I am now using media as a tool to bring attention to marginalized people.

I'm not sure I would make a direct connection between having press attention as a young person and being interested in the media as an older person. I came to it more organically, coming from a family of Irish Catholic storytellers. Storytelling is a pastime and important part of my family's history and culture.

The thing is that my father's story helps to communicate what was at stake with my mother, and my mother and father had so much a partnership that his story is integral to her story, as her story is to his - really, her story can't be told without his story.

They gave us 30 different dates to choose from. Homestead was the one I chose, in part because I think it's hard to tell the story of America without telling the story of the people who built it.

You need to think, when you get involved in wars, how you're going to get out of them.

I've always been interested in Vietnam, feel it's a seminal event in our nation's history, and have explored it over the years - but I hadn't been interested in doing a documentary about it. I felt there had been a lot done about Vietnam, and didn't know if I could add anything new to the discussion.

The thing that was most eye-opening to me, in my research, was the idea that the workers felt that they had a claim to the mill. That mentality is so far from how labor is treated today. I think it's very clear that you work for the corporation -- you don't have any claim to it.

I've been doing documentaries for about 25 years and want to continue to do that, but I love the idea of working in a different medium. Advertising pushes the envelope creatively, and there is some really great work being done right now, so I'm excited to jump into it.

There's a great op-ed piece by Kurt Johnson, who runs The List Project, that I recommend everyone read. He was talking about how he's been trying to get out of Iraq who were our allies, who are now subject to torture, and their families are being killed because of their alliance to the United States.

I think there is a lot to be said for the respect that our parents had for children, and for my brothers and sisters and me at a very young age, and for exposing them to the world and what's out there.