The difference between drama and classic tragedy is that in a drama people seem to have a kind of active role in what is occurring on the screen. So in something like On the Waterfront, with Marlon Brando, you know, "There's a right thing to do Malloy and a wrong thing to do!" And all this becomes a sort of moral parable. He can either act doing the right thing or act doing the wrong thing, and that's pretty much the way the world is established in that film.

What we tried to do was make something a little more tragic in nature, in which the fates, in which the system at large, was dictating the characters' behavior and people had much less of a role in determining their own fate. This is something, of course, that can be quite frustrating for a viewer because you watch Mark Wahlberg and he spends the movie going, "This is excellent," as he chews his food. But he's really a sad guy. But that's something that I like. I knew people like that growing up, and they're either dead or in jail, you know. So I wanted to put something like that on the screen. In fact, that's how Wahlberg got onto the movie. He said, "That's my life, Jim. I came home and my mother threw a party for me and it was the most depressing thing ever. That's my life, Jim."

THC: What about Charlize Therzon? She seems to be totally different in every movie.

JG: She's pretty transformative. Actually, I was very surprised by how good she was. I cast her because she was dying to do it. She kept calling me up. And I was like, "Why do you want to do the movie so badly?" And it turns out she had issues with her stepfather; I think what made her really connect to is was the scene where she goes to see James Caan. After saying fuck you the whole movie, she says, I'm sorry I've been horrible to you but please help Wahlberg. And I think that was the scene that got her hooked on the movie. She wanted to do it so badly. There was something she did which unfortunately wound up on the cutting room floor. It was a scene I couldn't fit in no matter what I did. There was a scene in which they whole family's together and they're eating Chinese food and Charlize, I remember, was eating an egg roll. And the way she was eating that egg roll and watching James Caan during that moment. And then she took a soy sauce packet and opened it up with her teeth. It was incredible footage. You could tell that she was totally about that character. And I couldn't fit it into the scene because every time I tried it was all about Charlize eating an egg roll and not about the conversation, which was a major part of the story. But she's an astonishing actor. She's really good.

THC: So what's next for you? Are you working on something now?

JG: I'm beginning to write something on what's called the Street Crimes Unit, which is an elite wing of the New York Police Department, who are hand picked. They number only about a hundred. They're almost all exclusively WASPs. There are a few who are not. And they pick people every year, cadets, who "have the eyes." And what that means is that they can watch you walk down the street, cross the street, and judging from your gait, if it's weighted to one side even slightly, they can see if you're packing a weapon, a concealed weapon. They can look at your neck, and if they see a pulse rate that disturbs them, they take you to be a suspect. And they use methods which are of questionable constitutionality. I'm fond of saying "I did Russian gangsters in the first movie, and I did businessmen in the second, so why not the police in the third." And I think it may be about the formation of the Street Crimes Unit.

THC: Rumor had it that you went to Harvard...

JG: My agent went to Harvard. And Darren Aronofsky '91 went to Harvard. I was talking to him and I was very disappointed-I was disappointed by your institution. I was talking to Darren in casual conversation one day and I mentioned Puccini, the music of Puccini, I can't remember what the context was, and he had no idea who Puccini was. I was really upset by that. I went, "Darren, Puccini? Madame Butterfly? Tosca? Do you know operas?" He went, "No, what is that?"