"I was never a western guy but I happened upon Tombstone one day on TV and was really sort of taken with it. It’s one of those movies that, if it’s on TV, I can’t turn it off. I just have to watch the whole thing. I really love Kurt Russell in it, but I think Val Kilmer’s performance in Tombstone is perfection. I just think he’s funny and cool and sad and broken. He’s a bad guy, but you’re rooting for him. He’s an interesting sidekick because Doc Holiday is a criminal, you know? But it’s like, “I’ll be your huckleberry” is such an amazing kind of line of bravado and bravery. And then at the end, when he’s dying, Kurt Russell wants to play cards with him, and Val Kilmer just wants him to leave and let him die. It’s beautiful. And Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton and Kurt Russell — it’s just quite a team. And you’ve got Billy Bob as a bully on the card table. It’s just expansive, and I’ve lived a little bit in Wyoming and being out there — really it just gives you a scope of the West: those big skies, and it’s beautifully shot. It’s just one of those movies that, when it’s on, I’m going to watch it."

"With my friend Morgan [Freeman]. It’s so funny, these movies, the ones that I’m pulling out, they all have the same element. They feel perfect. I can’t find a false note, I can’t find a scene or a moment that you could lose and the movie would still be as good. There’s not a wasted breath. I think that Unforgiven is some of Clint Eastwood’s best work. I love westerns — I grew up on them — watching them and playing them around the barn in Buffalo. This is a different western, again, this is a broken guy who’s hanging on by his fingernails. He’s been a dirt farmer, he’s lost his wife, this is his last shot. That’s funny, it’s a little like The Verdict in that respect. None of it is pretty. It’s not slick, it’s not the balletic gunfighting that you see in some movies. It’s ugly and awkward and it’s not easy to kill a man. That was one of the themes that just stuck out like a sore thumb. This is not an easy thing to do, kill a man. For all the glamour and all the romance of the old west and the gunfights and so on, this is awful work, guns. They brought that to life. Gene Hackman can do no wrong. He’s sort of an acting god."