I've often looked at the extremes as a way to shed light on the mainstream. Even though everybody says, "Money doesn't buy you happiness," I don't think that that's the principle by which people live. If you talk to kids and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they say, "Rich and famous," but being rich and famous is not a job.

I've often used the extremes in my work to comment on the mainstream. I think that sometimes a subject that I'm working on, like popular culture, is so present all around us that they're hard to see. It's like: How do you see the air you breathe? How do you see how it affects you?

When I first moved from photography to filmmaking, I was worried about how big I had to become. I was one person, or maybe me and an assistant, and I had these small cameras, and maybe a flash.

What I'm documenting can be hard to distill, because it's all around us like the air we breathe. I often need to go to a place where I can capture extreme moments.

The people in the popular group say there is no peer pressure because they are at the top of the food chain. Really what they are doing is just eating away at everybody else.

I've been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.

During the Reagan eighties, the idea that money was a good thing - it was good to be rich; that wealth was a reflection of your character. We see this today in perceptions of Donald Trump: the idea that money is an expression of success and even goodness. I compare that with my dad's generation, where the American Dream was about giving your kids a better life, but not just in material terms. The American Dream was also about doing something good in the world. The home was at the center of the dream, but home also represented community, shelter, and stability for your family.