You can move beyond the ego's perspective and see reality from the perspective of a higher consciousness.
People joke about me that I talk in voiceovers. I have that sort of inflection. But I do talk in voiceovers. I have done it my whole life.
You don't want to be slavishly doing the same thing over and over again that everybody else has done, but at the same time, you're conscious of, "This is important. I owe something to my ten year old self right now. I need to respect that. " I need for that kid who is obsessively reading comic books, I need there to be something rewarding for him where he's like, I didn't waste my time. I know what this is.
I have always been drawn to characters, and this was true for my feature-writing career as well, where there is a tension between rule-breaking and rule-following.
I came to accept in myself a long time ago that I really do like writing articulate sociopaths.
I really like transgressive characters that have an alternate world view. I've actually written a fair number of kids movies, and I'll insert these kid-friendly articulate sociopaths who are usually yelling at the children for their own benefit.
I'm a rule follower. But there is also a part of me, clearly, that doesn't follow them.
Democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a free society. History has told many stories of democratic societies that have degenerated into corruption, plunder, and tyranny.
My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.
Let us start with the title of War and Cinema. The important part of the title is not War and Cinema.
In this case [the Charlemagne Prize], I don't say (I was) forced, but convinced by the holy and theological headstrongness of Cardinal [Walter] Kasper, because he was chosen, elected by Aachen to convince me. And I said yes, but in the Vatican. And I said I offer it for Europe, as a co-decoration for Europe, a prize so that Europe may do what I desired at Strasburg; that it may no longer be "grandmother Europe" but "mother Europe. "