Top 40 Morgan Neville Quotes

Vidal was a novelist, an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and many other things. Buckley started a magazine, hosted a TV show, lead a political movement, and was a master debater. They were multihyphenates in a way that you rarely see anymore.

Music, like film, is an incredible tool for creating empathy.

I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.

I’ve produced two docs for Cameron Crowe, and I’ve always loved him as a filmmaker.

We had an incredible experience on ’20 Feet.’

Culture in general is important, and people’s identify is tied up in it. It’s how we connect with others.

Non-fiction or documentaries can tell any kind of a story because they don’t have to adhere to the rules of what’s possible. When you’re making something up, you have to say, ‘Well, this is what would happen here,’ but in reality, stuff happens that seems impossible.

They don’t make people like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley anymore.

I feel like I’m in a privileged position where I get to meet people and talk to them about the most important things in their lives. I appreciate that trust they’re putting in me.

There are a handful of music docs I’d love to do, including David Bowie.

Church singing is a great training ground.

There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.

Like the ancient Silk Road itself, ‘The Sound of Silk’ will make the foreign familiar while challenging long-held notions of identity and our place in the world.

The easiest way to subjugate a people is to erase a culture. I’ve seen it in war zones.

The problem with a lot of narrative films is that they’re not real enough.

If the Olympic Spirit is about overcoming every hurdle and accepting no limits, then I think Samsung is a great ambassador for these values.

You tend to put your rock stars on pedestals – they seem like they’ve been there for time immemorial. But you realize that the rock stars have their own rock stars. They were fans and kids once, too.

I would argue that the culture is not the frosting on the cake: the culture is the plate the cake sits on.

I so often doubt how much people on television believe what they’re saying. They’re playing roles for think tanks or political parties or shills of whatever stripe.

The presidential and vice-presidential debates are those rare moments when people come together, but to even call them debates is a stretch because they’re played by such negotiated rules, and they’re so over-rehearsed.

The first night I met Yo-Yo Ma, I found him the most charming person I had ever met, and I was willing to follow him with the camera anywhere.

I love documentaries. I love the format. I’ve been doing them for a long time.

Sometimes we have our perfect foils, or you can call them their bete noir: the person who brings out both the best and the worst in you because you disagree with them so completely. Yet, you understand and respect them enough to give it your all.

To be a backup singer, you have to walk into any situation and just be perfect from the first take to the 50th take.

When you come from a place and an identity, you can feel constricted and have to get away. But then you realise how much a part of you it is.

There’s no cultural revolution by mistake.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it’s a heroic pursuit.

You make documentaries because you love doing it; it’s the only sane reason to make documentaries.

Everything about Hank Williams interests me. His music, his life. His death. His impact.

I feel like – like Netflix is great if you’ve got a project ready to launch itself into the world rapidly.

The idea of music coming from the Church is not new.

I came up in left-wing political writing. My first job out of college was working as Gore Vidal’s fact checker.

Docs, in general, are made in the edit bay, archival docs even more so.

Watching somebody sing reveals a lot about character.

I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell, and it’s actually been really nice.

I always like learning the small details about a subject.

By the rules of debate, if you lose your cool, you’ve lost the game.

I love Memphis, and just being there affects one’s outlook.

‘The Sound of Silk’ will serve as a lens for larger questions about cultural identity in a global society and the potential for individuals to act as catalysts for change.

I’d worked on music docs for years. It felt like writing a novel. By the time I got to Keith Richards, it felt like making a sketch.