What made so many people so upset when Steve Jobs died was that he was a kind of combination of daddy - in this relationship between the machine and ourselves - and also he was our guide. He was the one who led us to look into the mirror. He created these devices that became extensions of ourselves. Suddenly, he wasn't going to hold our hand as we went from product to product, which became increasingly about who we were.

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."

I feel that Julian Assange came to be both paranoid and self-regarding in ways that ultimately undermined his own mission.

Many people, including myself, thought of Jobs as an inventor, an Edison-like figure, but he wasn't. I did a documentary on James Brown recently; and, oddly, I found a lot in common between Jobs and Brown. Jobs was also a fantastic performer, put on an extraordinary live show at his product launches, but he could also be ruthless, cruel and totally self-aggrandizing. And just as Brown surrounded himself with the very best musicians, Jobs understood the importance of hiring the absolutely most talented people and knew how crucial they were to the success of what he was trying to do.

What a terrible world it would be if we only did films that were poster boards for political causes.

You can't expect the institution to learn, if it doesn't accept any sense of justice.

As the power of governments wanes, corporations become ever more powerful. Sometimes they do things that aren't so good. We should pay attention. Steve Jobs was saying, "Don't pay attention to all that stuff. Pay attention to the product you've got in your hand."