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People tend not to dwell on drama.
Edward Zwick -
I had known a couple of people in college who went off the rails, who had significant bouts with mental illness.
Edward Zwick
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There is nothing that is so serious that you can't also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.
Edward Zwick -
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.
Edward Zwick -
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.
Edward Zwick -
Those of my generation who grew up in the midst of the Cold War had a very, very strong awareness and very much were sort of influenced by the demonization of the Soviet Union, whether that was through the Cuban Missile Crisis or duck-and-cover, or any of those things that so affected us then.
Edward Zwick -
When you're in a fight, and you get hit, it hurts. And as you get older, you begin to take on the aches and the bruises of doing that.
Edward Zwick -
I watched aspirationally. I looked at movies that maybe I didn't entirely understand but which developed in me some thirst for their subjects or for their context, and that became part of how I came to understand the world.
Edward Zwick
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The funny thing is, when you look at photos of Tuvia Bielski, he was fair, blue-eyed, and could pass for a Gentile.
Edward Zwick -
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.
Edward Zwick -
My very first job was working on a TV show that was a prestigious TV show and well done - was called 'Family.'
Edward Zwick -
Every day and every scene, it's never the scene that you expect.
Edward Zwick -
One resists categorization at one's peril.
Edward Zwick -
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.
Edward Zwick
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In my experience, the men of World War II, the vets of Vietnam, even guys coming back from Iraq, are loath to talk about their experiences. And the survivors of the Holocaust, particularly, are often very close-mouthed about their stories, even to their own children.
Edward Zwick -
I don't think movies can ever be too intense, but people have to understand why you're showing them the things you are showing them.
Edward Zwick -
I think every culture - you can call it an American Ronin, a medieval knight errant, you could talk about 'Shane.' There is an archetype that I think is actually common to a lot of cultures, and even the Clint Eastwood stuff was probably as influenced by the Japanese stuff, and yet done by an Italian.
Edward Zwick -
I, for one, suffer from a little bit of superhero fatigue.
Edward Zwick -
I like to reveal people with some of the niceties of social behavior stripped away and the moral, ethical, and political issues are revealed.
Edward Zwick -
You can't help but reveal your bias, and you can't but invest personally in any story that you tell.
Edward Zwick
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I've done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in 'Blood Diamond,' the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film - so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.
Edward Zwick -
Samurai culture did exist really, for hundreds of years and the notion of people trying to create some sort of a moral code, the idea that there existed certain behaviors that could be celebrated and that could be operative in a life.
Edward Zwick -
People who have any kind of illness use humor as a type of coping.
Edward Zwick -
Like everyone, I was a kid who played chess when I was young. And I am admittedly old enough to have been around during the fervor of the match in Reykjavik and the rise of Bobby Fischer, so those two things conspired to pique my interest.
Edward Zwick