Life is much more complex than the black-and-white sound bites that you get on television. There are nuances and shades of gray.

I never believe I'm presenting objective reality; I also don't want to delude people into thinking that my subject is talking directly to them.

Any documentary; any capturing of a non-fiction event, is a hyper-realistic condensation of reality that hopefully reveals an emotional truth. It's never the actual literal truth of an event.

I'm a filmmaker who is known for these ambiguous portraits that tell multiple sides of the story without really telling the audience what to think.

The Metallica film was like this incredible life experience where I learned the most through guys that stereotypically you would think couldn't offer much to you. That's what I love about the film: It explodes your stereotype of them - they're not just a bunch of lugheads banging on the guitar.

If people spend two hours thinking about the direction of their own lives and can relate to the stories they see on screen, to me that's a success.

What you hope, what you're trusting the filmmaker to do, is to capture the emotional truth of the situation.