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.

If you're successful and growing, you can manage any way you want to. Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth stops that things get tough.

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on 'being more' rather than simply having more.

The message of transformation and how we all can live from our heart, not just from our head, was a very important message for me to learn in my own life.

The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.