In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.

World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia.

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.