History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

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.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

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.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.