I come out of a background — I was a private detective for years after I started as a filmmaker. I like to think, of course I could be completely wrong, that there’s this detective element in everything I do. My movies start from interviews. Everything that I’ve really done —The Thin Blue Line started from bizarre, odd interviews. But interviews that are investigative. … The element of spontaneity is not knowing what someone is going to say in front of the camera, having really no idea, of being surprised. I know that there’s this moment in all of the interviews that I’ve loved where something happens. I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time again.”
Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War)
The Believer — Errol Morris talks with Werner Herzog
The Errol Morris ‘Three-Minute Rule’
July 30, 2018 by Scott W. Smith