I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

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.

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

Dialogue that's distinctive, funny, peculiar, and specific is the main thing that makes me want to get involved with a film to begin with.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

The thing I was up against in documentary films - was trying to get non-actors to convincingly play themselves in a way I'd come to know before the camera started rolling. And many non-actors can't do that convincingly, even if they just have to play themselves - they can't be naturalistic. And I would always want to recreate something I'd witnessed them do or say, and it just would be incredibly difficult because of the fact they weren't actors.

Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do.