In Matewan I try to give even the most negative of characters something else to play besides evil. At one point we learn that Hickey, one of the Baldwin agents sent to town to stir up trouble, is a war hero with a traumatic past in the trenches. This information is meant not as an excuse or a Freudian explanation for his actions but to give him some room to breathe, to remind us that the man's life is not contained by this one incident in it, as well as to establish him as a guy familiar with killing.

Similarly, Bass, James and Doolin, three of the Baldwins brought to town for the final confrontation, are introduced as a trio of working stiffs horsing around rather than as poker-faced grim reapers bent on murder. I didn't want the bad guys shot down at the end to be totally faceless, to be easily written off as human beings.