When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The script for 'Thirteen' is tight, and not because of the now-famous six day writing spree, but more because it started out as 15 pages longer.
From 7 in the morning to 11 at night, I was reading. I don't think one can find any other time in one's life to be left alone so much to read in peace like that.
'Thirteen' was really hard on my family. I wrote this movie about them and their flaws and imperfections and what it was like growing up. It was from one kid's perspective and not a well rounded one. You get older, and it's like, 'How dare I portray my father as being a totally vacant, careless schmuck?'
What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
I spent a good part of the nineties roaming the Earth writing about conflict. It was very grueling. I was beginning to find this way of life was, wow, addictive and deeply meaningful.
I read my sister's diary when I was 7. She was, I think, 13. It was awful to read it.
We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could.
I started writing when I was about thirteen.
Thirteen years I took on this last book.