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It's supposed to be entertainment. It's not supposed to be a documentary.

Documentaries are a powerful and effective way of bridging the gap between worlds, breaking through to new audiences that wouldn't otherwise be engaged - in essence, not preaching to the choir.

Independent documentary isn't beholden to some of the interests that the mainstream media are influenced by. It's a pathway to renegade, independent reporting in an in-depth, investigative fashion, and it can do so with a compassionate lens; it allows people to speak in a way that is more human than the mainstream media approach.

Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second, shaped by corporate delivery most of the time, but what's really the story there?

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.

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.

There's been a vacuum with movies that people can relate to. There's been a paucity of dramas that people can relate to. I think audiences are clamoring to connect - particularly after 9/11 - with things that are genuine and real and I think documentaries are filling that need.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

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

Some of the History Channel's documentaries involve docudrama segments and are highly speculative - but there seems, on the part of the producers, to be a real determination to get at the history behind our past - not the sex, which is left to drama shows and entertainment channels.