Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of The Directors Cut, brought to you by

the Directors Guild of America, where each episode we bring you a fresh and insightful interview

featuring one of the film industry's top directors, conducted by one of their peers.

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This episode takes us behind the scenes of director Scott Cooper's new western, Hostels.

Set in 1892, the film stars Christian Bale as a U.S. Cavalry officer who reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family

on a harrowing journey from an isolated outpost in New Mexico,

through dangerous Comanche territory back to their tribal lands in Montana.

In addition to hostels, Mr. Cooper's directorial credits include the feature films Black Mass,

Out of the Furnace, and Crazy Heart.

Following a recent screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles,

Mr. Cooper spoke with director Peter Landisman about filming hostels. During their conversation,

Mr. Cooper discusses how he separates the director and writer within himself during production,

his reverence for and directorial approach to the Western genre, and how

selecting a setting can be as important as casting one of the leads of the film.

Thank you.

Remarkable film, Scott.

Beautiful.

Before we get into it specifically, writer-director like yourself, this is your fourth film as both writer and director. The true creator and arbiter of the universe up on screen, but before we get to the movie, when you're both the writer and the director, you put yourself in the position of constantly interrogating yourself in your original intentions, right? You're at the dialogue, but then you have to coax performance. You have to get out of the way of performance at the avid when you're editing,

...