And so again, it underperformed critically and in terms of audience reaction, to the hopes for the film which again, the planning for the film went back further than the beginning of the new conflict in the Middle East. And yet, the decision kept going to keep developing it. And was that ultimately a wise decision on... In another universe, an executive would have said, 'You know, it's risky to make this film about that war when we're fighting a hot war in exactly the same place. And this is not a hot war, this film.' But that particular button was never pushed, so the film got made. And again, it's a wonderful film that examines the psychology of what it is like as a Marine in that environment, and the frustrations of that, and the few triumphs of that, and what you do to compensate for that. So I am, you know... Everyone who worked on the film is very proud of the film, I certainly am. But again, it just shows you the difficulty of predicting many years in advance, because films have to be planned many years in advance. What is the world situation going to be like when this film comes out, and is that going to be a receptive environment? Of course, it could well work the other way. Something that seems unlikely, some project, you make the film and suddenly it explodes and becomes extremely popular.

I remember thinking, with American Graffiti—this was many years earlier—'It's too bad that George [Lucas] is making this now, because the peak of interest in old rock and roll has come and gone', by my perception, which is arguably very flawed. But I was aware of, in the early '70s, a number of collections of early rock and roll that were made and became very popular, and then enthusiasm for that seemed to diminish. So it seemed to me, if that film, if American Graffiti had been made a few years earlier, made it... maybe it would've been a big hit. In fact, it was a much bigger hit when it was released.

So George was intuitively correct or very lucky that what was just an initial wave was only the pre-wave of another huge wave, where people were really interested in those songs from that era, and the evocation of a world before the assassination of President Kennedy, and the kind of optimism that came along in America in 1962 as opposed to later.