The freer a society becomes, the freer its arts can flourish and be exported.

Hollywood is enamored of the 20- to 30-year-old actress, but by the very nature of the life experience of the character, the roles cannot be that rich. You can only have Angelina Jolie in a mental hospital so many times.

We make movies to endorse our own personal feelings. I am not, in fact, a documentary filmmaker. I've got my personal beliefs, and I'm ready to put them out on the table.

I think our nation cannot stomach the notion of a woman in sexual terms whatsoever: that we are so puritanical that we cannot dismiss the notion of sex from our minds when it comes to women.

The truth is that when a man has a child, and it's a girl, and he doesn't change as a man, he's not much of a man.

'Commander in Chief' became a show not about why we should have a woman president but why we should not have a woman president.

In my mind, I'm no longer daunted by the idea of a remake. In fact, I now look at it as a genre unto itself - so long as you make it your own.

The United States military is probably the most socialistic institution in the United States.

Most people with whom I talk, often quite educated, think the military is made up of knife-between-the-teeth grunts, uneducated robots without any kind of free will whatsoever - people who goose step to Republican philosophy and particularly the Bush cowboy mentality.

I believe Sam Peckinpah is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and I hold him in high regard.

Every filmmaker wants to get their audience talking.

I really like iconoclastic casting. I really do.

There are a lot of westerns that deal with people standing up for their principles, and that is the predominant theme that has been in my films.

'All the President's Men' is a movie that has a very personal place for me because it made me want to be a journalist, and then it made me want to be a filmmaker.

The point of remaking 'Straw Dogs' is not to replicate the philosophies of Sam Peckinpah at all. What made that film singular was the attitude that he brought to the characters. Oddly enough, that's the one thing that I really wanted to change.

I don't think I'm equipped enough to be giving anyone a civics lesson or any kind of message.

I suppose when any movie dealing with politics is released, there is a knee-jerk assumption that it is propelled by a liberal agenda. That may be true most of the time, but not with 'Nothing but the Truth.'

I can't stand to see myself on TV.

I fell in love with 'Ben Hur' when I was 8 years old, and I just knew I had to be involved in movies, even if I was the guy who melted the butter on the popcorn.

He may not have been a good actor, and I personally don't think he was a good president, but I'll tell you this: Ronald Reagan was a helluva character.

I remember watching movies like 'Fatal Attraction' and watching the audience go bananas at the end of the film.

I grew up with an infestation of politics. I'm just nuts about it. It's our form of gladiators in the arena, only they are not in quite as good a shape.

I think that maybe human beings are conditioned to violence.

There's a difference between 'political films' and 'films about Iraq.'