What's Great About Documentary Genre, It Seems

I Used To Work As A Private Detective Years And Years Ago. And My Boss Gave Me This One Very Simple Piece Of Advice About Trying To Figure Out Who To Interview First In Any Investigation. His Recommendation: Always Pick The People Who Were Fired. Pick The People Who Are Pissed Off.

Interviews, When They Are Just Simply An Exercise In Hearing What You Want To Hear, Are Of No Interest. And Many, Many, If Not Most Interviews Have That Character. The Interviewer Who Comes In With A List Of Bullet Points They're Going To Address One After The Other. Interviews, Properly Considered, Should Be Investigative. You Should Not Know What You're Going To Hear. You Should Be Surprised.

You Can Think Of My Films As Cautionary Tales, But You Might Even Think Of Them As Despairing Tales, Because At Least In A Cautionary Tale, You Have This Idea That By Listening To The Story You Can Assure A Better Outcome. Whereas I'm Not At All Convinced That's The Case. In Fact, If Anything, I'm Convinced That It's The Opposite.

The Chance That Any Given Sentence Is A Lie, Rather Than A Truth, I Think, Is Fairly Great. An Intentional Lie, A Self-deception, A Misconception - There Are Lots Of Categories Of Untruth, Not One Grab Bag. And Hotographs Can Reveal Something To Us, And They Can Also Conceal Things.

There Is Only One Direction. (down.) There Is Only One Color. (black.) And There Is Only One Number (zero.)