The Proposition Movie Trailer

Movie trailer for the Nick Cave penned Australian western The Proposition starring Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Emily Watson.

Although I am a huge fan of Nick's I would still be going to see the film even if he had nothing to do with it because I like westerns and it is getting excellent reviews. Besides having it set in Australia is just a plus.

Here are some of my favorite westerns:
The Wild Bunch
Little Big Man
Once Upon A Time In The West
Open Range
Unforgiven
The Missouri Breaks
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
The Ox-Bow Incident
Dances With Wolves

My brother says Kevin Costner should only make westerns and nothing else while I don't go that far I do think there is some merit to it.

From the SF Chronicle here is a short interview with Nick Cave promoting the film.

Love and loss. Retribution and redemption. Violence and death. All these are familiar themes to Nick Cave, who has explored them in dark dirges, howling cris de coeur and tender ballads for the better part of his 48 years. It's also the territory that the singer-songwriter mines in the screenplay he wrote for "The Proposition," the stark morality play/Western that's set in late 19th century Australia.

Cave isn't a stranger to films. He performed in Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" (1987) and co-wrote and acted in "Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead" (1988). Fellow Australian John Hillcoat, who directed "Ghosts," again paired up with Cave for "The Proposition."

Cave spoke with The Chronicle from a studio in London, where he is recording music for "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," directed by Andrew Dominik (who also directed "Chopper") and starring Brad Pitt as the notorious outlaw.

Q: How would you compare writing songs to writing a screenplay?

A: This screenplay seemed a lot easier to me, mostly because it was just something that I was doing for somebody else, I think. I felt like I was just realizing someone else's ideas, and that's always a lot easier than realizing your own (laughs).

Q: What do you think distinguishes your story from other Westerns?

A: The films that were made in Australia about that era were usually kind of biopics about known bush rangers, as the Irish outlaws are called, people like Ned Kelly and Mad Dog Morgan. So this, for an Australian film, is actually something that Australia's never seen before. It's very much, to me, about how Australians see their history, and it's a very conflicted, muddled view of history that we have. Especially certain aspects of it, like our treatment of the indigenous population.

Q: You're a singer-songwriter, you've written a novel, scripts, plays, poems, you've acted and you've studied painting. Professionally, is there anything that strikes your fancy that you haven't done yet?

A: It's not that I sit around and try to think of new things to do. Basically, most of those things that you're talking about are kind of accidental and are really people asking me to do things, so I give it a shot. Even being a musician started off that way. I had no interest in being in a band or anything like that -- I was just asked at school when I was 15 or something to sing in a band. No one wanted to be the singer, so they got me to do it. I don't really have any idea of where things are going from one day to the next. I'm very much dedicated now to songwriting and being a musician, especially after this excursion into the film world has left me kind of scurrying back to music (laughs).

Q: Why is that?

A: Well, because I feel like I have a little bit of control over my career in music. I kind of call the shots and can do what I like.

Q: Still, it seems that you have taken a liking to scriptwriting.

A: I have written another script, yeah, for John Hillcoat. It's about a sexually incontinent hand cream salesman played by Ray Winstone. It's very different from "The Proposition" in every way except that it may possibly have some of the same cast.

Q: Is this a welcome change for you, to move away from something so dark?

A: Oh, it's dark. It makes "The Proposition" kind of look like, I don't know, a comedy (laughs). It's not violent, but it's pretty sad. It's a weepie.