I'm pretty upfront about my love and admiration for the military. One of the perks of making movies is that you get to sort of follow your own passions, and I believe quite passionately that we don't pay enough attention and respect to our veterans. Not just our wounded veterans, but all veterans.

I somewhere along the way became fascinated with exploring characters who are willing to put themselves into violent situations, whether it's football, hockey, boxing, being a cop, being a soldier. There's not a lot of people who are willing to put themselves into those situations.

I've been a big believer in musicians turned actor, going back to Sinatra winning the Oscar for 'From Here To Eternity.' David Bowie in 'Man Who Fell to Earth,' Kris Kristofferson's been great in a bunch of films. Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, Mariah Carey, I thought was great in 'Precious.

I don't like alien films where you don't get to see the aliens.

Michael Mann's always been one of my heroes.

I believe that anything in this world is fair game for a creative exercise.

One of the challenges assembling the film was that gun fight went on for three and a half hours and we obviously couldn't spend three and a half hours of the film with one gun fight. It was trying to figure out the balance of how much an audience could take before they either became repulsed or desensitized or bored or just overwhelmed.