I've always been very hopeful which I guess isn't strange coming from me. I don't want to call myself an optimist. I want to say that I've always been full of hope. I've never lost that. I have a lot of hope for this country and for the entire world. . .

There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.

I guess my first digital movie was 'Tintin' because 'Tintin' has no film step. There is no intermediate film step. It's 100% digital animation, but as far as a live-action film, I'm still planning to shoot everything on film.

In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a director who's never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that you don't look at war as a geopolitical endeavor.

He talked about it having a central spine with these little offshoots, I guess you'd call them nerve-endings, coming off it, ... These little other strands that he kept reiterating, in which every scene had to push that central spine.

History opens up new worlds to film-makers all the time.