After reading Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad when I was a student at Yale, I wanted to live in the world they captured in their books. I had had some experience living in Africa. I was drawn to that kind of adventure.

When I was at graduate school in London, I began working at NBC News, which had a thriving documentary unit.

It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street.

I have a great spouse, Andrew Cockburn, who's also a journalist.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News.

When I was in London at NBC, I was the lowest man on the totem pole. I would go to diplomatic receptions to meet people.

When you do a piece of journalism, you may have to cut away 95 percent of what you are experiencing.

I started making little films with a 16 mm camera as an undergraduate at Yale. My first job out of college was 'assistant editor' on a forgettable low budget feature.