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.

Well, as far as film, either you're making a film or you're making videos. Digital capture is always trying to emulate the range and look of film. I believe personally that film has more.

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.

It's important for me to take very famous, well-known people and not have them play themselves and not have them be seen as themselves.

I'm all about real drama, real performance, and real people, so my twist on this is: I'm creating a family, a brotherhood here. I'm creating a very real chemistry and I have this incredible ensemble of actors led by Will Smith, who are basically playing dimensional characters with lives and souls.

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.

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.