If the subject is no longer living, the immediate question is do you have enough first-person material to really get that story across. You'd like to avoid it just being other people's memories and interpretations.

I don't think that there is any hard and fast rule that says that documentary has to be linear at all.

With a living person you're always burdened with this idea of fair representation, treading this fine line between honoring the person, and yet you really look at the word "honor," it implies that you then have to address struggle and hardship and failure, and all these things that it means to be human, that you show the fullness of their life. If the person's living, they are able to interject.

I think in many ways what my films are about is that search for my grandpa's dentures: for that humanizing narrative that bridges the gap between "us" and "them" to arrive at a "we."

Documentary filmmaking has all the challenges and hardships of narrative filmmaking without any of the infrastructure or support. That's both a blessing and a curse.

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

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.