I tried [being a mogul]. It bores me. I don't really want to produce other people's movies. Because they're either grown-up filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh or Kathryn Bigelow that didn't really need me - and I've produced both of them. It's fun to sit around with them and be collegial, but they don't need me. They can make the film without me. I make my own stuff. There are tons and tons of other things I'm interested in that have nothing to do with movies or are documentary projects.

I'm a curious guy. I can't turn away from an investigative story, when it comes to the forensic analysis. I've done 33 dives, to the titanic wreck site. I've spent over 50 hours piloting robotic vehicles at that wreck trying to piece together what happened during the disaster. How the ship broke up, comparing the historical record with the forensic record. Documentaries are kind of my new life. I love documentary filmmaking.

The films that influenced me were so disparate that there's almost no pattern.

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad.

The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world 10, 20 years from now.

When you have the feeling that anything’s possible, sometimes you wind up acting on it.

I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.