Documentary Format Quotes

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

Reality television hasn't killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show.

'This is Spinal Tap' was a film we felt really had to be done like that. It wouldn't have worked any other way. And it turned out to be the first time a fiction film had really been made in a documentary format. I continued to do that, obviously, because it's a fun way to work.

It's not exactly an interview that's going on [in documentary]. I guess we do ask Edward Snowden some questions and we're recording him answering them and so on like that.

A mockumentary is supposed to be real, and we were frustrated with mockumentaries on TV, which are so rampant because of the success of 'The Office.' It's not real. You watch and ask why is there even a crew there. They never set it up in the narrative. You have a documentary crew following families for reasons we don't understand.

If there is a tendency in modern television I hate, it is the unstoppable march of the dramatic reconstruction to tell the stories of anything from an ancient Egyptian battle to the early life of Paul Gascoigne.

I think most documentaries are too long.

I think the reality-show format is brilliant, has endless possibilities. It's documentary! But unfortunately, it's rarely executed well. So it becomes just a scripted show, but without actors.

I am just not a great fan of the Piers Morgan format. I would rather do something a bit more substantial.

I love documentaries. I love the format. I've been doing them for a long time.

I'm a big watcher of sports, consumer of sports content, so I love documentaries; I love the format.

I think you could very much make a 'Vanity Fair' in 2018, and I think it would probably look like a documentary.