Steve James Quotes

I am deeply honored to be making 'Life Itself,' a documentary on the life of Roger Ebert, and to have had the full cooperation and enthusiasm of Roger and his wife, Chaz.

One of the differences between real documentaries and reality television, besides the artificial construct of reality television, is that the people who are recruited to be on those shows, and the people who are interested in going on those shows, basically want to be famous. Or maybe they can win a million dollars or something.

I'm endlessly fascinated with the ways families work and the ways they don't.

From a young age, I wanted to play in the NBA. Oh well ... It was when I was a senior in college that I fell for film, but even then, it wasn't documentaries. It wasn't until I ended up in graduate school at Southern Illinois University that I really discovered documentaries and thought that maybe that would be my calling.

For most of my films, I've had to go out and start shooting before I could get the rest of the funding. That was the case with 'Hoop Dreams,' 'Stevie' and 'The Interrupters:' We started them quietly out of Kartemquin Films, only really going to funders once we had something to show and a firm idea of what the film might be.

I think when people go into something for the right reasons, you're going to get a better film; you're going to get more intimacy and a stronger foundation of trust.

You kind of form a bond with your subjects, in a way. You're in it together. To a degree that people don't realize, documentary films - or at least the kind of documentary films I'm interested in - are a collaborative undertaking with the subjects.