Peter Berg Quotes

I believe that anything in this world is fair game for a creative exercise.

You know to me, being a good actor, the most important quality is you've got to love to play, and to just be open to anything.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.

There's a picture of the real Coach Gary Gaines in the book and he's sitting in the locker room after a game, and he just looks so much like Billy Bob, that we went to him.

You might make a lot of money, but it's very hard to get out from under that rug. The more you can reinvent yourself, the better - and unfortunately TV is designed not to let you redesign yourself.

I somewhere along the way became fascinated with exploring characters who are willing to put themselves into violent situations, whether it's football, hockey, boxing, being a cop, being a soldier. There's not a lot of people who are willing to put themselves into those situations.

Be really picky with your hiring, and hire the absolute best people you possibly can. People are the most important component of almost every business, and attracting the best talent possible is going to make a huge difference.

It's always funny to me how your movie becomes no longer yours and people interpret it how they want and react how they want to react to it, and it's fun to kind of watch that happen.

I did not want 'Battleship' to be perceived as an American war film. I wanted to do everything I could to make the film accessible to a global audience. It felt like bringing an alien component to the film would help take the American jingoism out of it.

What first caught my eye about Rihanna was an interview she did with Diane Sawyer after the Chris Brown incident, where she was very articulate, very poised, obviously a smart girl who talked about a very traumatic experience.

Working with composers often is a really frustrating experience because you speak a different language and, oftentimes, they take two or three jobs, at the same time. They're difficult and pretentious and they're tormented artists.

Truth is, we offered it to Tom Hanks, which pretty much every movie in America does, but Tom passed. Billy Bob said that Hanks recently called and said he's voting for all of us for Oscars, he loved the film.

There's no hidden agenda, no political agenda [in Patriots Day]. The only politics we were really talking about was the politics of community, the politics of social love.

I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience.

The way you set up for a sequel is by having a successful film. The focus is on making a successful film, and making a film that travels around the world, and that people enjoy and have fun with, and that people are able to escape with.

The big fun in Battleship is that there are no current battleships in the Navy today. The battleships are about 1,000 feet long and they have huge guns. They were what you saw in WWII. The last battleship that was used was the Missouri, which is what the Japanese surrendered to...

It's always an interesting sort of adventures that gets someone into a movie.

What kind of town do we want in the future, and how are we going to plan on that?

People know I love to shoot action and that I'm not afraid of emotion.

I've been a big believer in musicians turned actor, going back to Sinatra winning the Oscar for 'From Here To Eternity.' David Bowie in 'Man Who Fell to Earth,' Kris Kristofferson's been great in a bunch of films. Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, Mariah Carey, I thought was great in 'Precious.

Michael Mann's always been one of my heroes.

I don't like alien films where you don't get to see the aliens.

I wanted to do a naval film and I flirted with different ideas, most of which ended up being too intense. So when the idea of 'Battleship' was first suggested, I was instantly drawn to the challenge - could I invent a movie around the idea of five ships fighting five ships?

I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

The first movie I literally ever made in my life was about two guys playing Stratego with each other. I had all my friends dressing up like the military characters in the game. So 'Battleship' is really my second board game turned movie!

One of the things that's fascinating about making movies is a movie when it's done and you start showing it to people, it reveals its impact, which is often times not what you thought.

I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in 'Friday Night Lights' and 'The Kingdom.' I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.

To get audiences to go see a film is a completely separate issue.

You're in the middle of making a movie and this part of the process is always very interesting. Because you think what you're making your movie is and then you start putting it out there, and then people tell you what your movie is.

I've spent enough time with soldiers to know that once they get to know you and they loosen up and become themselves, they are some of the biggest hams and most charismatic, cocky, fun, humorous guys I've ever met.

Hollywood is not stupid, contrary to popular belief; it's really a lot of intelligent people trying to figure things out.

I'm much more collaborative than I probably was when I was first starting, much more willing to say, "I don't know the answer to that." I have really talented people and let them do their jobs and not try to control everything as much as I did when I was starting. I was a bit more insecure.

We're both [with Mark Wahlberg] capable of being sarcastic, vicious, violent lunatics, but we hold each other in check, appeal to the best aspects of each other.

I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you, I think.

You look for inspiration, I do, that got me going.

I tend to not have to handle things that are probably gonna end up being irrelevant, that aren't gonna have much to do with the film. I have probably a better understanding of really what does matter, when to pick my battles and when to kind of let them go.

I have a tradition of working with actors, over and over again. I've worked with Jason Bateman, over and over again. You get to know an actor, and you get a certain trust and a comfort, and you become really good friends, and you feel like you've got a short-hand.

I think I've been fortunate enough to have a fairly long career and hopefully I'm at the middle of it now. And I think I'm starting to develop a certain amount of experience and a certain amount of wisdom about kind of what really matters and what doesn't matter.

Every movie has its own unique series of challenges.

I'm pretty upfront about my love and admiration for the military. One of the perks of making movies is that you get to sort of follow your own passions, and I believe quite passionately that we don't pay enough attention and respect to our veterans. Not just our wounded veterans, but all veterans.

I try to preload as little as I can. I like to come to the set with minimal preparation.

One of the challenges assembling the film was that gun fight went on for three and a half hours and we obviously couldn't spend three and a half hours of the film with one gun fight. It was trying to figure out the balance of how much an audience could take before they either became repulsed or desensitized or bored or just overwhelmed.

I think musicians oftentimes have the right skill set to be good actors. And with Rihanna, I noticed her and knew of her obviously, and was very taken with her charisma and her confidence.

I like films that are about two hours not more.

I was in New York 9/11. Mark's [Wahlberg] from Boston, flew there immediately after. I was in Nice Bastille Day when the truck drove through and killed all these people. It's the new reality, unfortunately. The idea of trying to explore how we process this kind of event, how we survive emotionally, what we tell our kids: That was the movie [Patriots Day] we wanted to make.