Far from being a mere consequence of winning, strong team spirit is an essential ingredient of sporting success; it comes before, not afterwards.
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward.
People first concern themselves with meeting their basic needs; only afterwards, do they pursue any higher needs.
My mother came to see me in a play when I was a student, and afterwards, I asked her what she thought. She said, 'Honest opinion? No.'
Not that I went into the Olympics with any doubt, but my holiday plans afterwards depended on how well I did - bronze, silver or gold.
When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.
It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for 'Scent of a Woman.' It was a new feeling. I'd never felt it. I don't see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.
There have been times when I've been broke, and a job came along, and I've said, 'Yeah! Let's do it!' But I will never do something without having a feeling of knowing how to play it. I've been in projects that I felt terrible about afterwards, but I've always had something that sparked me while I was doing it.
I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.
In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It's about being a man. And it's about love as well as hate.
