Quotes from Edward Zwick

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

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

If you don't know each other you spend time doing research together, having dinner, and talking about your lives. You try to find common ground. Once you're shooting, the pressures are so intense; you really want to have a channel of communication open to you already.

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.

Doctors are kind of this shibboleth in our society. We know what they do, and we depend on them, but we don't know a lot about what it feels like from their side.

I'm very promiscuous in my tastes.

People make the assumption that you're only interested in one thing based on the most recent thing you've done. But some directors can be pretty promiscuous about their tastes, and that's how I want to challenge myself.

I know that when I'm writing, I always want to be directing.

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.

Ironically, it's easier to raise the money to make the film than it is to have the film find wide distribution.

I look at modern life and I see people not taking responsibility for their lives. The temptation to blame, to find external causes to one's own issues is something that is particularly modern. I know that personally I find that sense of responsibility interesting.

I think it's easier to be cynical. I think the temptation, often, among writers is to write about anything other than real, true, deep feelings.

Forgive me, but what is the purpose of drama but catharsis?

I'm always interested in the ways in which a character can inhabit either a theme or a premise personally, so that those scenes that are about his character or his relationship with other characters feel in context and don't seem to be apart from or oddly vestigial to the actual drama.

Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile.

You can spend an extraordinary amount of time raising independent money to do a movie for very little means. I've done it with 'Pawn Sacrifice.'

A sex scene is gratuitous when it only exists for its own sake.

I do watch 'It's a Wonderful Life' with my children at Christmas, and I liked it long before it went into the public domain and became a cliche.

If you take away scale, the nature of the story changes. I made a joke the other day: if I were to try to make 'Glory' now, rather than be about a regiment, it would be about a platoon. It would be seven men in the woods rather than all the men on the beach.

I think most Americans probably believe that our relationship with Japan began in 1941. In fact, obviously, it began in 1854 when Commodore Perry sailed into Yokohama harbor and threatened to burn it down unless they would open up to trade with us. The imperial impulse was first ours historically.

I think there is a very powerful wish that we all have of being self-contained and having sort of opted out or choosing to remove ourselves from society and to have no ties and no obligations, and even no possessions. To be free in a particular way.

Sometimes when an actor and director work together for the first time, it's not as if there's a suspicion, but there is tentativeness, a certain amount of a right of passage you have to go through in order to get there. When it's already there from the beginning, it's such a plus.

I like to do everything I can to avoid rehearsals, even while we're rehearsing.

Yes, illness is serious, but the indignities are also funny. And that defines my world view.