—Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on the art of the interview. He goes on:

This is the thread that has animated and connected his documentaries, which have specialized in both upending received wisdom and finding the humanity behind it. And it’s the question that has connected Morris, the investigator, to his sources. “What were they thinking?”

Answering that question requires, above all, “a willingness to listen,” Morris said. Obvious, yes, but also often forgotten — particularly in the documentary context, where directors are often, implicitly, actors in the work they produce. Though interviewers often ask their sources questions to which they already know the answers, he noted, it’s far more productive that they be guided by true curiosity, by a true desire to learn something new.