These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's more like can I build a group of characters and can I tell some universal truths that feel real and aren't formulaic in the spirit of filmmakers gone by who've told American stories that were personal and universal as well.
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
I tell stories about people audiences might think they have nothing in common with, then they emotionally connect with them and find they're not different at all.
Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
You have these relationships with people that you care about, but I also try to stick to my job as filmmaker and be fair and truthful about what I saw and my experience of the people, hopefully informed by a deep understanding of them.
I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience.
Oftentimes it feels like Fox stands alone in the media on certain stories.
My father always told me that story was first and foremost. We would watch not just his films but a lot of classic American films. My father was a great David Lean fan, and David Lean's one of my favorite directors. We would discuss films endlessly.
If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.
I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.