PARK CITY, Utah -- Nick Cave likes to joke he wrote a movie just so he could score it.

The Australian rock musician, probably best recognized for the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, penned The Proposition, a violent, evocative western set in the days of empire-building by the British in the unforgiving Australian outback.

The project had been gestating for 18 years with its director, Cave's friend, John Hillcoat.

"John always talked about this Australian western he was going to do and I was going to do the music," Cave says.

"For one reason or another, it wasn't really getting done. John had commissioned a script that was really an American western, just dropped into Australia. The writer didn't know anything about Australia or the Australian psyche."

When Cave told Hillcoat how he felt about the script, the director responded, "Well, why don't you write it then?"

The result, says actor Danny Huston, was "old-fashioned and lyrical in a quirky, twisted Nick Cave kind of way."

Huston recalls when he first received the script, "I saw Nick Cave on the title page and ignored it. I just thought it was a Nick Cave, not the Nick Cave and I didn't think about it any further."

When he found out it was indeed Cave who'd written it, "I couldn't believe it. But it makes sense. His songs tell stories and that's what we are -- storytellers."

Explains Cave, "It's my idea of what a thriller should be like. It's a classic story that could be played in India or Africa or America or the Bahamas. It's a revenge story and I think that's why this film really works. But it's full of detail also about Australia."

Once the movie had a script and financial backing, Hillcoat and his cast and crew shot in some of the country's harshest terrain. On-screen, the actors are bathed in sweat, fake blood and clouds of flies.

What did Cave, who was not on set, take from the experience?

"That the redback spiders and snakes there are not nearly as bad as the financiers."

It was another western, The Assassination of Jesse James, that brought Cave to Calgary last year. He filmed a cameo in the movie, which stars Brad Pitt as the legendary outlaw. Cave is fairly tightlipped on the subject -- understandably not wanting to spend time fielding questions about one movie when he's here to promote the one he wrote -- although he does at one point turn to Hillcoat to explain the city.

"Coming into it, as far as you can see there are large, newly-made homes in kind of the old style. You can see how developers have designed the whole thing -- it's extraordinary, actually. I really liked it ... I always like going to Canada. We usually tour the States and always go into Canada for a few dates. It's a breath of fresh air."