John Wayne was just a very conservative guy, who had not served in World War II, and he was defensive about that - he almost overcompensated his anti-Communism because of that reason.

It's hard to believe that these self-centered people have nuclear weapons that they can fire at any moment. Even modern wars are fought like revenge tales from some petty grievance. It was definitely tapping into the Dr. Strangelove vibe, which is one of my three top favorite films or all time.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson ] technique in negotiation would be that he'd lean into you and take away your personal space, it didn't matter your party affiliation when he was trying to convince you of something.

Sometimes perfecting the one thing can be the enemy of getting any traction on anything else.

The first thing we noticed was how flamboyant [Dalton] Trumbo was in real life.

People have an actual bias against there being some kind of popularity for political films, and when they get acknowledged, it helps keep the conversation going.

On the other track I got to talk with Jon Poll, my editor, and we go into more detail about the decisions we made in both the production and the post-production. So I hope the combination becomes something worth collecting.