I don't think writers should write about answers. I think writers should write about questions.

Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.

All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors - or at least a great majority of them - live in fear because we're all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don't want to piss off some studio chief who won't hire us for the next movie.

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.

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

There are very few guys like me. I make a lot of money. I didn't always.