What was his take on the secrets Jon Ronson uncovered when he read the script?
He loved it. He thought it was funny, and he actually did a little of his own research and realized that the stuff was really true. He was great. First, he was incredibly helpful because I wanted all of the military stuff to be as real as possible. The other part was he knew that we weren’t setting out to make fun of the military—it wasn’t really about that—but it was interesting that they were involved in this research. It was kind of cool, he thought. He was an interesting guy to have around. At what point did you realize that this was the script you wanted to do next? When I first read it. I’d been looking for something to direct and I just loved it. It was exactly the kind of tone that I wanted to tackle—I thought it was really funny and it had some things to say. I thought there were great roles in it and it just seemed like it was right up my alley, at the time. Little did I know… The films you’ve worked on blend politics with comedy—how do you take complicated ideas with a lot
