First of all how did you come across the story of "Rules Of Engagement"?
"Rules Of Engagement" was in development in Universal Studios for ten years. It was originally written by the man who was the Secretary of the United States Navy and he wrote it from his experiences. They could never get it off the ground because the people at Universal all hated it. Then the producer gave it to me, and [...] we changed it considerably but we held on to the premise and did a complete rewrite, and as a result I was able to get two of the best actors in the world to appear in it, Tommy Lee Jones and Sam Jackson.
What was it about the original story that you didn鈥檛 like that you felt needed changed?
There were many things. [T]here was no Vietnam sequence, it was mentioned, but not shown. There was no embassy attack in Yemen, it was mentioned, but not shown. It was originally set in Central America. I moved it to Yemen because it鈥檚 a very plausible place [...] and the film was rewritten from top to bottom. But the essential premise was kept of two Marines who had served together in Vietnam, one had saved the others life and how it fell upon the other one to save the life of the man who saved his.
William Friedkin on the politics of war.
