What first caught my eye about Rihanna was an interview she did with Diane Sawyer after the Chris Brown incident, where she was very articulate, very poised, obviously a smart girl who talked about a very traumatic experience.

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

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

I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience.

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

I tend to not have to handle things that are probably gonna end up being irrelevant, that aren't gonna have much to do with the film. I have probably a better understanding of really what does matter, when to pick my battles and when to kind of let them go.

I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you, I think.