Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep in Lions for Lambs Courtesy of United Artists

You were frustrated with the fact that 9/11 failed to galvanize people, but do you see any softening in the "red state/blue state" battle lines that have formed since?
Republicans are by and large — from my experience, anyway, because I'm from a pretty conservative family — are just so frustrated and fed up with the incompetence of what's going on, specifically in Iraq. It's almost like pushing someone to soften, if that makes sense. It doesn't seem a particularly willful thing; it's just almost realism now. This "My god, something has to be done. I don't care if it's a party line vote, I just want somebody to come in and at least get the debate going about what comes next." So I think that is softening. I don't think it's bringing people together per se, though. I think there's a vast gulf between those two things. Kind of the most contemptible, spiteful political development — at least of my lifetime — is that people now seem to be Republicans and Democrats first, and Americans second. And I think you see that on both sides of the aisle, and I think it's the most self-destructive development that could occur. So, yeah, I don't see us in any short period of time galvanizing and coming together and figuring out what the hell comes next. Is even one more American life worth this? I think John Kerry had that great line, and he took it from Vietnam, but something like "My god, to be the last soldier killed in Iraq." We need to think about that, we need to think about those questions, and that hasn't happened. It happened early on, and it happened when we realized that all the marketing about Iraq was off — I don't know if it was a lie or just gross incompetence, and, frankly, I don't know which one's worse. When we realized that it was all off, there was this spark of debate, but I think the current administration was so savvy about calling any debate defeatism and anti-patriotic, and they really played that card well, that I think people got disgusted by it and lost their taste for it and starting thinking, Let's just hunker down, and this will pass, and we can get back to some semblance of normality sooner or later.

Do you think these scripts have gotten some of this out of your system now?
I do. I feel like I'm absolutely willing to run this gauntlet a thousand times over, but I feel like people are so political right now in a pejorative way, in a divisive way, that when the trailer came out, nobody had really seen a frame of film per se outside of what we put in the trailer, and you had Republicans, by and large, coming out and savaging it because of who was in it and what they thought the message was. That part, I feel like it hasn't had an effect on my desire to talk about any of these things and to continue to kind of delve into it, but I think in terms of movies that I have in me, I've gotten that bit out of me and at least kind of put it out there and let the debate [happen], if there is even a debate to be had. If anything that I've written can add to that or spark that, I feel that I've done about the best I can.

Even apart from a political context, do you find it frustrating when people see Tom Cruise and bring up all the baggage that comes with his name?
I heard — so it might not be completely accurate — but I heard there was a half-assed review [of Lions for Lambs] on Slate.com, and they were referring to him as "the couch jumper." I don't know how you try to pretend some kind of impartial review of somebody's work when you're referring, in the absolute most pejorative way, to a cast member that has nothing to do with this movie. Again, it's to be expected. There's a lot of that going on. There are a lot of people who can't stand Redford, because heaven forbid Robert Redford has strong opinions about things and doesn't hesitate to voice them. I always thought that that was kind of the American way. You voice your opinion. You put it out there for debate. I see a paucity of people trying to debate him on those facts, and you see a lot more people going after him because he's Robert Redford and a star, and he's in Hollywood, and therefore his opinions should matter less… absolutely that's going on. And I think another bit that might be going on, and a guy who's been in this business and has been very successful — and I won't bring his name into it — was in Germany when we screened it in Germany and saw it and came up to me afterward and said, "Congratulations, now get ready for people to come after you." And I said, "I know, I know, conservatives, Republicans, they're already doing it." And he said, "No, that's to be expected. I think some people in the media are going to come after you as well." Because, from his perspective, he thought if there was a villain in the movie, it was Streep's character, it was journalism dropping the ball at this critical time, not giving people all this critical information, and before we knew it, we had 150 of our own in the middle of Iraq in the middle of a shooting war, opening a second front. So there are several things kind of going on — one of which are the personalities of the people in the movie, and the other is what people think is a very biased movie, which I swear to you, I don't think it is. Cruise's character, the Republican senator, I think, has some of the best arguments in the entire movie. And some people, and we'll see if this bears out, maybe some people in the media [will take] this personally and come after us for that. We'll see. I'm ready for it all, and secretly I kind of love it all, because if it does anything to stir things up and get people thinking in a different way tomorrow after they see the movie, then maybe that's job well done.