People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don't have to think about whether it's true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness.

My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.

You can ask yourself, if a film makes a claim, is the claim true or false? Having said that, a style of presenting material doesn't guarantee truth. There's this crazy idea that somehow you pick a style, and by virtue of picking the style, you've provided something that is more truthful. It's as if you imagine that changing the font on a sentence you write makes it more truthful.

One of the strengths of my interviews is that I really, honest to God, have no idea what people are going to say.

Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.

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

I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.