I think they are very important because westerns have a code and a symbolism.
Aaron Eckhart
My parents weren't involved in show business, but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house. Little film festivals of Westerns and stuff like that when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to be those guys in those movies before I knew what being an actor was.
Alden Ehrenreich
When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.
My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.
When I was 12, I decided I was only going to watch Westerns for a few months.
I actually don't like westerns much. I like good westerns, but it isn't my preferred genre. There are all kinds of westerns: acid westerns, '70s westerns, Nicholas Ray's neurotic westerns. The ones I tend to like are nutso westerns.
Andrew Dominik
I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.
Ann Nocenti
I grew up watching Westerns.
Anthony Hemingway
You don't just have to see superhero movies. Ultimately, those movies are westerns - superheroes are good guys fighting bad guys in a landscape. In westerns, that divide couldn't be any more clear, but the only superpower you have is that you're a quicker shot than the other guy.
Antoine Fuqua
Westerns are simple stories where there's good and there's evil and where people had a sense of space and freedom. Growing up in the city, as a kid, you've never really seen that before. It's a beautiful dream to go from concrete to big skies, dirt and horses.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
I was growing up with a single mom who'd be at work when I came home from school. So I'd just turn on the TV. I grew up watching old Clint Eastwood westerns. I adopted him as one of my male role models.
Bailey Chase
I love Westerns!
Barry Corbin
Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they'll reach an audience or not.
Barry Pepper
I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.
Ben Mendelsohn
Your basic physical makeup does influence the parts you're offered. If you're big, they cast you either dumb or tough, although there are exceptions. Clint Eastwood and James Arness carved out niches for themselves in Westerns. I just hope I won't be faced with doing 'Li'l Abner' in dinner theater for the rest of my career.
Bill Fagerbakke
Westerns give people a chance to see wide-open spaces and life before technology took over.
Bill Pullman
The first Westerns I saw as a child were those little 8-mm. home movies put out by Castle Films.
'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 think Westerns are always so great for clearing out the clutter and the ambiguities, and getting right to the broad strokes of that kind of situation.
Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies.
I would love to do a Western again if Westerns came back into fashion.
After 'Baby Doll,' I did some Westerns. I would try to do something so far away from 'Baby Doll.'
The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.
War stories, westerns, spy stories are all accepted as respectable because they are read by men. It is only women's light reading which is derided.
If one were to go back to the '50s, the most popular TV genre on the air in the United States were Westerns. You could go turn on ABC or CBS on any night and you'd almost have three full hours of everything from 'Bonanza' to 'Rawhide' to 'Wanted Dead or Alive.'
'3:10 to Yuma' was one that I just kept on talking and thinking about after reading it. And I think the reason is because, like in most Westerns, you have the very clear-cut bad-guy/good-guy, however, as the movie progresses, you kind of see that it's a very fine line that divides these two.
I think you're going to find out that westerns will be coming back. It's Americana, it's part of our history, the cowboy, the cattle drive, the sheriff, the fight for law, order and justice. Justice will always prevail as far as I'm concerned.
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.
People love westerns worldwide. There's something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It's a simpler time. There's no organized laws and stuff.
When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
You have to turn a blind eye to politics in nearly all Westerns.
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.
I love Westerns and I remember as a kid climbing up on the couch and make it into a saddle and shoot guns and fall off. I would lay there after my death and my mom would tell me to eat lunch and I'd say, 'I'm still dead, Mom!' I was Method, even then.
I have always loved westerns... supernatural westerns in particular. One of my first professional short story sales was a horror/western story. It wasn't so great, though, so I'm glad the magazine folded before it saw print.
In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.
I liked Westerns for two reasons: First, it took the actor outside. They were all very physical at that time and not limited to a stage. Second, they paid my rent an awful lot.
I started out as a very young girl in Hollywood doing westerns portraying a mother with a couple of kids.
When I was working my way up, it seemed to me that only Westerns and 'Star Treks' or sci-fi movies could afford to get away with presenting the problems - like prejudice and desegregation, for instance - that we face in our everyday lives.
I was born in 1950, so there were tons of Westerns on TV by the time I was 6, 7, 8 years old. In terms of television, 'Maverick' and 'Have Gun - Will Travel.' But filmically, classics like 'High Noon' and 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' - that's one of my favorite films.
Mel Brooks is an interesting one because he started out making films about stuff that he was totally affectionate about, like musicals, westerns, horror films, Hitchcock films. And then, as they get further on, and you get to 'Spaceballs,' then it's just kind of contrived.
History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
I never dreamed I would do Westerns.
I did 10 years of comedies and 10 years of Westerns. I really like to stay away from car chases. I prefer the more intimate film. You have a much more direct association with the emotions.
I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'
The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town.
If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.
It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.
I'm crazy about westerns. I need to do a western once in a while. It's like you know, eating bread, eating pasta, drinking wine. It's in my blood. I need it.
In Westerns you were permitted to kiss your horse but never your girl.
