I always say be humble but be firm. Humility and openness are the key to success without compromising your beliefs.

Theres something unique about the United States, a sense of individual rights and freedoms, and a sense of social and civic responsibility that we contributed to so much of the world. We lost that mission in the 1980s and 1990s, when we entered a gilded age, and the culture of individualism became a culture of avarice.

Im very strongly in favor of the auteur theory.

I think that narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verite is film in its purest form.

Generally in my films like Hearts of Darkness or Picture This, I try not to make myself a presence in the film.

At times doc filmmaking feels more rewarding creatively. Because you are creating something out of pure cinema - instead of narrative cinema, where you've got a script and a cast and you build from your foundation, whereas in documentary, you're building out of chaos.

The arc of the celebrity phenomenon ultimately is: everything turns to dust and everything does go away.