I don't have a favorite I like and then I'll go and watch "Days of Heaven" and I go how beautiful is that. So I think, at least my idea, was lets bring something again that's primitive and guttural but then let's also do something beautiful where you're outside and this isn't a typical western setting. It's lush. It's green. It's beautiful.

I've never gotten bitter about where I was at in my career. I've always earned enough money to put my kids through school and eat and all that, so I was never one of those guys who said, "Why am I not in this other position? Why am I not that other guy? Why am I me?"

Rebellion, just to be clear, can mean holding onto some of your own integrity, of not playing into the idea of sensationalism. We all have our moments, and that's your guys' job - to take those moments and make them turgid, gaseous, make them big, and it's bigger than the person is. When you start believing your own press, that's when it gets really sad.

I know that, for me, working with people like Robert Rodriguez and Ridley Scott and the Coen brothers and Oliver Stone and Gus Van Sant was so much easier than working with a lot of the people I had worked with before, because with these guys, there's not a lot of ego involved. It's all about the work. It's all about how to make the story better. So at the end of the day, you feel a trust that you usually don't feel - or at least I haven't felt in the past with most people.

I'm really, really lucky. I was given my dad's good genes.

In fact, I am so happy to be turning 40 and finally having a reason to take responsibility for my own behavior. It's also worked for me in terms of my physical appearance and emotional make-up and people entrusting me to bring the things a role deserves. I don't know whether that's depth or being a curmudgeon or what.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. "I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union."