I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.

We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.

When I started to allow the characters to go where they wanted to go, I just had to follow.

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough.

We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.

I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.

I optioned the magazine article. That was end of 2003. It was a time when the war was incredibly popular here and everyone was driving around with flags on their car, if you remember not too long ago.