I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.

There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives? To which my response was, Well, I hope so.

I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't have a make-up department.

The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.

My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if George W.Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.

I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.

I probably wouldn't have done as many as I did in one year, which I did when I was trying to raise money.