I never saw a department store Santa as a kid. My mother was afraid to take me.

I never saw a department store Santa as a kid. My mother was afraid to take me.

It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.

There's no choice left in America anymore. Anything that's authentic and genuine, anything that grew out of any sense of tradition, is wiped out. We're left with this bland monoculture that's swept over the whole country.

It's certainly a difficult time right now to try to make small, smart films. I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy.