I have great respect for the FBI, and I know that there have been some rumors lately that the FBI was disenchanted because of what we were doing in story, or doing a certain take: that's not true. Actually the FBI was tremendously enthusiastic about us doing [ J. Edgar Hoover ] film.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Everybody wants to make something they think is a surefire winner, though nobody knows what a surefire winner is, in my opinion.

If you're doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don't know what was going on in the person's mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

You can't stop everything from happening. But we've gotten to a point where we're certainly trying. If a car doesn't have four hundred air bags in it, then it's no good.