The U.S. ultimately decides what the national security threat is. They put Russia one, Iran two, China three - the terrorists are down the list. But it's amazing to me that we can still consider Russia a threat. On the contrary, they've been very helpful in the Middle East, trying to calm the situation and respect the rights of sovereign countries to exist. It's the U.S. that hasn't - whether in Serbia, the old Yugoslavia, in Africa, and now, Iraq.
A lot of the good cameraman who we used are doing television work; they're doing commercials for a lot of money. And the commercials look incredible. But what's it about? I made three major commercial campaigns. I enjoyed it, I experimented with it, and at the end of the day I felt no satisfaction. It was like having a fast food lunch.
Сyber-warfare is obviously the future. It's a real concern, but we lie so much about what we do that it's hard to know what's going on unless you really follow it.
The Greek playwrights, we're all beholden to them, every one of us.
People should really horde their Blu-rays like old comic books and baseball cards. Because they're really beautiful, and will be worth something if you like movies as I do.
Horses are very difficult to shoot.
What I've experienced, I'm trying to put in a narrative form, I suppose, to say that it does make sense in this way.
I look at Homer and The Odyssey and all the disparate adventures this guy goes through, and then he returns home and the question is, is he the same man who left?
There is a narrative to every life, and I believe in the classic mode of storytelling that goes back to Homer and carries through to today.
My home in Hollywood is not a home. I do a film here, a film there, as they want it. I don't have a relationship. Like, Warner Bros. has a great relationship with Clint Eastwood and takes care of him.
I think any filmmaker will tell you when they wandered from theater to theater to watch their prints, it was disheartening to see the poor levels of light and the disrespect for films that existed in certain theater chains. It was always inconsistent.
A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line.
Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.
Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice.
The only home I had was with Warner Bros. during the '90s. I made four movies with them then. Natural Born Killers, JFK, Heaven and Earth. Any Given Sunday was the last. And that was the end of the Terry Semel/Bob Daly regime.
When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that.
Every movie requires its own style. Just be honest to the story. Tell the story in the best possible way that is different, exciting and original.
For some reason, television still bores me. Even the best shows.
Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way.
I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time.
Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I've tried to get the overall in. I think that's more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes.
It was a tough experience with Alan Horn, who didn't like anything that was R-rated. So you can imagine he hated some of my films.
I believe in intermissions. I lived through this experience with JFK and Nixon. JFK should have had an intermission. It should have come right after the Donald Sutherland scene, because then there's just too much information flooding in. You need a break. Same on Nixon. It was a long film, but I couldn't help it, with that kind of subject.
I definitely love history. I'm not formally trained or educated in history, but you could say I did go back to college in 2008 to do Untold History of the United States. That took five years. Co-author Peter Kuznick has been teaching history for something like 35 years, at American University and other places. His group of researchers brought me into contact with a lot of books.
I want my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now. You read the paper, everyone talks about that thing [in the news] that day, and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglected. The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.
