When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn.

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions.

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.

I'm trying to understand my life. The one that I've experienced.

A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line.

Football is mesmerizing, because it's a figurative war. You go in one direction till you get there, but you get there as a team, not as an individual. Players bond whether they're black or white, much as soldiers do.