AA: When Cristi (Cristian) Nemescu showed me the script, I just thought it was a great funny metaphor of the state of the world right now. With all that technology, and all that we have militarily, it is finally all about the force of character, which drives the destiny of the world. The whole movie is about respect and trust.
Basically, that s what it is to me: on an unconscious level, who do you find to trust? ET: You character is indeed very strong. How much of it comes from the personality and how much of it is derived from Jones being an American?
AA: My father was in the marine corps, he taught me about the war. I always thought, that we have had a lot of great military, the people, who understood the ramifications of what a presence, even a peace presence is. And more often than not our military forewarned our administration about what they are getting themselves into, and about the consequences of those missions.
And I just feel, that they are the ones that end up not only politically manipulated, but also those who take the responsibility for what has happened. Jones is a perfect example of what is happening in the military; he is not going to allow Doiaru s petty corruption to intercept the greater good. In that sense he is pure.
I feel very strongly about the role of Captain Jones. Originally, the role of Captain Jones was more a role of a buffoon, and I hope it got communicated that he is a man with really strong moral basis. If you watch the movie, why everything goes awry, it is because he respects Doiaru.
It is always the character that is driving the destiny of the world. AA: Cristi Nemescu loved Romania, and he understood Romania as a young person, and he looked at Romania in its historical, political, and sociological context. What is Romania today and where is it going?
What I think is important and what separates one talent from another: Cristi had the talent to see how a character s trait is related to society. And if the society is going to be politically dominated by a communist dictator, the ramifications of that are in the people. The ramifications of the Soviet Union were in that people lost initiative, because they were told what to do, and what they were promised, never happened.
And this lack of initiative is what Cristi is talking about. He is poking fun at his own people, but he is poking fun and also saying that it came to be like that because of the tragic circumstances. Romanian characters were created by circumstances.
All our characters are created by circumstances. When a director has the ability to poke fun at his own society, this is a sign of a very healthy society. In a sense, if you look at the history of film: post-war Italy—they took apart their society in the neo-realism era.
They showed it for what it was, and it s a sign of a very healthy society. In America we are still willing to poke fun at ourselves every night on television, it s a sign of a progressive society, and I think, that s where Cristi is at. You can t move on if you are not willing to poke fun at your past.
AA: To me the most important thing is that the audience will see in this film a metaphor of the global society, and that s what I think it is—a timely story about the present state of the world on a number of levels. Again, the force of our character is, what s driving the destiny of the world, not the force of our technology, nor our brilliant ability to communicate—none of it means anything without the force of our character. AA: The moral quandary of the American position is accurately represented.
It is a moral quandary, because let s face it—what created America?—The rest of the world. And America is the rest of the world, it is just struggling to find what that world identity is, but the point is that the rest of the world wants to be America, and America could not have happened without the rest of the world.
America is a dream. In fact, we are so protected that we almost live in a bubble. How do we protect and preserve the ideal of this society, which is unfortunately extremely consumerist, materialist.
How do we justify occupying two-thirds of the resources of the rest of the world? Because, in fact, the rest of the world wants to be America, drive the same vehicles that we drive. So how do we do it in the way that the world is still alive?
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