[Through the making of Dream of Life] I learned about being patient, perseverance, having a dream, a goal. I learned that I can accomplish something despite not knowing anything about it when I begin.

At the beginning I didn't even really think about making a movie [Dream of Life]. I was just thinking of documenting somebody.

Over time it just got more and more intense as far as the trust factor. For example, when we started editing the film [Dream of Life], I thought, man, I need to make sense of all the footage I have; I need to ground the film. And one day I was hanging out in Patti's [Smith] bedroom, which is where Patti works, and in the corner of her bedroom is this great chair, and that's when she began showing her personal things to me. The camera was there, and we realized that we were really making the movie and making sense of the footage in the movie.

I shot [Dream of Life] all on 16-millimeter, and I just wanted to learn about Patti [Smith].

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments.

We had a hodgepodge of footage. We didn't film [in Dream of Life ]all the time - we would just film periodically, so nothing was synced and nothing was slated.

Ultimately, the film [Dream of Life] is inspirational.