Peter Berg
Peter Berg
Peter Bergis an American actor, film director, producer, and writer. He is known for directing films such as the black comedy Very Bad Things, the action comedy The Rundown, the sports drama Friday Night Lights, the action thriller The Kingdom, the superhero comedy-drama Hancock, the military science fiction war film Battleship, and the war film Lone Survivor. He also developed the television series Friday Night Lights, which was adapted from the film he directed. As an actor he is best...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth11 March 1962
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The big fun in 'Battleship' is that there are no current battleships in the Navy today. The battleships are about 1,000 feet long and they have huge guns. They were what you saw in WWII. The last battleship that was used was the Missouri, which is what the Japanese surrendered to.
It's always funny to me how your movie becomes no longer yours and people interpret it how they want and react how they want to react to it, and it's fun to kind of watch that happen.
I wanted to do a naval film and I flirted with different ideas, most of which ended up being too intense. So when the idea of 'Battleship' was first suggested, I was instantly drawn to the challenge - could I invent a movie around the idea of five ships fighting five ships?
I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you, I think.
Be really picky with your hiring, and hire the absolute best people you possibly can. People are the most important component of almost every business, and attracting the best talent possible is going to make a huge difference.
There's a picture of the real Coach Gary Gaines in the book and he's sitting in the locker room after a game, and he just looks so much like Billy Bob, that we went to him.
You might make a lot of money, but it's very hard to get out from under that rug. The more you can reinvent yourself, the better - and unfortunately TV is designed not to let you redesign yourself.
Truth is, we offered it to Tom Hanks, which pretty much every movie in America does, but Tom passed. Billy Bob said that Hanks recently called and said he's voting for all of us for Oscars, he loved the film.
Michael Mann's always been one of my heroes.
I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.
You look for inspiration, I do, that got me going.
I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in 'Friday Night Lights' and 'The Kingdom.' I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.
I think musicians oftentimes have the right skill set to be good actors. And with Rihanna, I noticed her and knew of her obviously, and was very taken with her charisma and her confidence.
It's always an interesting sort of adventures that gets someone into a movie.