In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

I think my movies aren't sentimental. I think my movies are funny and sad and realistic. Not realistic in the sense that they're documentaries, but realistic in the sense that they're not idealistic, they're not optimistic, not pessimistic, and not propagandistic. They're an analysis of a situation. I call it as I see it, so to speak.

I don't really know what I want, other than good sequences, whatever that means. What I find is always a matter of chance, judgment, and luck.

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

I think I have an obligation, to the people who have consented to be in the film, to make a film that is fair to their experience. The editing of my films is a long and selective process. I do feel that when I cut a sequence, I have an obligation to the people who are in it, to cut it so that it fairly represents what I felt was going on at the time, in the original event. I don't try and cut it to meet the standards of a producer or a network or a television show.

This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!