Saloon Culture Quotes

The western will always be here. And it just depends on how good you make one. And one movie doesn't kill it. And one movie doesn't preserve it. It's storytelling. It's a very American thing. I'll continue to do it.

I'm really glad Westerns have had a revival. Hopefully our little resurgence will last a while.

I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best.

The chief cause of the impecunious condition of millions of the wage classes of this country is due to their own improvidence and misdirected efforts ... The wage classes cannot support in idleness a quarter of a million saloon-keepers ... and at the same time hope to prosper themselves.

The saloonkeeper is the only man who keeps open house in the ward. It is his business to entertain. It does not matter that he does not select his guests; that convention is useless among them. In fact, his democracy is one element of his strength. His face is the common meeting ground of his neighbors—and he supplies the stimulus which renders social life possible; there is an accretion of intelligence that comes to him in his business. He hears the best stories. He is the first to get accurate information as to the latest political deals and social mysteries. The common talk of the day passes through his ears and he is known to retain that which is the most interesting.

I come from a long line of saloon keepers and proselytizers, and I draw from both sides.

The saloon is as dead as slavery.

Westerns just thematically, as a genre, have kind of a few tent poles that I really admire, and one of them is this perception that life was simpler back then. And with that perception goes that people were good or people were bad. You survived by your strengths or you perished by your weaknesses.

It is clear that the vehicle of the western was a very interesting vehicle for me to contraband some of my ideas.

I mean, in my - and I'm not trying to do spilled milk, but in those days it was a little - I think it was much tougher, because you got an image, and you were in a saloon. And it was tough to come out of a saloon and to get in films, and to maintain an image, you know.