John McEnroe was never an easy man to govern; he had too much armoury on the tennis court for his opponents and too much attitude off it for officialdom. He was an untamed street fighter who did not like to be told what to do and this inevitably led to moments of tension. McEnroe was pure box office and there has never really been anyone since.
It was this context that prompted me to cast him as a gunslinging outlaw in the chaotic and bloody days of the Wild West. He seemed to fit the bill much better than most of his contemporaries (though to his point - Jimmy Connors - ran him close).
I understood that the faux saloon we built in the Tetons of Wyoming would have a wider narrative if there was some sense of place and indeed a sense of the cold. There needed to be a fusion of the inside and the outside - never the simplest of tricks.
We ended up building the structure very close to where Tarantino shot the winter seasons in Django - I sense that he is not a bad judge of locations.
John was a leftie with a tennis racket and, of course, he instinctively picked up this pistol with his left hand. As with Wimbledon over 40 years ago, his presence holds court - there is a palpable sense of menace.
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