As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.

I was watching 'The September Issue' in the back of a theater in New York, and I thought, 'I know I really can do this with actors.'

Reality television has borrowed so much from the world of politics, whether it's alliances or voting or the kind of strategizing that's done. Anything like that came from politics well before it came from reality television.

I believe a democracy needs men and women of conviction in its positions of leadership in order for us to succeed. That's the subject of 'A Perfect Candidate,' a film I made 20 years ago about Oliver North and Charles Robb.

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.

I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

You have to have a certain amount of limitations, I think, to make art and to make something that can be alive on film. Money can get in the way of that.