When I took a couple of years to do the documentaries after I left 'American Morning' - what was I gone for, five years? - I didn't feel that I was floating under the radar.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I spent a couple of years doing American films. I did a few.
I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.
It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble.
When I left 'American Morning' in 2007, I'd focused on doing documentaries. But I thought 'Starting Point' was a great opportunity to be involved in the zeitgeist.
It all felt like a terribly long time. It would have meant that I had to make five movies in five years and if you don't like the movies, too bad. I guess I just wanted my freedom, and I think my life has been incredibly enhanced as a result.
Often in films, you have no idea where you're going to be six months from now. And I grew very weary of that. And television, although it wasn't necessarily as creatively diverse as filmmaking can be, it was the lifestyle choice that I needed to make.
I had gone to all the big stories of the '80s, which was one of the most fertile times in American journalism, around the world and here as well.
When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.
I've not been distracted by a long-running TV show or visits to America for pilot season.
I left the golden age of documentaries to go into the golden days of the 'CBS Evening News.' You could see that the audiences were eroding.