My job in many ways has been to navigate interesting routes around subjects people think are dull.
Our distorted media culture sees men as subjects and women as objects; in films, Woody Allen gets older and older and still dates 20-year-old babes; movies about women are called ‘chick flicks,’ and men make fun of them.
I often make films about subjects I don’t really know much about. Maybe it’s laziness, but I don’t go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I’m making the film.
Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.
I think, ‘How could anybody mock a good pop song?’ It is timeless; it transcends barriers; it breaks down every single type of social barrier that you can possibly have. It can deal with the most difficult subjects, even if it abstracts the subject matter.
When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.
If you see in all my books, I have two key intentions. One is obviously to entertain and make sure that the reader has a good reading experience. I also try to write on subjects that nobody has dealt with before to make my works different from other page turners.
People who are new to photography always pull their subjects directly into the sun, which is the most unflattering light in the world.
It just so happens that people aren’t doing comedy about abortion or cannibalism or waterboarding. And that to me doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t aspects of those subjects that are funny, it just means that people are too uptight.
Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.
There’s always a certain concern whenever you go and shoot a field piece: that maybe all the elements won’t come together, knowing that you have limited time to tell a story, hoping that you get all the elements you need, hoping the subjects are comfortable.
I engage my subjects in conversation, patterned after psychiatric questioning, with the aim of discovering something about the reasoning underlying their right but especially their wrong answers.
In the past, I think my films that focused on African subjects struggled in the marketplace because of their subject matter.
The only things I could do were English, drama and history. I loved them subjects, but I hated everything else.
I wish that sometimes there is a little more honesty and that you can discuss things openly. There should not be taboo subjects.
I don’t think anyone thought showbiz people know anything. I would suggest interview subjects, were told they weren’t such great ideas, and then they would be assigned to somebody else. I wasn’t given anything to do. I felt like the highest-paid dress extra in the world.
I am often drawn to what appear at first to be ‘dark’ or ‘difficult’ subjects, but which, upon further examination, are always and only reflections of the ways human beings attempt, however clumsily, badly, or well, to connect with others.
The thing about documentary is that you don’t really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.
