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.

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.

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.

The worst pressure is the pressure I put on myself.

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.

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.

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.