In a film, you have to externalize things that are internal and of course it becomes a debate about to what extent you do that.

Everyone is doing their job within a system. Even the revolutionaries are in a system.

Famously, the CIA is somewhere where marriages hardly ever last because it's obviously such a strange lifestyle.

You can't really write until the characters kind of show up one day and tell you what they're going to say. You start to hear the rhythm of the way the people talk, and then it becomes easier.

The 'Bourne' movies are great in their own ways; it introduces a whole other sort of allegory about the Bush years. The secrecy and the threats of a big global organization.

I need eclectic people in my life.

In Tehran, the 444 days of the Iran Hostage Crisis was the first world event in which you could literally have live events beamed into your living room. Now, every world event plays out on its own, and as a media event.