Written Interview: Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry is known as a novelist having written such books as “The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Lonesome Dove,” but he’s also a screenwriter having won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay with Brokeback Mountain. Here are a few excerpts from this interview:
Why has breaking down the myths of the Old West been important to you?
I’ve never given the matter the slightest thought — whether it’s acting on a myth, supporting a myth, having anything to do with the myth. I just write a book. If people want to mythologize it, that’s their doing. I never thought of “Lonesome Dove” as anti-Western or pro-Western. I just don’t think in those terms. I just think in terms of the story I’m telling.
In the late ’90s, you reportedly said you were done with the Western or bored with the Western. But then you went on to write a few more, the Berrybender narratives, for example, among others. Do you still feel this way?
I don’t pay much attention to pronouncements. You say what you say if you’re being interviewed. I might say things to you that 10 years from now I won’t remember what I was talking about. I just don’t think in broad strokes. I think in particulars. The particulars of a story.
“I just think in terms of the story I’m telling.” Perhaps not worthy of a T-shirt slogan, but I’d certainly consider printing out and sticking up at your writing station.
For more of the interview, go here.