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.

I think musicians oftentimes have the right skill set to be good actors. And with Rihanna, I noticed her and knew of her obviously, and was very taken with her charisma and her confidence.

What kind of town do we want in the future, and how are we going to plan on that?

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.

Be really picky with your hiring, and hire the absolute best people you possibly can. People are the most important component of almost every business, and attracting the best talent possible is going to make a huge difference.

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.

I like films that are about two hours not more.