MUNICH: THE INTERVIEW: His Prayer For Peace

IN THE SAME WAY, EVERYONE IN THE MOVIE IS HUMAN. YOU FEEL FOR THEM ALL. Right. I think the thing I'm very proud of is that [screenwriter] Tony Kushner and I and the actors did not demonize anyone in the film. We don't demonize our targets. They're individuals. They have families. Although what happened in Munich, I condemn. One of the reasons I wanted to tell this story is that every four years there's an Olympics somewhere in the world, and there has never been an adequate tribute paid to the Israeli athletes who were murdered in '72, and I wanted to tell this as a tribute to them. That was an important motivation for me, one of the earliest reasons I wanted to tell this story. I wanted this film to be in memory of them, because they seem to have been forgotten. The silence about them by the International Olympic Committee is getting louder for me every four years. There has to be an appropriate official acknowledgment of what happened.

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT EVEN THOUGH YOU SAY, "I DIDN'T MAKE THIS MOVIE TO MAKE MONEY," OBVIOUSLY YOU DO WANT AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE TO SEE THE MOVIE BECAUSE OF THE ISSUES THAT IT RAISES. The subject matter isn't the kind of subject matter that is going to outgross King Kong--not even on the last day of [Kong's] release. But one never knows in this business. I don't have a crystal ball, and I've never had one, even though I'm accused of having one secreted away somewhere. I don't. And I don't know. I'm lucky at this point in my career that I can make the movies I want to make without having a studio come in and second-guess me. I always say thank goodness for Jaws, because Jaws gave me final cut. I've had it now for 30 years, and because of that I only have myself to blame for anything that goes wrong.

PEOPLE ASK ME WHAT YOU'RE REALLY LIKE. THE SHORT ANSWER I ALWAYS GIVE--AND IT'S A TRUTHFUL ONE--IS THAT I DON'T KNOW ANYONE WHO'S BETTER AT KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH HIS INNER CHILD. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU MAKE AN AWFUL LOT OF MOVIES, LIKE MUNICH, THAT ARE FAR FROM CHILDLIKE. GUESS I'LL HAVE TO COME UP WITH A NEW ONE-LINER ABOUT YOU. I don't know if you can, Richard. Maybe the child in all of us dies just when we need him the most. I cannot tell you how many people come over to me on the street and repeat almost verbatim the line the Martians say to Woody Allen in Stardust Memories: "You know, we like your earlier, funnier films."

THEY COME UP TO YOU? They'll say, "Why can't you get back to making E.T. or Raiders?" This is not from young people but from older people, who I guess grew up with the movies I made when I was a kid and they were kids too. So I'm bewitched by Woody Allen in the sense that I keep hearing this scene from Stardust Memories played out in my real life. It's very bedeviling.

SO DOES THAT MEAN YOU'RE GOING TO PUT AWAY CHILDISH THINGS FROM HERE ON OUT? Well, you never can tell. I keep looking around for things, but then when I get the opportunity, say, to direct Harry Potter, I say no. When I get the opportunity to do something like Spider-Man, I say no. The films that are offered me that have childlike souls, I tend to say, "I've done that." I don't know if that just means I've grown up for good or whether something's going to come along that's going to make me say, "O.K., whatever I said to you is full of hot air, and the child lives in all of us until we die."