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I feel like a lot of funders of documentaries today want to fund films that have a social message that is going to yield results.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

Documentary people have to know that, particularly nowadays, they have to be on a mission. And part of the mission is to - is to be like good journalists: search for the truth, have an open mind, listen to as much as you can of different sides of things.

Documentaries are a form of journalism.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

You can construct whatever story you want to. Documentaries are constructions, as is all journalism.