Errol Morris Quotes

Every fact in my films is true. And yet how often do I have to read over and over again about supposed falsehoods?

As much as I like Michael Moore - and I'm on the same political side as him - I think his documentaries are really a batch of manipulations and lies.

In terms of so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries, there's a claim that the camera is a transparent window into a pre-existing reality. What really is happening is that the film crew and the subjects are collaborating to simulate a reality in which they pretend the camera is not present.

I don't know the facts surrounding Andrew Jarecki's work. I think it's a triumph of television. But it does raise troubling issues that I think we as a documentary community, you know, need to address.

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

In documentaries, you're confronted with reality; you can not manipulate or move it.

In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.

Truth is quite constricting, in a way. You endlessly see at the start of a film 'This is a true story'.

I like documentaries because there's nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren't just right. It's about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true.

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you can't airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

I think it's fair to ask how truthful a film is as opposed to how factual it is.

This is not a documentary. Are there essential truths that are captured by this movie? I think unquestionably the answer is yes. Do you have to change certain things to make it work? The book is called '13 Hours'; the movie is two hours long.

I don't want to manipulate actuality; I want to record it.

The only obligation you have as a film-maker is to tell your version of the truth and to use your film to illuminate reality. Whatever that means.

Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.

With fiction, you can do whatever you want to, but if you are making a film on someone, you have to stick to the truth. You cannot just say that I will change the climax because I do not like it.

I was criticised for making 'Devdas' so ostentatious. But stark and realistic cinema isn't the only real cinema in this country.

I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.

Objectivity is the purpose of documentary filmmakers.

A documentary film-maker can't help but use poetry to tell the story. I bring truth to my fiction. These things go hand in hand.

Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.

The more facts I can have, the better. I can operate very nicely between them, but I am not very good at making things up. I am not sure how ethical it is.

If a director takes the time to document - to step back to observe - I think it I more honest. Because it has to be the public that makes the conclusions and who, possibly, resolves the situation.

In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.

My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.