Richard Shepard Quotations

I didn't want him to be slick in this movie. Instead of designer looks, we wanted all of his clothes to be a half size too small. I wanted him to have a mustache. This character is an equal-opportunity letch, and Pierce just went with it. I think he appreciated focusing on the character, not how his hair looked.

Bullfighting ... is past its prime and is slowly dying out; and Pierce, as his character, is past his prime and is slowly dying out. It complements things that Pierce has done. What we haven't seen in Pierce before is the vulnerability because in every part he's ever played, he's always been in control. What's funny about Julian is he should be in total control, but he's a total mess.

I saw him as someone skinny with a potbelly. I wanted his clothes to be a little tight. I wanted him to have a moustache with gray hair in it and a crew cut. There were a lot of discussions about that, but at a certain point, Pierce turned the corner. Once he decided he was going to go for it, he went for it. He loved it. He walked around with his toenails painted all day.

Pierce just fully went for it. I said early on, 'If he doesn't give 110% percent this is not going to work. It's not one of those roles where you can charm your way through. Pierce is an incredibly accomplished actor, and he's very funny. I don't want to sound like some asshole blowing smoke, but the fact is that it's true, and the movie is much better for it.

Pierce just fully went for it, ... I said early on, 'If he doesn't give 110% percent this is not going to work. It's not one of those roles where you can charm your way through. Pierce is an incredibly accomplished actor, and he's very funny. I don't want to sound like some asshole blowing smoke, but the fact is that it's true, and the movie is much better for it.

If you have that group of people who are both nice and also creative, then you have surprises like a room with monkeys in them. That has taken a very good scene and just made it a great scene. I want my movies to be visually interesting and to have a lot of energy and be colorful and full of life.

For me, when I see movies where I kind of know who the characters are and what the situation is, I get bored. To me, it's, "How do I tell a story that will keep the audience engaged?" A great story does that: it's not exactly what you expect.

I'm not making a movie about the real people. I'm making a movie about what they did, and what happened to them. But I will create characters so that I can have the freedom to make them say and do what I want. The real-life journalists were fine with that.

Same thing for the bad guy. People were really after this guy Radovan Karadicz. But I came up with a combination of several people, who then became The Fox. That's who Simon Hunt and Duck are after. I did that so I could have freedom with what The Fox said and did, so that I didn't have to be stuck. Certain things I wanted to stay to the truth. Certain things I changed, and certain things are the facts.

It's great when you can bait and switch people - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in truth. If we were advertising this movie as a very serious indictment about the hunt for war criminals, and it's a very dark drama, it would probably get great reviews, but people would stay away from it because no one wants to be lectured.

I feel like you can have entertainment, and you can laugh, but during that period of time you can also think, and people should get upset. America is spending a lot of time and money pretending to be searching for people who we're not really searching for. That is enough to get someone angry.

I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going.

When you see what goes on in Iraq on a daily basis - more people dying in car bombings - you almost brush it aside after a while. To actually comprehend the human tragedy of these events is overwhelming. We see so many images, but there's always the sense, for Americans, that it's not in our backyard. That's another reason why the war in Bosnia was so fascinating; because it really was in Europe's backyard. It was in Europe. And they didn't do anything about it for years. It took the Americans to end that war, really. That's a shame.

As a writer, it's fun to free yourself enough to tap into some darker elements of your personality that sometimes I don't even know exist. It doesn't feel like work.

We're all so jaded. We've seen so many movies. We know what's going to happen in every single movie. I mean, there are some movies where I'm like why do I even need to keep watching? And so, if you can make a movie in which you're completely surprising the audience left and right, and left and right, then you've won. If a jaded film critic or reporter or an audience is like, "I didn't see that one coming," that to me is like a victory.

Every movie is a surprise. That's what is so fun about it. You can be planning a movie for years, and then you'd better be surprised every day, or it's going to be stale.

So I like switching it up. I like that people are laughing but they don't even know if they should be laughing. I think that's interesting. I think it makes for a fun movie. And you're far more likely to be able to actually get something into someone's head if they don't quite see it coming, as opposed to delivering a very serious examination.