I Wake The Dead. I Bring Jackie

When You Are Editing, The Final Master Is Aristotle And His Poetics. You Might Have A Terrific Episode, But If People Are Falling Out Because There Are Just Too Many Elements In It, You Have To Begin To Get Rid Of Things.

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 Have Come To The Realization That History Is Not A Fixed Thing, A Collection Of Precise Dates, Facts And Events (even Cogent Commencement Quotes) That Add Up To A Quantifiable, Certain, Confidently Known, Truth. It Is A Mysterious And Malleable Thing.

I'm A Filmmaker. I'm An Artist. I've Chosen To Work In History The Way Someone Might Choose To Work In Still Lifes Or Landscapes.

The Reason Why You Do History, And Particularly Why You Do War, Is That You Want To Make Sure That In The Next War, Some Lessons Were Learned. There's A Saying: "history Doesn't Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "what Has Been Will Be Again. What Has Been Done Will Be Done Again." Human Nature Always Superimposes Itself - Its Strength And Its Frailty Over The Rush Of Chaos Of Ongoing Events - And We Can Perceive Patterns And Themes And Motifs.