One day it was that I wanted to go make a movie with my kid and then another day it was that I wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and another day it was that I wanted to sit in the studio and figure something out. All those things manifested themselves into what the TV show was.

Just trying to live our lives and figuring out how to turn that into art. It's tough to say that the art was premeditated. Instead you just focused on living. 'How do I want to live? What do I want to do?' Then you figured out how to make that into art.

Then HBO was the pie in the sky. HBO is the absolute ultimate.

The biggest risk is to take no risk at all

The approach to that movie wasn't, 'Lets make this movie about Amsterdam and maple syrup.' The concept was, 'Lets go to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is fun.' So we flew to Amsterdam with our cameras and we saw what happened and then we got back and we sat down and we said, 'What's the movie here.' That's when we realized that the movie was 'The Maple Syrup Saga'.

The most dangerous thing you can do in life is play it safe.

As a guiding principle, life shrinks and life expands in direct proportion to your willingness to assume risk.