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

It's been said that the American spirit used to be about defiance, but now we've become about acceptance and conformity. Is this movie hoping to stir up the question of how and why we took this turn?
I hope so, I really do. I just hope people from my neck of the woods — I was born outside of Detroit, spent a great chunk of my life in the Midwest, just recently we moved to Virginia — I hope people in those parts of the country just give it a shot. Just go and make your own decision. If, afterward, you can't stand it — wonderful. And I'm not saying that because I want their business or anything like that — I don't care how you see it, sneak into the theater — I just want people to make their own decision about this one, because at the end of the day that's exactly what I had set out to try. And I don't know if I did it, I truly don't know if I did it. But at least that's what I was trying to do, and if that can reinvigorate somebody to start questioning things, my God, there are few things that would be better in my estimation. But that [idea is] great, that's putting it better than I ever could. We were wildcats. We were mavericks, one and all, and that's how we founded the country. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I hope we can get some semblance of that back, because this thing is just going to perpetuate itself over and over and over again until some slim majority of us do start to think along those lines again.

Stepping out of the political arena, what is the status of White Jazz right now?
White Jazz is, well, [George] Clooney's out, which was a complete shock and strange, I'll leave it at that. Very, very strange.

And is it true you lost your other lead, Chris Pine, to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot?
I don't know. I think the Star Trek film was always there, I think Joe brought him in to see if the George Stemmons character was something that could rival [the offer to play Captain Kirk], but I don't know.

Is Jazz still going to happen?
Yeah, it still has money behind it, it still has casting decisions made, and my brother is meeting with people who shall remain nameless as of yet — but I can say that there is great interest in that character, in the Dave Klein character, from some other actors. I hope it comes to fruition because Ellroy is really kind of a seminal writer in my way of thinking, and I hope my adaptation of his book can see the light of day. I love that guy — I read American Tabloid long before I started writing, and it just blew me away. I remember finishing that book and being just excited for no real reason I could point to at the time. Just this whole new place that I had found, this new language, this new lexicon that could be brutal and short and violent, and it blew the doors off anything I had read before it. So if I could get one of his books onscreen that would be… I truly could retire a happy man.