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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.
Errol Morris -
If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don't need Photoshop. You don't need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don't need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.
Errol Morris
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The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate with Donald Trump.
Errol Morris -
I like to think that every movie emerges from the conversations.
Errol Morris -
Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.
Errol Morris -
Writing is a form of talking, although writing is such an odd thing in and of itself. People go about it in such different ways.
Errol Morris -
War is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is difficult, if not impossible, thing to understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning - even virtue. It starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops.
Errol Morris -
What's great about documentary genre, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of "documentary."
Errol Morris
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Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.
Errol Morris -
I've done interviews in one day that went on for fifteen, sixteen hours. And at a certain point, the control over what they're saying breaks down; it becomes different. It becomes really powerful, and for me, real. It becomes out of control.
Errol Morris -
We have more information - a glut of information - than ever before, and perhaps less knowledge. That's what's peculiar. And the only way you can deal with it, I suppose, is to make fun of it. I would rather watch Comedy Central for the news than I'd like to watch any other program on television. Maybe that shows you the state of affairs.
Errol Morris -
The way I go about making a movie... even the ones that are interview-driven, I go into them not knowing what's going to happen, and feeling my way through.
Errol Morris -
There's a line I love in Conan The Barbarian where someone says, "That used to be another snake cult, now I see it everywhere." That's certainly true of documentaries. I wouldn't say it's ubiquitous, but it's become close to ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
Errol Morris -
But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.
Errol Morris
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A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins.
Errol Morris -
Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it.
Errol Morris -
People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don't have to think about whether it's true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness.
Errol Morris -
Truth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!
Errol Morris -
The perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and accomplishes nothing.
Errol Morris -
I asked Donald Trump if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, "Yeah, get yourself a different woman."
Errol Morris
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The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."
Errol Morris -
Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some damn good here!
Errol Morris -
Twenty to thirty years ago, who was making documentary films? Nobody. Well, relatively few people. It was an art form that had limited theatrical distribution, if any at all. Some television distribution, but relatively small audiences regardless. And in the intervening years it's become more and more popular with a lot of people.
Errol Morris -
Appearing on the front page of the New York Times even given the state of papers today is still something that's seen by a lot of people.
Errol Morris