Nine months after we submitted the original screenplay for 'The Attack,' the studio that was involved pulled out. I've been told that 'you don't write in a French way; you can't make these multicultural films.'

I graduated from UC San Diego, wanted to work in film to get my hands-on real experience, did music videos, TV, feature films, all kinds of stuff.

I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctuating between those identities.

I lived through many battles - the 1973, I was young; in 1982 with the Israeli invasions, and 2006 between Hezbollah and Israel. Before I emigrated to the States in '83, I had my own very black and white views of the Israelis and the Jews in general. But you start to understand that no matter what you think, there are two perspectives.

War implies a lack of comprehension of mutual national interests; it means the undermining and even the end of culture.

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.

Putting good foods into kids' bodies puts me at peace and makes me really happy.

People that spend time in a foxhole - they're never going to find that relationship anywhere else again... Everything else pales next to that. When you think about the Second World War vets - more than even the Vietnam vets - there's a brotherhood.