I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.

There is such a thing as truth, but we have a vested interest in not seeing it, in avoiding it.

I actually like doing commercials. I don't like doing them to the exclusion of everything else, but I like doing them. The 30-second format is very hard. I sometimes call it American Haiku. And I think some of the commercials I've done are not so bad.

Truth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!

I like to think that one of things I've done with non-fiction since the very beginning is to find new ways of telling true stories.

Long, long before I became a filmmaker I was talking to killers. Filmmaking was an after thought.

There are artists who are very well known and many of us feel they should be less well known, while there are others who aren't well known and many feel deserve more attention.