Brad Pitt Quotes

Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.

I may not have the gun that Jesse James had when he was gunned down, but if there's a piece identified with him and the same place, then I get interested; it's always excited me.

Years ago on TV, I played people like Doc Holliday and Jesse James on Westerns.

My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me.

I want to do a western. Nobody does westerns anymore.

There's been about 75 movies about Jesse James, and I've seen about four of them. He's usually portrayed as this plucky rebel who's got no choice but to turn to crime, because the railway's hassling his mother. But he wasn't like that.

I'm from Texas, and I would love to do an old-fashioned gun-slinging Western.

It's a character that I always found really likable. I'm fond of Zorro because he was a popular figure who worked for the people.

When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.

I love Westerns. They're a unique creation of American mythology.

The Jersey Lilly. Roy Bean, Notary Public, The Law West of the Pecos

The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.

If you're going to play a cowboy, show up with the horse at the audition

I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. It said: "Wanted, Dead or Alive." All I want and America wants him brought to justice. That's what we want.

I was born the son of a lawless man, always spoke my mind with a gun in my hand.

Walter [Hill] basically brought me into that ["Wild Bill Hickok"], and it was one of the great experiences. It was extraordinary stuff. He wrote this kind of American Shakespeare. But I played my part for four episodes, and the rest is history!

Captain Lone Wolf Gonzaullas was one of a kind. I'm sure he would agree to this truth, If you continuously compete with others, you will become bitter. If you constantly compete with yourself, you can become great.

Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?

The marriage between the fantasy and the Westerns is that thing of, if people think you're the best gunslinger around, they're going to come looking for you.

That's how it works in Westerns: the hero is minding his own business and trying to make a living, but he does something, the villain finds out about it and they have to have a showdown. So it's kind of a Western set to hip hop music.

My character was a homogenization of various things, whether it be the attitude of a Bruiser Brody, or the look of Nikita Koloff or the way that Nikita looked at the people. I took a little bit of what I liked and what I had seen throughout the years from everybody that I was entertained by and made it my own.

The reason I wouldn't dare to write a Western is simply because that seems to be so much a part of American culture. Maybe if I want to write a Western enough I should try to overcome that fear, but I'll certainly feel like I'm trespassing. I feel that that is so much a part of American foundation myth, it's part of the myth of America, the American vision of what America is, which people have glorified and then challenged and then vilified.

In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.

Basically the movies I make are my life, so I choose how I want to live my life for the next two years. So that's a decision I have to make. At some point if I feel there are enough elements - it doesn't even have to have great characters or great stories - it's just elements that can get my excitement and curiosity for one or two years, then I'll jump in and I'll find out what that is. Then I have to do [interviews like this] and rationalize why I do this.

I've grown up watching a lot of Western genre films on TV, and America is not just a country, but it's one of the most important countries in the world, and examining the process of how this nation came to be, it's an important thing, even for outsiders.