When I make a movie, it's almost a relief to get shooting 'cause the hell is over, or part of the hell is over.

The movie on the screen is always going to be different from the movie in your head. How it makes you feel is what I'm after, what I'm chasing, and what I'm trying to construct.

You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different and critics say we [directors] make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different and you get kicked in the gut for it.

In the writing phase, normally I try not to envisage any particular actors because I like to let the characters sort of reveal themselves in that process.

You don't want to get too far ahead of the audience and you don't want the audience to be ahead of you. So, that balance is difficult and it takes a lot of work and tuning in the edit, to get the right balance.

I'm a veteran, and I come from a family of veterans and people who served in that war. And the stories that I heard were a hell of a lot different than the movies that I was seeing, so I wanted to make a movie about the people that were really there.

I'm not a film-school guy. I was a high-school dropout. I was on a nuclear submarine. I was an electrician. I was a house painter. So if you get in my face, I'm going to fight you.