Success and singing is not synonymous.
— Morgan Neville
I so often doubt how much people on television believe what they're saying. They're playing roles for think tanks or political parties or shills of whatever stripe.
In the late 1960s, English artists like the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker began recording in the States, and at that point, they realised, 'We can get real African-American voices on our records; we don't have to pretend any more.'
In a weird way, our satirists probably have the most complicated, nuanced views of our politics now - Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. I don't know what that says about our country.
Now, you watch cable news, and you know what everybody's going to say before they open their mouth.
Everyone feels entitled to their own facts.
I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it's a heroic pursuit.
Church singing is a great training ground.
Maybe this is my left-wing conspiracy theory, but the right has re-branded itself as kind of the everyman party: Who's the person you'd rather have a beer with? The Republican Party, even though it's a party of incredible wealth and corporate interests, has hidden behind this everyman quality.
If we can't agree on objective truth, then how are we ever going to agree on opinions?
So much of what we get on our news debate shows is really people spinning one way or the other, giving their talking points one way or the other.
They don't make people like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley anymore.
I always tell aspiring documentary filmmakers, 'You have to go into it because you love it; if you go into it for the money, you're an idiot.' The number one prerequisite is you have to be intensely curious. If you love learning and trying to make people figure out what makes people tick, it's the best job in the world.
I came up in left-wing political writing. My first job out of college was working as Gore Vidal's fact checker.
The idea of music coming from the Church is not new.
Politicians pretend not to be smart.
TV tends to laud the person with the perfect one-liner rather than the one with the better idea.
If the Olympic Spirit is about overcoming every hurdle and accepting no limits, then I think Samsung is a great ambassador for these values.
The presidential and vice-presidential debates are those rare moments when people come together, but to even call them debates is a stretch because they're played by such negotiated rules, and they're so over-rehearsed.
There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.
