Working with composers often is a really frustrating experience because you speak a different language and, oftentimes, they take two or three jobs, at the same time. They're difficult and pretentious and they're tormented artists.

Hollywood is not stupid, contrary to popular belief; it's really a lot of intelligent people trying to figure things out.

I was in New York 9/11. Mark's [Wahlberg] from Boston, flew there immediately after. I was in Nice Bastille Day when the truck drove through and killed all these people. It's the new reality, unfortunately. The idea of trying to explore how we process this kind of event, how we survive emotionally, what we tell our kids: That was the movie [Patriots Day] we wanted to make.

I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

To get audiences to go see a film is a completely separate issue.

It's always funny to me how your movie becomes no longer yours and people interpret it how they want and react how they want to react to it, and it's fun to kind of watch that happen.

I did not want 'Battleship' to be perceived as an American war film. I wanted to do everything I could to make the film accessible to a global audience. It felt like bringing an alien component to the film would help take the American jingoism out of it.