From my image of digging around in the mud like a grunt, I preferred fighting the war from ships.

Well, of course the general idea was dreamed up by the advertising agency and so my job was to realize that. And we down to Lubbock, Texas, usually and onto a ranch and we would pick cowboys who looked the part and photograph them under dramatic situations - rounding up wild horses or running through streams and then reaching in and taking a drag on a cigarette.

Most people, I believe, when they're asked profound questions about their own persona are not really able to enunciate it, because it's a combination of so many things.

The helicopter was a U.S. Navy helicopter. There were no civilian helicopters available to film companies, so they just made some stuff out of two-by-four wood. And I would straddle a two-by-four out from the helicopter with a camera and what we call a high hat, which is a low metal stand.

I think that the whole voyeuristic attitude of filmmakers or of me personally - of shooting documentaries and so forth - is an important issue. And it was an important issue to me, personally. And the whole question of when - when do you put the camera down or when do you keep shooting to get the shot. And a number of times in my life I've had that question hit me very hard.

When I search myself carefully I do think it's from my mother. I even feel strange saying that. Most people, I believe, when they're asked profound questions about their own persona are not really able to enunciate it, because it's a combination of so many things. But certainly influences early on that I felt from my mother. I wouldn't say she was "political" per se; she was sensitive to other people.

There was no actually stock footage in "Medium Cool." I wrote the script. I wrote the riots. And I integrated the actors in the film in the park during the demonstrations. But nowhere was it like we had stock footage and then later, in editing, integrated it into the film. It was all done at the time.