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."

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

We don't see many films in which someone with schizophrenia is the main character.

One thing people often forget when making a documentary is that, in a sense, you still have to cast, find a star, and it has all of those built-in challenges.

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 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.

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.