I optioned the magazine article. That was end of 2003. It was a time when the war was incredibly popular here and everyone was driving around with flags on their car, if you remember not too long ago.
I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.
A creative person has to believe in the unseen and the untouched.
We’re trying to reinvent Bond. He’s 28 – no Q, no gadgets.
We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that’s the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.
I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.
Unless I’m really uneasy with what I’m writing, I lose interest very quickly.
I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it’s affected us and the world.
I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.
I just want to thank people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren’t cameras rolling. I want to dedicate this award to people who stand up for peace and against injustice and intolerance.
If there’s magic in boxing, it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.
What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We’re just shoving them under the carpet.
As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don’t know Clint Eastwood.
Right after we invaded Iraq, I put a sign on my lawn that said “War is not the answer.” That sign was either defaced, ripped up, or stolen every week. I had to replace that sign twelve times.
When we’re threatened, it’s very easy to appeal to our basic natures.
You hear this story that we’re all on the left, but when there’s a demonstration, you count how many actors actually come out. If there’s a half dozen, that would be a big day.
I wanted to do a political film that is as nonpartisan as can be, because I wanted to do a story that was American. I wanted to tell an American tragedy.
We think we know what’s right. With excessive pride comes blindness.
This is our fault. My fault as much as the next man’s, because even if I was against the war, I didn’t do enough to stop it.
If you change the right mind, then that person can perhaps change the world.