I knew that one day I would come to this point that I would make something so outrageous and so ambitious that... it'd be that Don Quixote feeling, that I'd have to tilt at a windmill. Sometimes you've got to do it. That's the only way you can do things.

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.

I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience, honest experience.

I like automatic weapons. I fought for my right to use them in Vietnam.

The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.

We are seeing entertainment become politics and we're seeing people acting out in ways that are extremely violent and destabilizing. No rules apply. We're in an era of no rules now, it seems.