The very first thing I ever did, I was doing some work for the French Cultural Center. They wanted a little recording set up. And I got wire. A wire recorder. The wire came off spools, and to cut and edit, you tied it together in little square knots. Can you imagine?

I kind of liked the idea of filming musicians. I could like a musician and know, at the same time, maybe nobody else maybe liked them much or appreciated them.

I had maybe heard 'The Times Are A-Changing' on the radio, but I had no idea who Dylan was. No idea.

Well, it is curious what lasts and what doesn't. Publishing empires and whatnot would pay anything to figure it out. But they can't figure it out.

It was interesting to shoot history as it happens, without anyone demanding a huge story.

I heard the new film, 'Tangerine,' was filmed entirely on iPhones. No cameras were involved!

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

Animals are companions on this planet, not necessarily our feedbags.

When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. You're not inventing it, but you're finding the story that's there. You're making a play that's eventually going to go on stage and present itself to an audience. You want to show what happened, not exactly what you have evidence of happening.

If you're filming somebody doing something they really want to do, you're probably not very high on their list of problems to deal with. You see James Carville on the phone - he's like that whether you have a camera or not. He isn't doing it just for you, and that's hard to explain.