The new wild bunch

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

GRAHAM FULLER: As a native of Uvalde, Texas, where the Newtons settled down, had you heard of them before?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, I sure hadn't, man. We moved from there when I was eight, and when Rick [Linklater] brought 'em up to me, it was the first time I'd heard about 'em. Then I found out my dad took my oldest brother to go get his first horse from Joe Newton, and that my more had a good friend who knew Joe and Willis in their eighties. Around town everyone had a crush on them. I heard some of the legendary stuff too, like their porch was lined with silver dollars.

GF: Do you think the Newtons were decent guys, or sociopaths?

MM: I had so much fun, it's hard for me to badmouth them. It's a pretty cool American survival story. Willis, especially, wanted to be respected and wanted the good life, and he wasn't gonna get it unless he went out and made it for himself. I talked a lot with Claude Stanush [Newton biographer and the movie's cowriter], who knew Joe and Willis real well in their eighties. He told me that once Willis figured out the banks were taking from the insurance companies, like crooks stealing from crooks, he looked at robbing banks as a business, and it wasn't up for discussion after that. I think if a priest had pinned him in a corner and made him put his hand on a Bible, he still would've said there was nothing wrong with it.

GF: DO you think he was motivated by anger because when he was younger he'd been imprisoned for a job he didn't do?

MM: There was probably some spite there. The reality is, you gotta crawl before you walk when you get out of prison. Well, hell, Willis wanted to ran - fuck crawling or walking. Could I do what Willis did? Oh, I'd love to at times, but thankfully I don't need to.

GF: I wondered if you enjoyed acting in this movie more than others you've done lately.

MM: Good question, because in a lot of ways I did. It was a more fun role because I finally got to be on the other side of the law. I didn't have the responsibility of doing God's work like Palmer Joss in Contact, and I didn't have the responsibility of seeking justice like Roger Baldwin in Amistad. Willis didn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders; he had the weight of himself, his ambition, his responsibility for his brothers, and the love of his life, Louise [played by Julianna Marguiles]. Other than that, piss on everything else.

GF: But It seemed to me you were having fun because you were acting in an ensemble rather than drawing on your star quality.

MM: You liked Willis better than Palmer or Roger?

GF: Uh-huh.

MM: OK. You have to draw on a lot more reserve and contemplation when you're playing a lawyer defending fifty Africans in a true case in 1839, or when you're playing a man of the cloth, compared to a role where the drive is, "Go get the money." [laughs] Willis wouldn't go to bed at night thinking, Did I do the right thing? Willis is Huck Finn at thirty. I had a blast doing this, man, and it was about time, because I've played the white knight a few times. And you know what else I noticed? Bad guys get to smile a lot more.

ETHAN HAWKE

GF: I hear you found the Newtons' old shack?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, it was on the day before we started shooting. I drove out to Uvalde to find their graves, but it was a Sunday and no one was working at the graveyard, so I couldn't find them. I went to get something to eat, and this old guy walked up behind me and asked me if I would have lunch with him. We sat down in some little roadside diner, and I asked him if he knew the Newtons and he said that he'd been good friends with Jess and that it pissed him off that nobody knew who they were. He asked the waitress, "You ever heard of the Newton boys?" And she said no, and he said, "See, everybody's damn ignorant in this town." Then he took me out to their house, which is in a field and has trees growing through the middle of it.

GF: Did you pick up the vibes?

EH: I don't know. I got what I was looking for. I ripped off some of their old wallpaper and drove back to Austin.

GF: Where do you connect with the time and place shown in the movie?

EH: I was born in Texas, and my grandfather served in the state legislature. Texas has its own spirit of independence, and I think the Newtons are representative of that. It's a be-your-own-man mentality. If they won't give it to you, take it - which was exactly the phrase on a Texan cannon used in the war against Mexico: "Come and take it."

DWIGHT YOAKAM

GF: Brent Glasscock Isn't like the Newton boys, Is he? He's the neurotic one.

DWIGHT YOAKAM: He's the most seasoned criminal, but I tried to keep in mind that this guy had done hard time in the Missouri and Oklahoma state pens, which wasn't a cakewalk in the early 1900s. He was in such poor health after the last incarceration, he went into a sanitarium. Even his wife, Avis [played by Chloe Webb], was a nurse. I think he was a shattered person. That's why he comes unglued and snaps at times. He's just trying to cling to his sanity and interact with this band of roguish brothers long enough to pull those jobs off and then disappear, which is what he did after he did time for the Rond-out [Ill.] train robbery [1924]. They never heard from him again or found his money. There was some story he may have owned a circus that he sold to the Ringling brothers. I told Richard [Linklater] I wouldn't be surprised if we found out Glasscock owned a rubber plantation in Indonesia.