If you just think about the difficulty you'll never get anywhere.

My grandpa could go days, weeks, even months without a drink but if he took that first drink, he couldn't stop. Once, when I was twelve, my mom and I were driving and we saw my grandpa staggering drunk down the street. I asked if we should stop and help him. My mom sadly shook her head and kept driving.

I think that most of us instinctively avoid people with mental illness.

I knew as a young boy that addiction and alcoholism afflict people - good, loving people - in profound ways, and that some people - usually from those rare "normal" families that I longed for as a child and as an adult wonder if they even exist - didn't understand this and sort of looked down their noses at people suffering with addiction.

If I weren't making documentary films, I suppose I'd be teaching.

The visual quality of the cameras now is such that you can shoot with available light, and if people are willing to mount a microphone on the camera and maybe even on the subject, then you're good to go.

I think it would be really hypocritical of me to make the films I make, where I delve into people's lives, to say that my life can't be looked at or that I have to be this pristine, isolated figure.