I'm a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it.

I was trying to find out what happened in my lifetime, because I was an older man. We lived through two terms of George Bush, and I was wondering, "Is he an exception to the rule, or he is a continuation? What is driving all these wars? What is driving this attitude of aggressiveness and militarism?" I got my answer - and it was a shocking answer. I found is this whole strain of history, this whole school has been denied by the media. It is a bizarre blindness, because we are such an intelligent country. It's bizarre that we can't get our own history straight.

There's an electrical thing about movies.

I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation.

I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans.

I think there is a whole older generation that will go to movies still. People like me; people over 45.

I didn't like my classmates at Yale. George W.Bush was in my class. I didn't know it then.