Movies: Capturing the Cowboys

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Have you been happy with the films made from your work over the years? I feel I've been maybe the luckiest of American writers in that my novels have generated very good films, more than the average. Maybe Steinbeck was luckier.

You attribute that to luck? No, I attribute it to coming from a strong place that breeds strong characters, and strong characters are what major actors and actresses want to play. They want to play somebody vivid.

Do you still see a lot of movies? Not much. I'm old. I've seen a lot of movies. I have the same problem with fiction. I can't read fiction anymore. I've reviewed over 1,000 novels, and I just burned out a long time ago. Occasionally I'll reread War and Peace or Anna Karenina or Middlemarch.

So what do you read for fun?

History. Memoirs of World War I, trying to figure out how we got from 1895 to 1945.

In your Golden Globes acceptance speech you thanked your typewriter. Have you ever used a computer? Never.

How do you know that you wouldn't like it? I don't. I just know that I'm satisfied with my typewriter. I've been typing on it 50 years, and I don't see any reason to change.