Director William Wyler had spent most of his film career trying to gain creative control of his pictures but kept falling short of his goal in his dealings with Paramount and other studios. In 1956, he attempted to remedy that situation by entering into a joint venture with his good friend, Gregory Peck, to create an epic western called The Big Country (1958). In Wyler’s words, the film was “about a man’s refusal to act according to accepted standards of behavior. Customs of the Old West were sort of debunked.”