Ed Zwick Quotations

I think it's a movie about us, ... I think it's a movie about this country and it's a movie about the Constitution. I think there is a very comfortable and familiar myth in this country and not necessarily a false one, but an important one about a set of freedoms that we have in this country. I think the fact is this country has never really been tested.

What the movie is most deeply about -- it's about our own latent possibilities of repression, stereotyping and prejudice, ... To see Americans rounded up in the streets, to see Americans put into stadiums, to see people held without habeas corpus -- to have their rights violated in such a way is such a chilling and just terrifying thing to see -- that is what one takes away, I believe, from this film.

Well, I think to see American troops in an American city is, you know, the sum of all of our fears,

I have the feeling that the baby boom generation will continue to be interested in talking about itself.

It's a hypothetical; it's a cautionary tale, ... I would say there is a pretty venerable tradition of movies and literature that presumed to say, 'Here is something that exists in the world,' and by extension or by exaggeration, let's imagine, let's push it to the next step.

We received a letter from a group called CAIR, which is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, I believe, ... And they asked to meet with us. And we met with them.

Some of (the concerns) we were able to deal with -- having to do with sensitivities in the portrayal of Islam in the movie, ... But some of which asked us to change the premise of the film, which we were unwilling to do.

That would be an interesting movie, it's just not this movie, ... You can't come into a process that's 10 weeks into filming with only a couple of weeks left and presume to try to change its focus. By the way, I would think that is a kind of chilling effect, or more, of my own rights as an artist.

We went to extraordinary lengths to be thoughtful.

There's a less anxious approach to the work itself, ... and I think that actually affects the work.