As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view."

One of the things about Steve Jobs is that he gives us an opportunity to look at the disjuncture between that world and the world he claimed that Apple represented, the "Think different" world of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Gandhi.

Bill Gates, who is the classic computer nerd, as opposed to Steve who is, like the coolest guy in the world. And who is really doing things to make the world a better place?

Jobs' incredible skill was as a storyteller, a salesman. He could captivate our imaginations and reel us in. He was more P.T. Barnum than Thomas Edison.

I'm still an Apple person, but let's just say the magic aura is gone. In a way that was a sad thing to lose, but I feel better for it. It's just a machine now, not linked with any greater mission or mystique.

In many ways, I'm a big admirer still of Julian Assange. He had balls to do what he did and his motivations in terms of holding the powerful to account are tremendously inspiring to me.

It's easy to get armchair analysts to talk, but to get people on the inside to talk is very, very hard.