A biography for Peter Landesmanhasn’t been written yet.
“I'm Jewish, not Catholic, but I'm a spiritual person.”
“Serious collectors and art experts, among the world's most educated, often cannot fathom the possibility of being rooked, and then once taken, cannot face the humiliation of admitting it.”
“What interested me was the story of Bennet Omalu. You hear his narrative: Immigrant from Nigeria, landing in Pittsburgh, only to learn and tell the truth about this most American - and sacrosanct - cultural institution: the NFL.”
“A museum's meticulous presentation - exhaustive captions, hushed lighting, state-of-the-art armature - creates an institutional authority that is constructed to seem impregnable.”
“People go to the movies to have an emotional experience, not to learn information they could look up on Wikipedia.”
“My personal sources in the intelligence community and the military are very good. They're excellent. I have very high-up, in-depth sources.”
“I start each of my scripts by going on a journey of painstaking research and discovery, much as I do a piece of long-lead journalism.”
“My politics are very centrist and sometimes, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, lean to the right.”
“I love football. I played it into two years of college.”
“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.”
“Life is itself an occupational hazard. Sometimes the things we love hurt us. Embracing and navigating around that contradiction is part of what it is to be alive.”
“Most editors are just worried about their jobs. They're overwhelmed. They're underpaid. They do the best they can.”
“'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.”
“As a filmmaker, it's not my intent to trigger or shape national discourse. My task is to make as powerful and understandable a film as I can. What happens next is what happens next.”
“Life only has narrative when we frame it and edit it and call it certain things.”
“Refugees tend to avoid planes, airports and fake passports, even though flying may appear to be the most obvious way to flee. For one thing, security procedures at airports are far stricter than at land borders.”
“What I learned is that there are indeed some stories that are too true to tell, too revealing for the general population to metabolize. And too challenging to your reporter colleagues, whose turf or toes you might have tread upon.”
“I've been writing screenplays for a long time, and a lot of it came out of the journalism I was doing.”
“I am an old journalist, so I always do a lot of research and dive deep into people's character, who they are, and their motivation.”
“When it came to 'Concussion,' I found myself with so many threads to weave. So integral to the whistle-blower's tale were spirituality, the cost of hero-worshipping, what it means to be an American, and just how dangerous the truth can be.”