“There’s something so lovely and deep and American about that, particularly because it’s a culture that’s such a melting pot. Coppola captured that so beautifully, but with humor. That’s just something I love over and over and over—the outsiders trying to become the insiders.”

“It falls into that classic verité tradition.”

“When I did Hospital, I wanted the feeling that the audience was peeking around the corner. So I did a lot of it handheld. I kept saying to the operators on certain shots, ‘Messy good, messy good.’ Which is very hard for the operator to hear. They’re trained to be good and they can’t be messy. Then you’d say, ‘But I want that.’ Deep down the camera operators were afraid that other operators would look at it and say, ‘You’re messy.’ So I’d have to create shots that they couldn’t do well, or I’d go handheld. And a lot of it is done that way.”

“Every shot was chosen; you could see that it was meticulously planned out. It was so deceptively simple. It’s kind of like a haiku.”