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

You can just imagine the restrictions of shooting in a prison, but I just decided I'm going to embrace those restrictions sometimes when you don't have many choices you can make the best choices.

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."

It can be difficult to present mental illness in film without resorting to devices that, if not handled well, can seem heavy-handed or cliché.

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 felt that if people understood the struggle of recovery, then some of the stigma of addiction might be reduced because the audience would understand in a palpable way that addiction is a disease that tells the afflicted, despite years or even decades of heartbreaking evidence to the contrary, that using will make things better.

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