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.

As a writer, you have to be willing to kill your darlings, and I'm a writer first. As a director, I've got no problem cutting the scenes.

Even the scrutiny is good because it lets you know the world cares about your movie, and there is interest in it.

I'm one of those big believers that the movie comes together in the way it's supposed to be and that movies are fated to become what they become.

Stories of friendship are very interesting to me. Artificial families are something I like to explore. Whether it's a bunch of guys or a bunch of ladies, there's something interesting about that.

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.

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.