery. If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is. In the Sixties, American westerns were stale, probably because the great directors—Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh, John Ford—were no longer working a lot. Then the Italian western came along, and we did very well with those; they died of natural causes. Now I think it’s time to analyze the classic western. You can still talk about sweat and hard work, about the spirit, about the love for the land and ecology. And I think you can say all these things in the western, in the classic mythological form.
You’re not generally credited with having any sense of humor, yet certain of your films get big laughs in all the right places. The first half of ‘Honkytonk Man,’ for instance, was very funny.
That’s the way it was designed: a humorous story that becomes a tragedy. A lot of the humor is not in what you say but in how you react. Comedians are expert at that. Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners: Alice zaps him, and his reaction—just look at his face—cracks you up. Jack Benny could do that. Comedy isn’t necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it’s a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.
You have a reputation for shooting your films quickly and bringing them in under budget. Do you think that this has anything to do with having grown up in the Depression?
I would like to say it’s just good business, but it may be that. It may be a background of not wanting to see waste.
There’s a rumor that people work quickly on your sets because you don’t provide chairs.
That rumor derived from some comment I made. Someone asked why I like shooting on location as opposed to in the studio. I said, “In the studio, everyone’s looking around for a chair. On location, everyone’s working.” But there are chairs on the set and on location.
You also have a reputation for bringing in bright or underappreciated talent. ‘Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,’ for instance, was Michael Cimino’s first film. Some people might say that you do that because you get these folks cheap.
Nothing’s cheap, and I don’t think I’d cut off my nose to spite my face. I don’t think I’d get somebody cheap just because I thought he was cheap. I think I’d want the film to be the best possible. Otherwise you’re selling yourself short. An awful lot of directors are expensive, but you don’t know how they got to be that way.