I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.

Always write from your gut, no matter what the project is.

I wanted to do a political film that is as nonpartisan as can be, because I wanted to do a story that was American. I wanted to tell an American tragedy.

What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.

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.

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 found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis' story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard's parents were on the set and they'll tell you that the story is different than their son's. I was very concerned because I called them to say, 'You understand I'm fictionalizing this story?