Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.
Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.
People lie, and they always are very very creative in finding new ways to lie.
We all know that yellow journalism didn't just happen a week ago or a month ago, that yellow journalism has probably been with us as long as journalism has been with us.
If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.
My advice to all interviewers is: Shut up and listen. It's harder than it sounds.
Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.
A movie is like a tip of an iceberg, in a way, because so little of what you do in connection with making a movie actually gets into the movie. Almost everything gets left behind.
I think an interview, properly considered, should be an investigation. You shouldn't know what the interview will yield. Otherwise, why do it at all?
I've never had any problem with crazy people. I like crazy people; I probably am a crazy person myself.
I like to think that I'm nonjudgmental, that I can listen and be engaged by almost anything.
When 'The Thin Blue Line' came out, I was criticized by many people for using reenactments, as if I wasn't dedicated to the truth because I filmed these scenes. That always and still seems to be nonsensical.
Photographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.
My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.
When you're working for yourself and your own obsession with finding the truth, you're at your own mercy.
Do I like tawdry, sleazy stories? Yeah, I do.
The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.
Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.
Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some damn good here!
