Stephen Frears

The way Stephen Frears describes it, having a Western under your director's belt is a bit like strolling round Hollywood in cowboy boots and a stetson. "There's a look that I see on my contemporaries' faces," he explains, tongue-in-cheek. "A look of amazement that you can go and somehow walk with men - as though making a Western was what men did, and I've been allowed out with the men."

Frears, the British director who worked as assistant to Lindsay Anderson at London's Royal Court Theatre before making his name with small-scale dramas like My Beautiful Launderette, Prick Up Your Ears and Sammy and Rosie get Laid, took his epic brief by the horns: "You are dealing with people who are quite taciturn, quite laconic, so you have to use all that landscape to express emotion. It does involve large feelings and a large sense of scale.

"I kept thinking I wouldn't really know how to do this any differently - I mean, you couldn't really do it hand-held. You can see why Clint Eastwood is so tall - it only makes sense in those terms."

Post-War cowboys

Strictly speaking, The Hi-Lo Country isn't really a Western at all since all the action takes place after the end of World War II. On the other hand, the landscape remains the same and it's always going to look good when accompanied by a rousing string section on the soundtrack.

Frears' initial reaction when Martin Scorsese handed him the Max Evans book was one of slight bewilderment: "I read it and I said, 'I can see this is rather good but I don't know how you make it.' Someone would have to teach me how to make films like this."

A three-year period of research began, in and around New Mexico: "I had to learn both the history of the area I was making the film about and why Westerns were the way they were, what the values were inside them and things like that." Helping Frears find his way were Evans and the screenwriter hired to adapt the novel, Walon Green.

"Walon signed on, whether he knew it or not, to teach me how to make it," says Frears. "He and Max Evans used to sit in the back of a car and tell stories and you would gradually start to realise that you were making a film that was a portrait of what the world was like after the war, and that Westerns meant different things to different people.

"When I was offered this film I knew I had to deal with the spirit of John Wayne. I couldn't make a movie in a setting which had been immortalised by the likes of Wayne, Howard Hawks and John Ford and not acknowledge them in some way. Big Boy (Woody Harrelson) is a sort of John Wayne figure, depicted in a slightly more modern way. He's not as pure in the sense that Wayne was; he is, in fact, a very flawed man. But underneath those flaws he's a hero. To me the heroism lies not in how many men you've killed, or defending the frontier, or robbing banks. The heroism lies in the way you deal with real life."

Time spent in some of America's more remote corners revealed to Frears that such heroes still exist.

"There are still people who herd cattle and work at ranches and there's a sort of melancholy to them because life is tough. It's a wonderful image of freedom - that's what I came to realise. They lead very tough lives but the landscape is sort of enchanted at the same time. You'd turn up at people's houses and ask how near their nearest neighbour is and they'd say - 'Oh, about 10 miles.' You know, they do live quite extraordinarily self-reliant lives."

What really drew Frears to the story was the simmering conflict between the ways of the Old West and the pressures of 20th-century industry. "You can't have the forces of progress losing. The character that Sam Elliott plays (a powerful rancher who threatens the die-hard cowboys' independence) is in a way the most interesting character in the film because he's dealing with the modern world and he's also very patriarchal. So it's actually a much more complicated society than just good guys and bad guys; old fashioned guys and modern guys. I would imagine Sam Peckinpah [who always wanted to make The Hi-Lo Country but never quite got around to it] grew up in a world rather like this.

"When I asked Marty why he'd sent me this book, he said: 'Well, because it's about complicated relationships.' Life's like that. The other day, in an airport somewhere, I was thinking that to kill your enemy is one thing but to kill your friend is much more complicated and makes for a much more interesting story. I have no explanation, I just prefer things to be complicated because it's my experience of the world."

The Hi-Lo Country A complicated tale of simple folk A good horse is like a good woman," says Big Boy Matson (Woody Harrelson) to a hushed saloon - it's all in the 'bottom'. Now, in most places that kind of talk would be considered incendiary, but this is New Mexico, just after World War II. Big Boy, along with his pal and fellow rancher Pete Calder (Billy Crudup) represent the last of their breed - the American cowboy. And 'bottom', in cowboy speak, doesn't mean 'rump' but courage; or dependability when the chips are down.

The central theme in The Hi-Lo Country is trust. A creature with 'bottom' will not let a man down. Mona, played by Patricia Arquette, fits Big Boy's ideal of womanhood to a T, but the course of their relationship is never going to run smooth. For starters, she's married to a man who works for wealthy rancher Jim Ed Love (Sam Elliott, minus the usual moustache). While Big Boy and Pete went off to fight for the Allies, Love used the war as an opportunity to monopolise the cattle industry in Hi-Lo, which has made earning a crust even tougher for the small outfits. In Big Boy's eyes, Love's financial acumen is nothing short of a betrayal.

But the tensions between business rivals are lightweight compared to the real crux of this tale -Big Boy's trusted buddy Pete is equally impressed by Mona's 'bottom', in every sense of the word. The big question is whether one woman can come between two men who discover life can be mighty complex outside the "pure simple joy of a cattle drive". The rough and tumble of their daily grind is a doddle compared to the thunderclouds of chaos stirred by lust. Wrestling steers is one thing, but grappling with the demands of conscience and loyalty is another proposition entirely. And from the movie's opening line - "I once set out to kill someone" - you know it's going to end in tears.

Novel beginnings

The Hi-Lo Country began life as a novel, written in 1961 by Max Evans. One of the first directors to show an interest in the material was a young Sam Peckinpah, and it's not hard to see what attracted him: a world of old values in transition; harsh country; personal vendettas. Every car in Hi-Lo comes equipped with a bottle of whisky; deals between men are sealed with a large wad of chewing tobacco; men urinate on their enemies like dogs when riled.

Evans and Peckinpah became good friends and for 20 years, up until the director's death in 1984, numerous attempts were made to bring the story to the screen. All failed. Charlton Heston, Lee Marvin, Slim Pickens and Ali McGraw were all attached to the project at one time or another. Rights to the film version of the novel changed hands so many times that Evans and Peckinpah had to hire separate firms of lawyers to find out who owned it.

It took LQ Jones, a familiar face in many of Peckinpah's movies, to break the deadlock. Hired to play the Las Vegas County Commissioner in Casino, Jones handed a copy of the novel to Martin Scorsese. From then on it wasn't a case of 'if' but 'when'.

A heavy schedule ruled Scorsese out of the running as director, so he and producer Barbara de Fina turned to Stephen Frears. The trio had previously collaborated on The Grifters - but a Brit in charge of an epic Western? "When you think about it," explains Scorsese, "there's nothing in anyone's character that uniquely qualifies them to be a director of Westerns - after all, many of the American directors we associate with the genre were Easterners. Stephen has shown that he can adapt to many genres - gangster, horror, period, comedy, noir, you name it -; with remarkable ease and flexibility.

"What's more, he has a terrific eye, whether the action takes place indoors as in The Grifters or out of doors, as in The Hit. Finally, Stephen is one of the best directors working today, a total pro. He knows how to communicate with actors, he knows where to put the camera, and he has a remarkable ability to identify and expose the emotional core of whatever story he happens to be filming."

With the helm in safe hands, and the production clout of Working Title on board, Walon Green was recruited to write the screenplay. Green's credentials were bang on the mark: his debut screenplay became Peckinpah's classic The Wild Bunch. The first of the actors to sign up was Crudup, a native New Yorker who had impressed on Broadway, soon followed by Harrelson: "He reminded me of cowboys I had met while I was in New Mexico," says Frears. From their base in Santa Fe, both actors were taught the finer points of driving cattle. They suffered saddlesores for their art, but the director kept his excursions on horseback to a minimum.

"I'm a city boy," confirms Frears. "They put me on horses twice and I was amazed how wide you have to open your legs: I'm glad I'm a man."