The Stories From 1975 On Are Not

I Think We Continually Need To Understand How Important An Event The War Was - How Defining, How Central To Who We Are. Everything That Came Before It Led Up To It, And Everything Of Importance To This Country - At Least Up To 1940 - Was A Consequence Of It. Even Now There's An Echo Of The War, However Faint, In Almost Everyone's Life.

History Is Malleable. A New Cache Of Diaries Can Shed New Light, And Archeological Evidence Can Challenge Our Popular Assumptions.

World War Ii Is Smothered In Sentimentality And Nostalgia. What's Interesting About Vietnam Is That Sentimentality Is Just Not There, So You're Given Kind Of A Clean Access To It In One Way. It's Also A War That Represents A Failure For The United States. Many People Came Back Feeling Like They Never Wanted To Talk About It Again. And So We Developed A National Amnesia.

I Think My Expectations For Myself Are Much More Severe And Much More Direct. You Can't Work On A Film For Six Years Without Being Your Own Toughest Critic. So You Can't Really Be Distracted By The Expectations Based On Your Previous Performance.

I Have Made All My Films For My Children With The Exception Of My First Film Because My Oldest Daughter Wasn't Born When I Was Making The Film About The Brooklyn Bridge.