Errol Morris Quotes - Page 4

I probably wouldn't have done [ Fred Leuchter story] if it was just a story about an executioner or a holocaust denier, but the combination of the two elements was irresistible. So yeah, I find it strange that there are so many people out there now.

We live in a very litigious society. I've never sued anybody. I certainly can imagine a situation where I might sue, but it seems more or less in bad taste.

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.

Right now, we live in bad times in this country, and the fact that there are filmmakers addressing political and social issues is to me a good thing.

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.

We imagine what this country is, but quite clearly, this country is a mystery. I mean, one of the reasons I did the election ads is, I thought I could learn something. Like, what the hell is going on? I think anybody - particularly a person of leftist persuasion such as myself - who stops and thinks even for a moment, realizes that something strange is going on and we don't quite get it.

It was assumed that you can't touch evangelical Christians. "Oh, they're the Republican Right. Stay away from those people. Don't even try to talk to them." Well, what's interesting is that there were evangelical Christians who were voting for Kerry. There were right-to-lifers who were voting for Kerry. And it's interesting to listen to the reasons why. To ignore that segment of the electorate is moronic. Particularly if you don't know who those people are, or what their concerns are.

Tell me what's wrong with this idea: If you're selling to somebody, find someone like that person to sell to them. If you're trying to reach swing voters, if you're trying to reach people on the fence, if you're trying to reach Republicans who are unsure about this candidate... get people who switched! Get people who are registered Republicans. Get people who were George Bush voters who can't bring themselves to do it again. Talk to them, get them to explain what their reasons are, and show them to people. What's wrong with this idea?!

You can ask yourself, if a film makes a claim, is the claim true or false? Having said that, a style of presenting material doesn't guarantee truth. There's this crazy idea that somehow you pick a style, and by virtue of picking the style, you've provided something that is more truthful. It's as if you imagine that changing the font on a sentence you write makes it more truthful.

I actually felt diminished by watching [Donald Trump's]. If this is what discourse has become in America, who even wants to know about it? It's just too demoralizing and unsettling.

You know, anything more negative, anything more disparaging, anything more adversarial than what [Donald Trump] does already. The mystery is how he's gotten as far as he's gotten.

I asked [Donald Trump] if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, "Yeah, get yourself a different woman."

I actually wanted to publish [ interview with Donald Trump about Citizen Kane] in the New York Times, but the circumstances under which I did that movie made me vulnerable to a lawsuit and at this point in my career, I don't want to go there. But it's amazing.

In the case of The Thin Blue Line, I was surprised actually by many things. I was shooting down in Texas where the actual killer David Harris lived and I interviewed the town cop. He described these guys as being David Harris' partners in crime and even though they had criminal records and had committed crimes, they sued me! More often than not, the insurance company that protects you against this type of lawsuit will settle it with cash and contest it in a court of law.

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.

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.

I like to think that one of things I've done with non-fiction since the very beginning is to find new ways of telling true stories.

There is such a thing as truth, but we have a vested interest in not seeing it, in avoiding it.

Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.

You can talk about a caption underneath a photograph being true or false, because there is a linguistic element. You can claim that a photograph is a picture of a horse or a cow, but it is the sentence that expresses the claim, which is true or false, not the photograph.

I don't believe that you can talk about a photograph being true or false. I don't think such a claim has any meaning.

You can't tell by looking at a film-clip whether it is a drama or a documentary without knowing how it was produced.

There are many dramas that I would like to make: dramas based on real stories. It's approaching things from the other side.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

Think of my movies as heightening our awareness, not confusing the difference between truth and fiction, but heightening our awareness of how confused we can become about what is real.