Russell Crowe

But he sort of puts the audience in this position where he allows them to start to be amused by some of the things that are going on and the interpersonal relationships.

And, you know, when the commandant of the prison has to call up his two top mental health experts and dress them down for getting into a fistfight, things like that, kind of it's there's a charm to it.

And then he gets you into the courtroom and he locks the door.

And he goes, now you're going to see what we're talking about.

So I think it's a very interesting film device to disarm people before he starts giving them the real juice, you know.

And that's the thing that was a very unpopular take at the time, actually led to his removal from the process because he wasn't fulfilling what the War Department wanted him to say, which is, you know, all Nazis are crazy, you know, ruled by a madman, and this is a unique experience.

But that's not what he found.

And sitting down talking to the 22...

major Nazi sort of names that he was assigned to post-war, he realized that every single one of these people was, you know, was normal.

Well, there was a couple that were pretty out there.

But, you know, for the most part, he was dealing with rational men.

How the hell did they end up making this series of decisions if they're rational men?

Incrementally.

Yes.

And that's the thing that's difficult because –

Gigantic jumps, we can all read.

But little incremental changes.

The boiling of the frog.

Just how you take away this person's rights, that person's personal power, and slowly you get to a point where the average person then turns around and goes, how did we get to here?

I thought it was about something else.