How Michael helped you with the production of this film?

Very much. Before that I've made two short films with him and we had a relationship of deep harmony and collaboration. As a producer he has helped me to find funding. Needless to hide it. His involvement in the film is official... I got the money and this gave me the freedom to write the script that I had in mind and above it... And I was working on Silas character knowing that Michael will play him.

And as an actor who is very experienced there was something he helped you with?

Enormously. I learned that even in the field or off in a plane you can not analyze some things in detail because you're away from the action of the scene... Michael did very interesting things adding details that enriched the character. Once he was in it became a continuous discovery for us all, it was brilliant on set.

The movie reminded me a lot of The Frisco Kid (1979) by Robert Aldrich. It was a point of reference?

No! I've never seen it!

I can't believe it. There are Harrison Ford and Gene Wilder there - an "odd couple" pretty much like Silas and Jay...

Wait while I write the title (Maclean takes a pen and paper and write actually the original title on a slip: The Frisco Kid), when Ill get back home I'll buy a DVD and watch it immediately. And so to say... there's nothing absolutely "original" can be created in art.

Why you made a story about a European in the West?

Between 21 and 22 years I spent several months in the United States with some friends going from town to town and I can say I've been around for almost sll the boundless country. All the characters I met had European roots. Scottish like me or Irish, Scandinavians, Germans in almost all of Texas. I started reading the West History but in realistic key. I have documented through texts written during the period around the end of 1800. So I decided to make a film on the West from a point of view of the European. America is the best country in the world where to travel.

America, if you're travelling, is very much like American in the films. As a filmmaker have you felt the impact of its sky and the horizon far away?

Yes. I've been camping in America and I was at the rancho. I was with the Cowboys, and they always had their heads turned upwards. Skyward. Then I thought "But why in the Western classics thery never shoot people who look up to the sky?" I wanted the landscape to be a character. A character that Jay always emphasizes, who does nothing but watching it and glorifying it with his words, and yet a character totally underestimated by Silas, who observes the landscape just to figure out from where the next threat will come.

The choice of New Zealand as a filming location is intentional or just motivated by production?

It's because I wanted to return to the fascination of the North American landscape... Only the Colorado has many different places that have this specific coloration and it's also bigger than all of England put together. Impressive.