When people do something extraordinarily well, it's self-evident. It could be art. It could be a circus, whatever it is, where people are doing incredible things. It's self-evident. You know that it's beautiful. You know that it's very difficult, but it looks easy.

I found a lot of stuff that's never been seen before. That was the goal: to not use cliché Cold War footage but give people a sense of the place and setting. It's a field you still need. At first it was a lot of fun, and then later it became a little bit intimidating. "Oh my God, I've got so much footage. Where am I going to put it? What am I going to do?" I ended up really only reviewing about 20 to 30 percent of what I had. So it was a task.

Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

I'm writing and putting together my next few things. Even during the Red Army process, I've been writing and developing things, so that now that I'm done and with efforts supporting it throughout this process, I'm armed and ready to go with some things that I'm really passionate about.

If you're a skilled player, you want to use your skill, not just hit the puck.

I'm American and I wanted my friend and people to see ' Red Army' . I didn't want it to be a film for Russia, although I did show it there and they absolutely loved it.

I guess the prime example is in North America there's a thing where if there's no opportunity to move forward with the puck, then a [hockey] player is told to dump the puck into the other zone. Just give up the puck and dump it in. Give it to the other team. And to the Soviet mentality in coaching, it just doesn't make any sense. If you're a skilled player, why are you going to give the puck away to the other team? Just give it away, right?