The characters have an archetypal outer appearance—Joe is the stranger in town, Sid the representative of brooding violence, Few Clothes the John Henry of coal, Turley the company man—but they also have to work on a merely human level, to seem to have a life outside of the story, other fish to fry. One thing I've tried to do in all the movies I've written for myself to direct is have the world populated by more than one or two people, to present a community. The norm in star-vehicle screenwriting is to have a couple of leads and the rest of the characters there only to provide background and plot advancement. "A love story set against the turbulent backdrop of the Hundred Years War" and so on. I'm more interested in how individual or political acts affect communities of people—parents, friends, children, co workers. To pull this off, to have all these characters seem three-dimensional, they need not only more screen time than is usually provided but also more depth of character.