On Releasing “Stealth” in Theaters During Wartime: “I think what’s special about this movie is that there are no politics in this movie. It just shows what these guys are doing. So there isn’t a point of view, per se, other than the fact that it’s questioning the sense of technology,” said Lucas. “It’s not saying this is where we’re at politically or questioning it or saying it’s right or anything. We’re just saying this is these guys’ jobs.
I think that was one of the interesting things for me being on the aircraft carrier, because I have my own very serious political beliefs, but what the military is doing is that that is their job and that’s what this movie says. This is these guys’ job and interestingly you put some human beings inside of it, some actors who can ask in their own way certain questions. I thought that scene in the thing in Thailand, when you’re walking through, it’s just a little moment where he says, ‘You know, up there we drop these bombs and you’re down here on earth and you realize what you do…,’ it just adds something to it. It just makes it have that much more of a sense of for these people, it’s their job. That’s it. That’s what the movie’s saying.”
Jessica Biel added, “I don’t know. I sort of feel the same way, that it doesn’t necessarily have an opinion and it’s not a film pro-war. It’s not like, ‘Ha ha, look at us! We’re Americans. Yeah! Let’s blow s**t up.’ It’s not that at all. It’s like, ‘This is the future, possibly, question mark, what do you think? It’s a movie that’s asking interesting questions, kind of bringing it up in a way that is entertaining and that can even talk to a younger generation that might not even think about it yet.”
Director Cohen said he came to love and respect the young men and women he met while shooting “Stealth.” “I don’t think you have any doubt of the respect that we all had for the real people and I think it’s good to remind people of that because you get so easily polarized where like in the 60’s where it was like the ‘baby killers,’ you know?
These men and women are out there so that you and I, all of us, can sit here with tape recorders and talk about any damn thing we want. I tell you that’s a miserable mother-f***ing life out there. That’s the most intense environment I have ever been in and I’ve been in coal mines and many, many different stressful things - Hollywood studios, places where it’s really difficult. But, no, these guys are running all day with 50 pounds of chains on their shoulders, breathing those fumes, absorbing that noise level, out there on a 120 -130 degree deck in the Gulf. That takes some dedication. I think the film shows that dedication but it’s not a jingoistic, patriotic movie.
In order to make this film, I had to get cooperation from the Navy. There’s no way you can do this film - pure CGing those carriers and so on can’t be reproduced. The affect on the actors can’t be reproduced from really being in those environments. So it wasn’t so much that it didn’t have a point of view, but that it had to take, let us say, a journalistic approach as opposed to an editorial approach. Which is you had to say Sam Shepard has some points, and Josh Lucas has some points, and these are the points that are in operation at this moment in time. 20 years from now, it will be too late to debate this. There won’t be trained pilots. The minute they can save the money, the millions of dollars that goes into training each one of those young men and women to fly those hypersonic jets - once they stop that they’ll be, pilots will be transport pilots, and they’ll be supply pilots and these EDIs [Extreme Deep Invader], they’ll be doing the job so it’s better to look at it now than later,” Cohen said.
