Errol Morris
Errol Morris
Errol Mark Morrisis an American film director. In 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth5 February 1948
CityHewlett, NY
CountryUnited States of America
taken thinking guarantees
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.
past order remember
Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it.
people interviews stuff
My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.
drama confused two
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.
thinking support world
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.
essence problem lied
What is it that angers us?... We have been tricked. In essence, we have been lied to. The problem is not that the photograph has been manipulated, but that we have been manipulated by the photograph.
needs want way
If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don't need Photoshop. You don't need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don't need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.
strong mean people
There is a documentary element in my films, a very strong documentary element, but by documentary element, I mean an element that's out of control, that's not controlled by me. And that element is the words, the language that people use, what they say in an interview. They're not written, not rehearsed. It's spontaneous, extemporaneous material. People
believe opposites seeing-is-believing
They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.
thinking people narrative
People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.
believe self deception
If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.
hearing simply
Interviews, when they are just simply an exercise in hearing what you want to hear, are of no interest.
If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing.