By creating false environment of a war on drugs, and cruel and unusual punishment with these crimes, 50% of our U.S. population is in jail without having hurt anybody, mostly for drugs.

I'm not an activist. I'm a filmmaker. I'm a dramatist. My strength is to tell a story, to find a way to tell a story that makes it exciting. Our Untold History was a huge challenge. Snowden was no piece of cake, because writing code and breaking code is some of the most boring stuff you've ever seen.

America is the strongest empire ever, with the largest military. We spend ten times what the Russians do. And they have equal nuclear ability as we do, because they're precise.

I gave up on America. I read the Times just to find out what they're thinking. I read blogs. I get most of my best information from people who are there, people who write independently. And there's actually very few of them.

One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that.

I may have disparaged the idea that people are looking at films on smaller and smaller screens... it's a shame that people have to watch DVDs with the lights on in a television-type situation where people are wandering in and out of the room. Movies are different from television, and you cannot watch movies like television. It distorts it.

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.