Here is that rarest of things -- an actual western out of Hollywood. As writer/director David Von Ancken freely admitted at this week's junket for the film -- his first feature -- his agents scoffed when he first proposed the idea of writing and selling a western spec script in Tinseltown. Unless you're selling something that will appeal to the horror fan base or the romantic comedy fan base, you almost shouldn't even bother trying these days, apparently. But miracles do happen! Seraphim Falls, which has shadings of the Clint Eastwood classic The Outlaw Josey Wales, is set in the aftermath of the Civil War, and follows a disgruntled Confederate officer, played by Liam Neeson, who is systematically tracking down the Union captain who torched his home, with wife and child trapped inside. Pierce Brosnan, as the now hunted yankee, spends the first half of the film as a man literally on the run -- he has no dialogue in the first half hour, except for a few grunts and muffled screams.

The two stars, as well as Von Ancken, were on hand at the junket -- showing up about 40 minutes late, but still on hand, eventually -- and appeared eager to promote the film, which is opening in the unfortunate dead-zone of late January. Aside from the samplings below, you may also be interested to know that Liam Neeson is incredibly tall. He probably had to duck to get into the hotel room where the roundtables were conducted:

Pierce Brosnan

Cinematical: What are your thoughts these days about giving up the James Bond character? Barbara Broccoli has been pretty frank about the fact that there were some hurt feelings there in the beginning, when it all went down. "I thought it took great courage to do what they did, because it was so far down the road with our deal-making, and as far as I was concerned.....it was great to do a fifth and then say goodnight. It really does take a toll on you. You've got to be fit and you've got to be present for six months, and then some, to sell the bloody thing. So as much of a shock and a surprise as it was to get that phone call on that day, it was also in the next breath a great liberation of 'I'm out there again. I'm in the field. What's going to happen next?' That's always driven me as an actor. The next one is gonna be great, and I'm gonna give my Oscar-winning performance and be the mightiest of the mighty....and then nobody shows up [laughs]. That's the thing you live for as an actor, and when you have Bond, there's a comfortability there and you have a responsibility to that character and you live with it for many years. So it was mixed emotions, but I knew Daniel and I was at the BAFTAs that year and he was toiling with it...'what to do....' and I said 'for God's sakes, go and do it...enjoy it...you're a great actor...bite the head right off it.' I haven't seen it, because I'm living down in Hawaii and I've been off the grid and kind of enjoying life. But I'm looking forward to seeing it."

Cinematical: The big horse scene, where you elude Liam's character, who's chasing you, by stuffing yourself into the carcass of a dead horse....wow. "I showed up on the set one day, and I thought -- 'What the fuck is that horse doing over there -- oh, of course, it's that horse.' Half of my salary was spent on that bloody thing. It was a great idea. It was a really good idea, and when you sit in the cinema, you go -- [Pierce gasps] -- it's the last place you expect to see him. He is kind of a field agent, in some respects. He thinks on his feet. He's a survivalist." A trained killer. "Yes, he's a trained killer, yes, but reluctantly so."

Non-Cinematical Question: Are you doing any writing? You've talked of trying your hand at that before. "Yeah, but nothing has really come of it. I haven't really put my mind to it. Laziness is a big factor in that. The lack of discipline - sitting there and actually having a great idea and then putting the bloody thing on the paper. Just sitting there day in, day out and doing it. I might do it at some point, but right now it's great just putting pictures together and having a say in your career."

Non-Cinematical Question: Is your process for a dramatic role like this one much different than for some of the action films you've done? "No, not necessarily, the process is still the same. You sit in your hotel room the night before, and during the day you use your imagination. 'What if?' 'Where am I?' The same questions are asked. 'Who am I?' 'What do I want?' You get a lot for nothing, really, because you have the landscape out there, so it's sort of 'no acting required.' I really loved the education that I found, the investigation of that period in time. This professor I talked to at UCLA turned me on to books, and I had all these books and literature around, and that seeps into you. And the narrative is so simple. You try to keep it uncluttered. You're being hunted. You don't know why. You're fearful. You're desperate. You have all of these emotions. It's the best kind of acting, if you can pull it off -- acting without words. When you're out in the cold and you're freezing and it's twenty below, you're just......cold."

Non-Cinematical Question: Did you ever wish you were doing Liam's part, or vice-versa? "I loved the part of Gideon. I loved his journey, his coming to faith, coming to acceptance, his forgiveness, his wrenching heart and soul that has been torn asunder -- two sons lost in one of the bloodiest battles of that war. The blood that's on his hands from the killing of Carver's family, which he lives with every day in the mountains, in solitude. I loved all of that imagery and the grand, operatic emotions."

Non-Cinematical Question: What's up next for you? "Butterfly On A Wheel and Married Life, it's called now. It was called Marriage, but I think it's called Married Life now -- yeah, the two of those." What about The Big Biazarro? "Oh, that's just one of those announcements in the trades, you know. That's a work in progress. We've got the book, we've optioned the book by Leonard Wise. It's been around a long time. It's a mentoring film, with the backdrop of poker. We're working on it. The Thomas Crown Affair -- we just got the script four days ago." Where will you shoot that? "We've looked at Istanbul and Dubai. New York is his lair, but it's a tough one."

Non-Cinematical Question: What was your working relationship with Liam like? "We sank many a good bottle of wine. The dynamic was kind of easy-breezy. You know what Liam is like. I just get by on the set, and I'm very happy if someone wants to lead the parade or whatever, so be it. Just get on with the work and keep it as simple as possible. When you're on location, it's like two hours to every location and you have to go into the wilderness and there's no motor home. There's no waiting around for someone to get their makeup on."

Liam Neeson

Cinematical: What was the rehearsal process like on this film? Did you and Pierce feel the need to rehearse a lot? "No, we didn't. Obviously fight sequences have to be choreographed, but there was very little in the way of props and stuff, you know what I mean? There were no telegraph poles -- the camera could turn 360 and you would still have a very good shot. But no, very little rehearsal." You have similar styles? "Yeah, we just kind of get on with it, you know. Our egos are very much in check. We're not trying to out-showman each other, or anything like that. Pierce is just the loveliest guy. He'd do anything to make you better." Giving actor? "Absolutely -- to a fault sometimes, I think."

Cinematical: How did you arrive at the accent for this role? It seems like a Southern accent to me. "I didn't really do a Southern accent in this -- I listened to lots of Georgian accents. It's funny, because people say 'Irish accent' and there's no such thing as an 'Irish accent.' There's 300 to 500 Irish accents. There's 3,000 American accents, who knows. So I sort of dipped in and did little bits and pieces. I tried to make it sound country -- American country -- rather than from a specific area."

Non-Cinematical Question: The film has a theme of forgiveness -- was that important to you? "You know, I saw this documentary about two years ago where these American Vietnam vets met their enemies -- their former enemies -- these old men. There was this look on their faces of maybe not forgiveness but a recognition that 'You're a father with a family. I'm a father with a family. We both survived and we were maybe manipulated by our governments and our politicians, but here we are looking into each other's eyes.' Something about it was just quite amazing and it sort of stayed with me. So, for the ending of our film, I just wanted to tap into that feeling. Of course I could never realize what that's like, because I'm not a veteran, but I could imagine the intensity of that feeling. As long as you don't see your enemy, you can shoot and you can kill and stuff, but when you're looking at this man, another man's face who is breathing and suffering....."

Non-Cinematical Question: What was it that initially attracted you to the part? "I had done quite a few cowboys in armor movies, but this was the real thing. I just liked the material -- there was something very sparse and bare and clean and pure about it. I know it sounds like a cliche, but I did think there was kind of an anti-war message there. I loved the idea -- not to spoil it for your readership -- but there is an act of forgiveness at the end of it that I found very uplifting and a bloody good message in these times where it seems to be all about revenge."

Non-Cinematical Question: Talk about playing a lot of different historical figures, and how you research that. "Certainly as an actor preparing for something, depending on the script, one can do research on, for example, Kinsey, or Michael Collins, or even Oskar Schindler. You can tap into a field of history where a lot has been written about them. Certainly the Holocaust for Schindler's List, of course, and to a certain extent with Kinsey. Certainly, the historical characters I've played, there's always something that motivates that individual to do something that no one else has done before. It's kind of like they are almost blessed. Some kind of finger has been put on them to do something that will elevate all of us in some way, in some capacity. It may not be in this generation, but somewhere down the line that piece of discovery or that action that individual did is going to have a domino effect that will affect all of us. Hopefully we will be elevated by it."

Non-Cinematical Question: Did you get into a lot of Civil War history in preparation? "Well, I've been asked to play Abraham Lincoln by Steven Spielberg two years ago, so I've been reading a lot about the Civil War and Lincoln over the past two years. So when David approached me to do this, it was like 'my research is done, you know....just give me the costume and I'll step into it.'"

Non-Cinematical Question: Are you a fan of westerns? Did that enter into your decision to do this? "I'm sure Pierce has told you this to, but we grew up with it. That was the entertainment in Ireland, certainly in my hometown -- Saturday afternoon matinees, as a kid. Audie Murphy was my total hero and a gentleman called Dale Robinson who was kind of a B-movie western guy and Randolph Scott to a certain extent. Then it elevated to seeing these John Ford films on Sunday afternoons and watching how John Ford created the western myth. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance -- that was the first western I thought that was a real moral dilemma. The whole issue of violence and what do you do if you take up a gun and shoot -- the repercussions of that. Shane is a classic example of that."

Non-Cinematical Question: You must have drawn some parallels between Northern Ireland and this story. "Here we are in a situation in the North of Ireland where the eyes of the world are looking at Northern Ireland again, because this peace process is really going to kick in. Protestant leadership and Catholic leadership -- the Republican leadership, I should say -- are actually going to share a leadership and that's extraordinary. I'm from there. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I was not part of the violence, but I was certainly surrounded by it. This is an amazing step these people have made, and it's about time too."

David Von Ancken

Cinematical: How did you dream up the scene where Pierce hides inside of a horse carcass? "You know, where do you dream up any of this stuff? I think I remember simultaneously thinking 'I don't want him to be too MacGyver, but all this stuff he does has to be very much rooted in necessity. The movie is violent, but Gideon is only violent when he's forced to it. Self-preservation kicks in. He always gives an out. When the kids come up to kill him, he says 'Go back to your kin, just leave me alone.' When he's going to kill the guy in the tree....one time when I was a kid I was looking down thinking 'If I dropped a knife it would stick into the ground or something,' in the woods of upstate New York, and that stayed in the back of my mind. But with the horse, you're out there -- look where we shot this, in a place called Zia Pueblo -- very untouched land. This tribe has a casino, they don't care about renting their land. It's beautiful, just stunning. What happens when you're out there? You're being chased, you can see the dust of your pursuers coming at you? Where do you hide?"

Cinematical: How long was the first cut, and will the extra footage appear on DVD? "About 25 minutes longer. It's gone -- maybe it will go on DVD, but I haven't been approached about that. There are some beautiful scenes, stunning scenes. They are really painful, but when you go through it, you're really draconian about how a chase movie should evolve. I was, very fortunately, editing this with Conrad Buff, who is a really wonderful guy to work with. When we sat and looked at each other in Santa Monica when we were cutting this thing, a certain scene shot at magic hour, with John Toll doing it absolutely perfect, it looks like early Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, it looks exactly like that, and that's what I wanted, but it didn't work so it had to go. Dancing around a fire at night -- there are about three or four scenes that are gone."

Non-Cinematical Question: What was the process of getting Liam involved in this project, and then Pierce? "It was bit more of a circuitous route to get Pierce, because of the concept of packaging from a certain agency. I knew I wanted Liam, and there was another actor who is also very, very talented who was offered to me and was a go for the picture and I said 'Okay, that one. May not be the perfect choice but it's a very good one,' and then when that guy went away because another movie would pay him more, we had the opportunity to go get Pierce. Liam, when I met him, said he had been waiting for this role for fifteen years, which I thought was a pretty easy sell over lunch. So we started with that. Then, once Pierce heard that Liam was in and had seen the script and knew that we had John Toll, then I met with him at his house in Kawai, and within ten minutes, we knew it was good."

Non-Cinematical Question: Talk about the research, in writing the script. "It was about six months of research and about three months of writing. You're really going back and finding primary accounts of what it was like being in the West. There are lots of primary journals you can find -- first-hand accounts. What I found was that people, first and foremost, didn't really talk much. When they did, they talked about the weather. They talked about religion and they talked about death, and the last two were pretty much equal to each other. And they talked about it very matter-of-factly. "John died today. He was hit by a horse. He was a husband." I had this desire to make a movie that felt authentic, and in Hollywood that's an oxymoron. Pierce gets shot in the first reel of the movie and he bleeds for the rest of the movie and it hurts for the rest of the movie. That was the idea. Liam gets a haymaker and he's disabled by that. There was an effort to get at least a bit of reality to how these people were."

Non-Cinematical Question: Was selling the movie the hardest part? "Well, you know, Hollywood doesn't want you to make a western. Oh my God, no. They want you to make a horror movie. Especially if it's a spec. When I told my agents I was writing a spec movie, they were like 'oh, great,' and then 'it's a western'....'you've got to be kidding'. I've read a western-horror movie. I've read a western that was gussied up as a teen romance. I read a western -- these are scripts that are out there -- where 'the African-American cowboy turns into an 8-foot monster and then kills everybody.' I was like, 'Oh, God....Why don't we just go back to High Plains Drifter? That's a western."