On the influence of American filmmaking: "American filmmakers had a big effect on us — people like Scorsese, from Mean Streets on, recognizing those characters trying to come to terms with violence. Violence is not widely discussed in relationship to U2, but it has been an obsession. It came out of living in a very violent era.”
When THR brings up the Academy Awards — for which the band is nominated for its original song in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom — Bono enthuses about the other category nominees and the stiff competition, saying he's been urging the band to lower any expectations of winning. But "if the song gets to shake the hand of the little gopher," he says, "it would give a whole other imprimatur to our audience, which would be great. I would love if it had a life outside of the film. Because we poured so much of our life into the song and, I hope, his life, the life of Mandela."
On composing the score for 1986’s Captive: “I found it less artistically rewarding. I was having to lay aside the fun part of what I do, which is going in a very instinctive way and finding music that’s turning me on for reasons that I couldn’t possibly explain. But what I do love is writing songs for films. Because I love movies.”
Clatyon on on the death of the album format: “Unfortunately, one has to think of an album as a rather quaint artifact. It used to be a force to be reckoned with. You put on an album and it took you to a place. But people don’t listen to music that way anymore. So now, in the U2 business, it’s about songs, and it’s about people knowing those songs.”
Mullen joking about why he talked to THR: “Lying for a living is something I’ve been doing for a long time. Acting’s a slightly different arena. I would love to do more and spend some time on that. I have spent most of my life sitting in my drum kit, and I have the best time in the world. But when I get in front of the camera, something else happens.”
Writing and recording "Ordinary Love" — from Mandela — was a major disruption in the U2 flow and still is having fateful repercussions. Intensive work on the band's 13th studio album, the first since 2009's No Line on the Horizon, was underway in the summer, with a target release date of December 2013 when Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of The Weinstein Co. and a longtime friend of Bono and the band, called on behalf of Mandela's South African producer, Anant Singh, and director Justin Chadwick to solicit a song for the nearly completed film.