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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

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Errol Morris
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: February 5
Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Non-Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Hewlett
New York
Errol Mark Morris
Issues
Documentaries
Two
Distinction
Ends
Confused
Make
Begins
Deeply
Drama
Spurious
Difference
Distinctions
Differences
Documentary

More quotes by Errol Morris

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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.
Errol Morris
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I remember on page one of The New York Times the article about Fred Leuchter. The heading was Can Capital Punishment Be Humane and it was the story about an electric chair repairman and execution machine designer. And then buried in the back of the paper was the fact that Fred Leuchter had also been involved in holocaust denial.
Errol Morris
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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
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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
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They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.
Errol Morris
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The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].
Errol Morris
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People often trust low-res images because they look more real. But of course they are not more real, just easier to fake. [...] You never see a 10-megapixel photograph of Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness Monster.
Errol Morris
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Mike Wallace's interviews may make great television, but they don't produce great evidence.
Errol Morris
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I think we get into all kinds of difficulty by saying photographs should be taken in a certain way which guarantees their veracity. I think that's a slippery slope to hell.
Errol Morris
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When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.
Errol Morris
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
Errol Morris
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It's so much easier to make a movie about someone who is so likeable that you just want to get out of the way.
Errol Morris
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Finding truth involves some kind of activity. As I like to point out, truth isn't handed to you on a platter. It's not something that you get at a cafeteria, where they just put it on your plate. It's a search, a quest, an investigation, a continual process of looking at and looking for evidence, trying to figure out what the evidence means.
Errol Morris
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I don't think that anybody really makes films quite like mine. That's maybe true of any filmmaker.
Errol Morris
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I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.
Errol Morris
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You can't really trust anybody who doesn't talk a lot, because how would you know what they're thinking?
Errol Morris
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Maybe [killers] is one of my real passions. Why deny it?
Errol Morris
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Truth is a pursuit, it's a quest. And proof is certainly in the pudding in this particular instance, because the film, and the evidence accumulated in making the film, led to this man's release from prison. And that's hardly ever happened, if it's happened at all, in any other film that I can think of.
Errol Morris
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I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.
Errol Morris
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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.
Errol Morris