I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.

I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.

I don't know if people realize how hard I work, because sometimes people ask me for my secret. The truth is that I don't have any secrets apart from the fact that I've been directing theater and film for twenty years and trying at every stage to make my work better.

I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.

I love great locations in movies, and I couldn't believe I'd never seen a landfill on screen before. It was the most haunting place.

Why is nobody questioning the sanity or suicidal tendencies of Everest ascenders? It's kind of a question of framing: How do you frame these activities? We frame them as freedom-loving, exciting, progressing sports and they are. But there are other ways to frame it. It's also true that these young men, neurologists say that their frontal lobes aren't developed yet - the long-term planning part of the brain.

I can ask someone to let me into all aspects of their life for several years, but people have got to have that gift: that courage and that talent for opening their lives to the camera. Being candid is a gift, and that's what the audience responds to. Part of it is me asking, and part of it is just their inherent talent, which is what you are looking for when you make documentaries - people that are really going to let you in on what they are going through.