Sam Shepard Prefers His Tradition With a Twist

Despite being publicity-shy, Sam Shepard is remarkably friendly and funny over the phone from New York City. Shepard, the prolific American playwright, actor and director, is breaking his usual silence to discuss his latest film, “Purgatory,” a new western adventure premiering Sunday on TNT.

The lanky, laconic Shepard seems perfectly cast in the quirky sagebrush saga as Mr. Forest, an honorable sheriff of a mysterious little town. When a band of ruthless outlaws descends on the town, they soon discover that Sheriff Forest and the rest of the inhabitants aren’t exactly who they appear to be.

Shepard, 55, received the Pulitzer Prize for his now-classic play “Buried Child” and has penned such acclaimed plays as “Curse of the Starving Class,” “Fool for Love,” “Lie of the Mind” and “Tooth of the Crime.” For the screen, he was one of the writers of “Zabriskie Point” as well as “Paris, Texas,” and he wrote and directed “Silent Tongue” and “Far North,” starring his significant other, Jessica Lange, with whom he has two children.

As an actor, Shepard received an Oscar nomination as test pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s “The Right Stuff” and has starred in such films as “Baby Boom,” “The Pelican Brief,” “Frances,” “Country” and the upcoming “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

Question: Are there any acting projects you regret passing on?

Answer: There are two things I really regret turning down, “Lonesome Dove” and “Unforgiven.” I turned both of those down and I could kick myself now.

With “Lonesome Dove,” it was an extraordinary long shoot. It was like six months, and I couldn’t do it with the family and all. And with “Unforgiven,” I do this thing sometimes where I just read the first two pages [of a script]. It had that horrendous female assault where the woman gets cut up. I picked it up and threw it away thinking, “I don’t want to do this. Good Lord, this is outrageous.” So I just threw it away. Oh, well.

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Q: So what was it then about “Purgatory” that compelled you to do it? Was it the fact that it had a traditional feel to it?

A: You know, mainly it was that. It felt like a traditional western even though it had this odd twist to it, and that it was being directed by a German fascinated me. Europeans seem to have some way or another a more objective take on westerns. I was fascinated about what a German would do with the material. It might have a kind of starkness and a non-sentimentality about it. [Forest] also seemed like a great character reminiscent of “High Noon” and those traditional western heroes.

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Q: So what was director Uli Edel’s take on the film?

A: He loves the action of it and the hero element. I haven’t seen the film. I hope it came out well.

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Q: Was it difficult making a western on a short TV movie schedule?

A: It was horrendous. You look at the day’s schedule and you say, “This is impossible.” We had to shoot like eight or nine pages [a day]. As with all of these emergency filmmaking situations, the tensions are high because there is time and money and all of that kind of stuff.

I had never done a western on the back lot in Hollywood. It was at Warner Bros. in Burbank on the old “Maverick” sets. You have to stop shooting there when there are helicopters [flying over]. It was totally crazy. The camera can’t go high or it will catch the [telephone] wires and the condominiums. It was actually like purgatory shooting the thing.

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Q: Why is there still a mystique about the “Wild West”?

A: Well, I think you have to make the balance between the actuality and the romance of it, but still, I think, what’s fascinating about it is that it still offers some kind of mystery--the promise about it is still unfulfilled and probably never will be fulfilled, so I think that’s what magnetizes a lot of people’s imagination. There is this huge vast, still, vast tract of land that hardly anybody ever walks on.

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Q: You just completed the A&E; movie “Dash and Lilly” about the relationship between novelist Dashiell Hammett and playwright Lillian Hellman. What was that experience like?

A: It was fantastic. I got to work with Judy Davis and [director] Kathy Bates and they were extraordinary to work with. Again, it was an emergency filmmaking situation. We shot the whole thing in 20 days, but that’s the way these things are done.

I never changed costumes so many times on one film in my life, you know! Four different mustaches, different varying degrees of gray hair. It was unbelievable.

But there is something to be said for doing things under duress. You have to come up with the goods. It’s sometimes good to be pushed up against the wall.

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Q: When you work as an actor on a movie, is the writer half of you tempted to alter the screenplay?

A: I do admit to messing around with the language sometimes with the author’s consent and so far there hasn’t been any big battles about it.

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Q: But aren’t screenwriters intimidated when they learn you are doing their movie?

A: I guess they are. It’s kind of too bad. I try not to make it a situation like that. Sometimes, just as an actor, I like to adjust the language a little bit without changing the meaning, just change it so it feels speakable. That is just my own quirkiness as an actor, I guess. I need to have the language right.

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Q: Has your acting superseded your writing?

A: No. I’m working on a play now and another book of stories. But you know, it’s a little bit crazy jumping back and forth between things. But sometimes I can do things parallel like I have been working on this play doing the “Dash and Lily” thing and I was working on stories when I was working on “Purgatory.” Sometimes you have a lot of down time in the trailer, so long as you are marooned in a trailer, you put it to use.

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Q: Have you found, even for you, it’s getting more difficult to get plays mounted?

A: Oh yeah. Absolutely, it’s more difficult. For instance, Broadway is ridiculous. It costs you $100 to get a seat. I saw this great Irish play “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and I think the minimum ticket was $50.

It’s nuts. That, of course, changes the nature of the audience because you suddenly have an audience of people who can only afford this extravagant thing called theater. When I started out, theater was something for everybody in the off-off-Broadway days. Anybody could come. Most of it was free.

I did a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club and you literally couldn’t get the audience to stop twitching and moving around. It was sort of an octogenarian [audience]. It drove me crazy. There were a lot of people who wanted to see the play who couldn’t get in [because of the ticket prices]. I don’t know what the solution to that is. I don’t know what can change it.

* “Purgatory” can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight on TNT, and repeats Wednesday at 8 p.m., and Jan. 16 at noon, and several more times during January. The network has rated the movie TV-14, as it contains material that parents might find unsuitable for children under 14 years of age.