Edward Zwick

Growing up, movies were something my family and, later, my friends and I would stay up all night talking about. The movies I remember moved me and forced you to think about things that made you know yourself better. ”

The military has been actually remarkable at dealing with race, but gender is an issue. ”

There is no reason why challenging themes and engaging stories have to be mutually exclusive - in fact, each can fuel the other. As a filmmaker, I want to entertain people first and foremost. If out of that comes a greater awareness and understanding of a time or a circumstance, then the hope is that change can happen. ”

The issue of assault in the military is something that they've gone to great lengths to try to deal with - and have not entirely dealt with yet. ”

I met a lot of women in the military with Meg Ryan, and they were remarkably impressive: Competent and strong and not versions of men, but versions of women. And they had stories to tell about how difficult it had been for them. ”

My job is to tell the truth about what's happening as best I can. ”

My very first job was working on a TV show that was a prestigious TV show and well done - was called 'Family.' ”

I've always believed that the stories and the performances are more important than I am. I think that the more invisible that my hand is, the more attention people can pay to the story and to those performances. ”

As we began to read more and more journals of men who had been in the Civil War and then been in the Indian Wars, we realized there was a whole universe of men whose souls had been shattered, whose lives had been utterly destroyed by what they had to do. ”

When I first thought about the military - and this goes all the way back to 'Glory' - I learned really quickly that it isn't a monolith. It is really an institution made up of some people with very different personalities and people of different backgrounds. ”