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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
Ends
Confused
Make
Begins
Deeply
Drama
Spurious
Difference
Distinctions
Differences
Documentary
Issues
Documentaries
Two
Distinction

More quotes by Errol Morris

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The first Polaroid ever took of someone in my family was my son when he was about four years old.
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It's pretty clear that fame isn't inextricably connected with merit .
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I like to think that every movie emerges from the conversations.
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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.
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We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.
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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?
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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.
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Maybe [killers] is one of my real passions. Why deny it?
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I've always wondered where explanations end and excuses begin.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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 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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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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I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.
Errol Morris
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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
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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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There are many dramas that I would like to make: dramas based on real stories. It's approaching things from the other side.
Errol Morris
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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