Classically, throughout all of our history, the movies in times of crisis have turned to military figures as heroes, because they are the guardians of our nation.
— Rod Lurie
Rehearsing is more about blocking in the case of movies, I think, and blocking, of course, is very important to the beauty of a scene.
I've been a huge fan of Steven Bochco's for over two decades.
It's not such a bad thing to bring some naive optimism to Washington.
People tend to forget about nuclear weapons. We think they are going to remain in silos for the rest of time. As long as they exist, they are going to be used.
It's very exciting to continue to work at DreamWorks.
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.
The common denominator of the great women leaders in the world - Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - is that they're dramatically nonsexual.
There's a difference between 'political films' and 'films about Iraq.'
'Commander in Chief' became a show not about why we should have a woman president but why we should not have a woman president.
I often found that my favorite scene that I shoot is often one that I cut out, like in 'The Last Castle' and 'The Contender.' If you look at the deleted scenes, some of the best scenes never made it into the film.
I think people were a little premature in writing off violent movies. They're going to continue being made, and audiences will continue going to see them.
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.
As for Kate Bosworth, I've always admired her. I watched her in a movie called 'Girl in the Park,' which has never been released - not even on DVD. I had a copy, and it was bravura acting I had not seen from her.
I loved going to the movies, especially when I was a teenager in the seventies. How couldn't you in what was perhaps the greatest era of auteur cinema?
No matter how far they rise, women never stop being the caregiver. At the end of the day, women bear the emotional responsibility for their families.
I don't know a nicer guy in the world than Alan Alda.
The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason - our most cherished right. But it often creates muddy and uncomfortable situations, ones that are the source of great drama and national self-reflection.
'Monsters of God' isn't just a series close to my heart; it is my heart, and I am very much looking forward to working with my fantastic team in New Mexico to create a top-notch series.
Just because the boogeyman of the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't mean the world is living angelically.
I promise that if there was no Hillary Clinton, there would still be a 'Commander in Chief' - I want to have a hit show that people enjoy, and really, that's it.
I grew up during Watergate. I was enamored of the study of that.
If you look at the greatest performances of women, they're usually older... Anne Bancroft in 'The Graduate,' Kathy Bates in 'Misery.' It's a matter of characters having a life experience that makes them interesting.
Unfortunately, in this country, when we have the opportunity to be bigots in private, we take it every time.
My mom is an exceptionally wise and kind person.
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.
I'm sure when 'Midnight Cowboy' came out, it took a couple of minutes to get used to the voice and the look of Dustin Hoffman, or to even recognize that it was Dustin Hoffman.
When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'
The truth is that we're not remaking Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs,' we're making 'Straw Dogs.' We're taking this story, and we're putting our own spin on it. The mere fact that I have James Marsden in it is an indication that it's a very different film than the one that had Dustin Hoffman in it.
I can be accused of being acerbic as a critic and writer.
Every weekend from, like, 1974 to 1978, I'd trudge over to the Greenwich library, which gathered up almost every major newspaper in the country. I would sit there all day long and read and read and read the reviews. I remember being twelve or thirteen and writing to Judith Crist, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert.
When I was a kid, my heroes were not baseball players nor movie stars. My knights in shining armor were film critics.
I can't stand to see myself on TV.
Marc Frydman and I are overwhelmed by the confidence Touchstone Television has shown in us, and we're thrilled to continue trying to knock 'em out of the park.
We need to get young people involved in the running of this country.
The way that one feels about the story line of 'Deterrence' can tell us, I believe, about each person's conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.
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.
Take a look at Mila Kunis. When you see her performance in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' you see a beauty there, and also a sadness.
I grew up in the home of a political cartoonist, so I was a junkie for politics.
There seems to be an interest in connecting the history of the past to the present and asking whether things have really changed. Films like 'The Contender' and 'Bulworth' seem quaint compared with Trump!
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.
Anything about Iraq is a death sentence at the box office... You can't make movies about an unpopular war while the war is still going on - people don't want to pay to get depressed, though they sometimes will go to movies to get educated.
I met Joan Allen at an L.A. Film Critics Awards' dinner, and I said, 'I want to write a movie for you.'
I look at 'Straw Dogs' as a very imperfect movie. It's a little bit slow, and its themes are a little bit murky.
I think that most of the young officers I know are leftists and liberals and Democrats. And the reason is this: All of our soldiers, the men that work for us directly, are minorities - blacks or Latinos. And we empathize with them. Our job is to advise them and help them.
I think that 'Straw Dogs' as a story is eminently re-makable. It can be modernized and Americanized without a problem and without giving up any artistic integrity.
I still viewed myself as a reviewer when I was on radio. Was it appropriate for me? I think the answer is it's only inappropriate if I allowed it to affect my film reviewing. I don't think you will find any studio that said, 'Yeah, he went easy on us because he was shopping a script.'
I came to the conviction that film criticism, in and of itself, was an art.
