I think a lot of people misunderstand what I'm doing, because my films are not easy sometimes. They do deserve a second viewing. I think they get misunderstood easily.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.

It's very important to understand that World War II is at the base of this new policy. From the 1890s on, the U.S. was always imperialistic. We went after the Philippines, and we did the same in Cuba, in Hawaii. We controlled South America. Woodrow Wilson was not what he was supposed to be. He was very much a white man first. "The world must be made safe for democracy." It really accelerates after World War II.

Christianity did take a lot of Greek concepts.

[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it.

I can't tell you how many times at the breakfast table my dad would curse out Franklin Roosevelt. I love my father. He was an intelligent man, but he really didn't like regulations of the Roosevelt style, or the taxes. He was an Dwight Eisenhower man. And that's what Eisenhower did, committed to breaking down the program.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.