Sam Shepard on Blackthorn, His Hollywood Years and Why He'll Never Write a Memoir

Why did you want to play Butch? What brought you to Blackthorn?

Well, the script was by far the best script I'd seen in about 10 years. I mean, it was a great script: The way it twisted and turned, and the complexities of it, and the levels of it. It was a beautiful script. It is a beautiful script. And the fact that they were going to shoot it in Bolivia -- that it was a Spanish production, not a big budget -- I thought it might be unique. I thought it might be different than another American Western -- particularly since they were shooting it in Bolivia. And it's true: You get down there, and you're in an Indian nation. It's 70, 75 percent Indian, all the Quechuan dialects. Spanish is the second language. There were many people we were working with who didn't speak Spanish at all. And it's poorest country in South America.

So we're in this very exotic territory, and there are these spectacular settings. You go from the Andes to the deepest valleys where the walls of the canyons are straight up, and then you go to the high plateau and the salt flats... The variety is just amazing.

Had you been before?

No. I'd never been to South America before. I'd been to Central America and Mexico, but never South America. We just flew right into El Alto, which is at 15,000 feet. It's the highest airport in the world. You come in and you go, "Boom." You're like a postage stamp.

As a writer, what's your approach to shaping your parts and your characters in other people's scripts? How do you negotiate any changes or developments with the screenwriter or director, if at all?

I kind of have an agreement with the director ahead of time that I can fool with the language a little bit -- not in terms of changing story or plot development or any big ideas, and not changing the other actors' language. But that I can manipulate the language a little bit to where I feel comfortable with it. Beyond that, I woudn't say I'm in the conceptual part of it at all. I try not to mess around in that territory. But the language, I will fool around with. That's the only way I would really influence anything as a writer.

In you career, you've shown a historical interest in collaborating with foreign filmmakers on stories about American mythology, psyche and landscape -- guys like Antonioni, Wenders, Andrew Dominic, now Mateo Gil--

Volker Schlondorff.

Absolutely. What is it that keeps you returning to this interest?

Ironically, and I don't know why it is, I think Europeans -- particularly Germans, for some reason -- see this country in a very, very distinctly... I wouldn't want to call it "objective." It may even be more romantic. But they see America in a way that Americans don't see it. Maybe because we're submerged in it and tend to polarize ourselves. But the German sensibility about America has a scope to it that's so different. Like Paris, Texas, for instance. I don't think Paris, Texas would have been the same film had it been done by Robert Altman or whoever. I don't think it would have had the exile feeling that Paris, Texas had -- the remoteness of it. I really think it's the exile kind of thing. I don't know what it is about the Germans. Maybe it's because of World War II; maybe they feel exiled from their own country. America is regarded as the savior of the second World War, and they look to America as being some sort of contemporary brother. And they don't quite find it, but they feel like... I don't know. I might just be making all this shit up. But I think Wim has a certain tenderness for America that's unique.

And you've seen it develop over the years in multiple collaborations with him. Aside from the films themselves, how do you think you've factored into Wenders's attitudes? What do you guys talk about it in that context?

With both of those films -- Paris, Texas and Don't Come Knocking -- we had a lot of discussions about place. He had, for years, this obsession with a Dashiell Hammett book called Red Harvest that he wanted to do a long, long time ago, and somehow it got hung up. But Red Harvest is set in Butte, Mont., and so he had this thing about Butte. I said, "Well, let's make this movie in Butte!" Because in both the instances of Paris, Texas and Don't Come Knocking, he started with a totally different idea about characters. But both of them converged around the idea of place. First, he wanted to shoot Paris, Texas all over the world. I said, "Why don't you just locate it in West Texas? Do it strictly as a Texas movie?" Wim said, "Well, why don't we call it Paris, Texas?" I said, "Great!" [Laughs] "Call it anything you want! Just keep it in Texas!"

And it was very difficult, because many times, Wim wants to have many, many, many characters. Don't Come Knocking must have had twice as many characters when we started, and we kept trying to condense it and make it more focused. So it's things like that.

We're in a period where a lot of your peers and contemporaries are coming out with memoirs and other material, giving the last half-century a cultural perspective that we didn't have before. How do you intend, if at all, to add your own last half-century to that perspective?

I'm not interested in autobiography at all.

You're not going to do that?

No. Never. I mean, in a way, all the plays have been autobiographical, but not confessional like that. I've never read an autobiography where the protagonist isn't the hero of his story. It's ridiculous.

Is that intellectually dishonest?

No, no. I'm just not interested in it. There's nothing dishonest about it. It's just that I don't want to pursue it as a thing.

So what is next?

I have a three-act play that I've got the skeleton of; it's not committed to a theater for another year or so, so I have plenty of time to work on it. I've got another play that I'm working on. I'm going to do a film with Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon in Arkansas.

Oh, right -- Mud.

You know about it?

Just what's been announced. That director, Jeff Nichols, is awesome.

What's his name?

Jeff Nichols? Have you seen Take Shelter?

No, I haven't.

Oh, man. Well...

He's from Arkansas, right?

Right. Then he attended North Carolina School of the Arts, where he got hooked up with Michael Shannon. Then they made Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter.

I talked to him on the phone. Sadly not much idea about his work.

He's brilliant.

Well, good.

And what a cast.

It's a beautiful script. As a screenwriter, he's quite talented. It's kind of an impeccable script. [Pause] But I'm doing a lot of other stuff. I'm working at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico with a bunch of scientists in a kind of think-tank situation, which has been very productive.

Isn't Valerie Plame at the Santa Fe Institute? Is that how you wound up in playing her father in Fair Game?

No, it was actually the other way around. She and Cormac McCarthy, who I've known for a long time, recommended me for this fellowship out there -- the Miller Fellowship. I did that a year ago, for six months, and then I was invited back as a kind of resident. It's without any stipend or anything, but they give me a place to work. And I really liked that somehow it's time for me to be institutionalized. [Laughs] So far it's worked out good, and I want to continue it as long as I'm productive. I've got my farm in Kentucky, but sometime it gets a little bit remote, and I wonder what I'm doing. New Mexico feels like home to me now.

[Top photo: WireImage]

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