I can't remember faces, don't remember names, but after awhile and a thousand miles it all becomes the same.
If you're a skilled player, you want to use your skill, not just hit the puck.
One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative.
Sports is like literature. People watch it and if it's beautiful and it's non-violent, whatever messages that you see, people can read into it and say, "Wow! You know what? Whatever they're doing over there, it's extraordinary, and maybe that culture is superior to ours in certain ways. "
A lot of what I know as a filmmaker is because of hockey. That's teamwork, and being able to collaborate with people, and be creative with them, and get the most out of everybody. Everyone's got different talents, and you've got to bring out the best of everybody, and use your strengths and work together, and try and evolve it rather than do what was done before you, and to push into new areas.
I speak a little bit of Russian.
Anatoli Tarasov, the guy that created the Soviet style of play, was a visionary. He was a creative thinker. He studied ballet and chess and art and read a lot.
No writer or thinker has taught me as much as James Hunter has about this all-important and complex subject of how culture is changed.
The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.
I think there is this thing where people are impressed - it gives you a leg up in the sense that people won't treat you like a run-of-the-mill actress. They'll assign "smart" to your word bank, your adjective bank.
Yet the widespread planetary theories, advanced by Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain equalizing circles, which made the planet appear to move at all times with uniform velocity neither on its deferent sphere nor about its own epicycle's center.