From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

My guest, director Hedswick, I think, has made a career of making movies that deal

with loyalty, going from his first film, Special Bolton to Leaving Normal to Glory, The Siege,

and his new film, Blood Diamond, definitely deals with loyalty as kind of a theme. Ed, first of all,

thanks for being here. My pleasure. Nice to see you. Would you say that's true? I mean, because loyalty plays such a big part in all these movies.

You know, I think about that.

Just watching and getting ready for this, a question of loyalty, Legends of the Fall,

all these movies ask that question of the protagonists.

Well, I know that I've, I try to put people in some situation that's, you know, in extremists and the things that are everyday assumptions and maybe in a more decorous time might be, might not be tested.

So I know that when you're talking about relationships and intense relationships, that that's stretching the fabric to its limit.

I don't know.

I'm interested in the contradictions in people as much as I am in their consistencies.

And I think I'm interested in those moments when people confront those contradictions in

themselves and in their relationships and with each other and have to decide what are the ties that bind. And I guess

that does become loyalty. I had never thought of it in quite those terms. I think that's probably

true. And I think it certainly plays a big part in blood diamond, doesn't it? Well, I imagined

I wanted to try to find people whose agendas would in some way resonate into

that political moment.

In other words, a man looking for a diamond and a man looking for his son would create

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