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you got to feel that that that flush of

of inspiration around an idea and

sometimes it's the

themes sometimes it's the freshness of

the of the presentation combined with

some traditional familiar themes

splashes example of basically a 30s

romantic comedy it makes all the boy

meet girl boy loses girl boy gets girl

back you know all the obstacles you know

they're they're there right out of the

screw ball comedies which I always

adored but you you know even there in

the 80s when we made Splash it was

already too tired to do it in a literal

way yet adding the the you know the the

fantasy element of her being a mermaid

it it made all of that okay so it sort

of the traditional idea the sort of the

sort of quaint idea was suddenly fresh

visual funnier and and more interesting

along the way I also came up with this

other theme that love is not

perfect and I I actually got um you know

John Candy character to say that line

and it became you know really important

to me that it was the idea that you you

know you're going to have that

initial um Rush of romance and

excitement and then you may discover

there's some complications there's some

problems there's some you know and and

yet what are you going to do with that

love is that going to be the thing that

chases you away or are you going to

accept it um and um so uh that became a

secondary theme that I became very

passionate about

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with Cinderella Man there were a number

of things that I liked about it it

wasn't really the boxing even though I

love sports um and my dad had memories

of of uh Cinderella Man James bradoock

and what he meant uh during the

Depression you know as a kind of a hero

but I was most interested in finding a

way to convey to Modern audiences what

the abject Poverty of the depression

meant on the population I thought it was

particularly interesting that this story

was about that kind of poverty poverty

that you now mostly see in urban areas

generally people of color and that here

was a story about you know um an Irish

you know Caucasian All-American family

that was going through that kind of

suffering winding up in a kind of a

ghetto and struggling to get out of it

so I I always wanted to do something

about the depression um an era that

shaped my parents life lives I'd always

been fascinated by it in high school I

made a documentary um about the

depression instead of doing a written

school project I got to make a movie and

got an A too you know that's why I was

involved in it and yet the real center

of it was this amazing true story of of

James bradoock and it carried a

narrative that you couldn't ignore but I

was always a little bit concerned that

it was sort of a familiar narrative you

know was it too familiar year well I did

my research I put together uh reals of

boxing scenes going back to uh Wallace

beer as the champ in like 1930 31 um of

course Raging Bull but also Jim Brock's

footage and um and uh you know and and

and everything that we could find and um

um began analyzing how we were going to

shoot it and so forth and then I came

across on the real a Popeye

cartoon the popey cartoon was about

boxing well I thought this was kind of

funny I always loved Popeye I watch it

it's our

storyline papey is down and out he wants

to challenge Brutus Brutus is the champ

Brutus claims he's going to kill

him olive oil is beside ourselves please

don't fight poey poey comes back

eats some spinach and lo and behold

carries the day I thought it's our whole

it's our whole plot when was this when

was this cartoon

made it was made like the same year

James bradock fought it was either about

Jim bradock or you know or that boxing

Arc was already a cliche they were

already making

satires uh out of this plot line uh so

that definitely threw me and it worried

me but it reminded me both to make the

boxing as visceral and intense as

possible it encouraged me to make each

fight be about Jim bradic his State of

Mind where he was in his quest to feed

his family and it made me work even

harder through the research to make sure

that the Depression era elements of the

story really did resonate with audiences

and we did Elevate Beyond being you know

a boxing story with a basic plot

line cocoon was a project um the first

time in my career where I came across a

a screenplay that had a green light they

wanted to make the movie they just

needed a director I inherited a

screenplay that I thought was very

promising as an idea but didn't deliver

fully on a humanistic level and uh um I

was very attracted to something my wife

had told me she my wife Cheryl has a

degree in Psychology she spent a lot of

time focusing on geriatrics and worked

in senior senior citizen homes and one

of the things that she said to me was

you know what you could say with this

script something I observed and that is

that we never really get out of high

school we never really lose those simple

Petty basic feelings I thought that as

they get younger that some of those some

of those problems might reemerge and

they might you might be able to to

relate to them even better as they go

through their their sort of Fountain of

Youth um moment and that became a

central theme that I thought was fresher

more entertaining more surprising and

could connect

audiences um with u you know with these

senior citizens in a in a in a more

revealing and Rel able

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way Apollo 13 was a true story that I

didn't know very much about and I had no

notion really of how

complicated um the the uh the the rescue

and survival story was and I became um

really challenged and inspired by the

truth of the story and the Cinematic

possibilities of really taking the

audience on an Apollo Mission really

letting the audience understand what it

was like to be there I love movies that

transport you in that way and um I took

a very journalistic approach to it uh

and and my my motto was just show it so

I wanted to take people on that

experience that was a a little bit less

thematic and a little bit more

cinematic um in terms of you know the

the elements that's excited me the most

as I went deeper and deeper into the

project I began to connect with the

emotional thematics uh on a much deeper

level and I think that identifying that

largely through the research um was is

is um is is probably what gave the movie

an extra dimension of um of of impact

and and maybe surprised audiences in in

ways I I know it surprised me as it as I

kept sort of discovering it in this

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story A Beautiful

Mind that

screenplay was well well down the road

was already excellent when I read it it

would existed at imagine it was a

project that Brian graser had had nursed

along and developed carefully uh along

with Karen hila and other people that

imagine and uh AA Goldman script was

already very strong I was inspired

by

both the emotional journey of the couple

even more than than John Nash I thought

it was a romantic story I thought that

it was a a story of love triumphing in

some ways and I also felt that it was

brilliant the way um AKA goldsman forced

the audience to believe in those

characters of the of the hallucinations

and then pull the rug out from under the

audience and therefore um not only not

only is it a great twist but it leaves

you understanding how real those

hallucinations can be for somebody uh

who is um you know live living with

schizophrenia and I I thought it was

just a powerful fresh and very

informative um um both

intellectually um and emotionally and

you know that's a that was a powerful

combination that just knocked me out

with the

screenplay Rush was a very

interesting Journey for me it was a spec

script written by Peter Morgan he had

written Frost Nixon I'd very much

enjoyed

directing that and collaborating with

Peter Morgan um and Peter told me this

story of these these two

Rivals and I was immediately taken by it

I had loved the Larry Bird Magic Johnson

documentary which was you know about

basketball Rivals I'm a Bas I'm an NBA

fan and I thought that was a u terrific

film directed by Ezra Edelman and and I

immedi

equated this um with that except it had

this visceral component of Formula 1

racing so I I felt like that um it it

revealed a lot

about

pride and the need to Define yourself as

a champion and and the willingness to

risk everything and the cost of that

Journey uh and um I I connected with it

on that level and it it was immediately

a movie that I wanted to see and the

screenplay was already very strong but

it just kept getting stronger the more

research we did and the more Peter

Morgan uh and I continued to to discuss

it and um and it was a real thrill that

was a tremendous challenge

logistically because um uh it was not a

studio movie uh and and and yet we had

to deliver on what I felt was a promise

of of um you know speed and Formula 1

racing uh which has been seen you know

and done very well in the past but I

needed to borrow from what I learned

doing the fires in

Backdraft and the boxing matches in

Cinderella Man and the interviews

between David Frost and Richard Nixon

where made a conscious decision to Let

each set piece reflect the characters in

a different way

psychologically allow the audience to

sort of feel it sense it through the

characters in a way that was um uh

viscerally a little bit a little bit

specific and with the races in rush I

wanted them to reflect the psyche of

either nikila or James Hunt depending on

which of of the two characters we were

focusing on because it was a a true

two-hander it wasn't about one character

or the other it was about a couple it

was about a rivalry and the way that

rivalry uh you know influenced their

lives for forever pushed them to you

know the heights that they realized