Matthew Modine Learned from Brilliant Directors

One truth from working with all these brilliant men probably that’s easier to tell the truth,
much easier to tell the truth than to complicate our lives with lies. It’s dangerous and I
think that what I learned from Robert Oatman is that my truth is quite different than yours
and so that doesn’t necessarily make it the truth. It just makes it my truth and what I
learned from Oliver Stone is this the ability to when you’re listening. If you watched
Oliver Stone when he’s talking particular when he’s listening he’s always spinning it like
a Rubik’s cube that he’s looking.

So he’s listening to your truth and then he’s trying to, if you’re talking about somebody
he’s imagining himself being that person that’s listening and then trying to hear that
person’s perspective of what you’re saying. I think that’s a really smart thing to do is to
try to understand the other person’s point of view. So if you were talking about Fidel
Castro he may put himself in the shoes of Fidel Castro being this man who lives on this
island and go back in history and try to remember, try to understand why the revolution
began, what were the Cuban’s fighting for, what was the form of government that they
felt needed to be overturned. Why did they think that a communistic society would better
than a democratic society?

So he’s not just listening passively. He’s listening actively and trying to understand that
point of view in that perspective because it’s valid. As long as you're not punching and
killing somebody, what is that person’s perspective? I don’t know where Oliver Stone
learned that. Maybe when he was in Vietnam and fighting the Vietnamese that he really
sat down and tried to understand the position of the North Vietnamese and why we were
sent here, why are we sent to this country to kill other human beings?

Why don’t we send it to the jewel of Southeast Asia to destroy ancient culture, to destroy
such a beautiful people? What are we doing here? Why I was sent to kill these people?
These are really important questions to ask. Just because our government says that this is
where we should send the army and go off and kill somebody, why? We have to question
the leaders. That’s going back again to that living in a free and democratic society. The
army and the marines tell you not to ask questions, don’t ask questions. You’re on a need
to know basis but I think there comes a time when you have to question things, question
our military leaders within their intention.