Your last film, “Trial by Fire,” was 2018. Do you ever think, “Was that the last one I’ll ever direct?”
I think I felt that every time that I finished a movie and took a couple of years to get [another] movie going. I was sick 17 years ago [Editor’s note: Zwick was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma] and was then quite fine, so everything since then has seemed to be remarkable and gravy. I’ve been very active. There are [projects] that seem to have great prospect of happening, but I also know that if I were to look at all the things that didn’t happen compared to those that did, they’re probably an equal number of each, and that’s a good batting average. If I were a baseball player, that would put me in the Hall of Fame.
To extend the baseball analogy, is it hard to consider you’ll never step back into the batter’s box? I understand that the uncertainty is always there for a filmmaker, but as you get older, is that feeling different?
Am I still going to be able to climb a 14,000-foot peak as I was able to do when I was in my teens? No, part of age does have to do with acceptance. I’m not saying I’m good at it — I’m not saying that I look forward to it — but I’d be an idiot not to understand that that’s part of a process that I’m in the middle of.
But think of it this way: I’ve just written a book at 70 years old, which was an entire big swing into the unknown. I’d never written a book, I didn’t have an agent, I didn’t know the process. I had no notion of what that might mean. And it has been exciting. The creative experience was exciting. Conversations like these are exciting.
I’m getting these letters and very interesting responses [to the book] — that’s not what it is to make a movie. You make a movie in a bubble, and it goes out there and you sit there in an audience once or twice, and then it’s in the past. Already, I can tell that this book is going to have a longer tail, and it’s being read one at a time. Readers are different than moviegoers, I’m discovering. Moviegoers these days are like, “Well, have you seen it?” “Yeah.” “Was it good?” “I don’t know.” But already what I’ve seen is I’ve engendered some very fulsome and thrilling responses from people that I hoped to touch or had never thought I would touch — that’s a new experience.
All I’m saying is, will there be another new experience that isn’t necessarily making a movie? I don’t know.
Edward Zwick will be hosting a conversation about his book tomorrow, February 13th, at the Metrograph, followed by a screening of “Glory.” Get tickets here.