There was no other concern; there was no other focus [in the Governor's School]. It was simply there to learn and grow and perform, and that was pretty amazing and informative. I'd say that was a big pivotal moment for me.
I went away to this summer program after my junior year of high school. They used to have this thing called the Governor's School, and they had it for different disciplines - science, math, performing arts. I auditioned and I got accepted, and it was an eight-week program away from home. I went for acting. I was 15, and I turned 16 while I was there, so that was a seminal moment for me. It made me realize the life of it, the discipline of it, and the joy of that discipline, where it was all we did.
It was actually pretty cool to be in Pittsburgh for those four years. I moved into the dorms and had a pretty normal college experience, even though it was in my hometown. I really thrived there. I feel like it really suited me and served me well in terms of how I grew up there.
I didn't get a chance to meet Glen [Beck] for this movie. I did meet him a few years ago, coincidentally, before any of this happened. But I've been familiar with his work, so I felt I wanted to get it right. I wanted to honor him. I respect him and I think the way he does his job is admirable. Yeah, there was an added incentive. I wouldn't call it pressure, but incentive perhaps.
It's funny that you [Zachary Quinto] did a monologue from Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead. I did the same thing for my university when I went to USC.
People always ask me what I think, if Edward Snoden is a hero, if he's a villain. I don't really tend to moralize it so much as I feel like he's a whistleblower. He's someone who saw a wrongdoing and in order to shine a light on that wrongdoing had to bend some rules and break some laws along the way.
It certainly woke me up to how vulnerable we all are. I think I was much more cavalier about it before I started working on the movie [Edward Snowden], and then the more I read the documents themselves and saw just how sweeping and indiscriminate the intrusions into our privacy have been, it made me more aware.
I met Glenn [ Greenwald] briefly in 2009. We were both guests on Real Time With Bill Maher. I was the show's guest and he was on the panel. But this was before the Snowden stuff happened. I didn't have the opportunity to meet him in preparation for the movie, unfortunately, for various reasons. But I was able to dive into the main articles he's written, and interviews with him, and just the function that the character serves in the movie, that was enough for me.
J.C. [Chandor] was the kind of energy we were looking for, so we decided to get behind it with all of our effort. That was the beginning of our relationship with first-time feature directors, and that's when it became really important to us, watching them thrive and grow in a creative environment in which you can do that was really key. Also his work checked all the boxes, because it was socially relevant and intellectually driven, and creatively exciting.
It just so happened that J.C.[Chandor] was a first-time feature director, and his script was exactly the kind of thing we were looking for.
We [with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa] were constantly looking for features and looking for ways to get involved with people who were making stuff.
We [with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa] wanted to draw people in with a dialogue - whether it's a creative process or a social issue or innovation of some kind; whether it was how we told the stories or what stories we told. We produced some online videos.
I like dreams. I think there's a lot of information in them. I spent a lot of time on Jungian analysis and dreams are an elemental part of that process. Carl Jung believed very much in the power archetypes in dreams, what dream imagery means, and how you can tie it into deeper self examination. It's a big part of the therapeutic process.
I actually met one of my business partners [Neal Dodson] at the Governor's School summer program, so we've known each other since we were 15 and 16 years old, and we both ended up at Carnegie Mellon together. He started working for a producer out of school after a few years, and then we started the company together.