Sometimes, in a fictional story, you can be more honest and truthful, actually. As a journalist, you’re a prisoner of the data, in effect. You have to tell the story with evidence you can verify. – Peter Landesman
Modern art, in particular, seems especially vulnerable to fraud. Its abstractions are sometimes difficult to understand or grasp, and a modern painting is often loved less because of its intrinsic quality – its beauty, as conventionally understood – than because of the identity of the painter, its mark of social status. – Peter Landesman
I was a war correspondent and journalist for a long time, and I was very near the towers on 9/11 and very shortly after in Afghanistan. – Peter Landesman
As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I’m trying to tell compelling and truthful stories. – Peter Landesman
The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it’s just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey. – Peter Landesman
I had a very strong background in journalism, so it’s my instinct to try to be as fair and accurate as possible. – Peter Landesman
The itinerary of most antiquities from their source – tomb, temple, quarry – to the shelves of museums or private collectors is murky and often purposely concealed. – Peter Landesman
Our brains have this habit of quilting dreams from the fabrics of our lives. As a filmmaker, I get to do it for a living. – Peter Landesman
I was a painter before I was a writer, so I was always a visual artist. And my writing, to me, was always visual. – Peter Landesman
People go to the movies to have an emotional experience, not to learn information they could look up on Wikipedia. – Peter Landesman
‘Writing’ is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away. – Peter Landesman
I was doing an investigative article on arms trafficking that was taking me through Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And after I had interviewed a helicopter pilot who had been ferrying weapons into Liberia, I realized as I left the restaurant that I was being followed and set up for an ambush. – Peter Landesman
I love the game. I love to watch. I watch it with my kids. I’m able to divorce the beauty of the athletics from the corporate entity that is the National Football League. – Peter Landesman
Most editors are just worried about their jobs. They’re overwhelmed. They’re underpaid. They do the best they can. – Peter Landesman
I always spend a good deal of time with the people I write about. I try and smell the normalcy of their lives. I try to look at the normal rhythm of their life. – Peter Landesman
I played football the whole time I was growing up, and through two years of college. I think it’s a beautiful game in many respects, one that allows you to follow a player from boyhood through manhood. – Peter Landesman
When you’re researching something for a movie, you get a very different kind of reaction than when you’re researching something for an article for ‘The New York Times.’ – Peter Landesman
I love writing in compressed time periods because the act of survival in the midst of panic and fear, that’s where true heroism comes. If you have a uniform, and you’re expected to do things, it’s a sort of incremental heroism. – Peter Landesman
I’ve been writing screenplays for a long time, and a lot of it came out of the journalism I was doing. – Peter Landesman