All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that's why it takes so long.

There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.

After a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, "Wow, everything's still here. I'm OK!" We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge, and when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you're falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.

I compose the frame literally with the camera. Unless it makes a story point.

All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that's why it takes so long.

Some movies I make for myself. I just sort of make them for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine I'm an audience.