I think if the extremists were happy with my films, I'd start to worry.

I think that any time you are making a film you have to realize that the people you are talking with might be giving you misinformation. Sometimes it is factually incorrect and for that, it's important to me to check it out and not let things find their way into the film without being challenged, either by me, or by another character, or by evidence that you might see on screen.

I don't think that any law enforcement got in trouble for the event in Eugene where police sprayed the tree-sitters who were protesting the cutting of the trees for the parking garage.

Balancing the complex point of view in the edit room was mostly a matter of challenging ourselves to keep digging deeper.

I have wondered if I might be placed on a watch list of some sort by the government, though. I know that the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is a friend and who has made documentaries about controversial Middle Eastern terrorists has had trouble at customs when she travels internationally - but nothing like that has happened to me.

Most of this film, however, is about interpretation - are these people terrorists or freedom fighters? Are they good or bad? Is cutting timber good or bad? And I don't feel like the answers to those questions are simple, so we don't try to answer them for the audience. I wanted to elicit the strongest - and most heartfelt - arguments from the characters in the film and let those arguments bang up against the strongest arguments of their opponents.

I've always been curious in why different people believe the things they do and do the things they do - in the different ways that people live.