On how S.O.P. fits in with the other Iraq documentaries:

"I really don't think it does fit in. It's about Iraq, I can't really pretend otherwise, but I don't think it does the same thing. I haven't seen every Iraq documentary that's out there. I've seen a fair number of them but I'm not really interested in telling the story of torture memos in this movie. I think it's important that people have made many attempts to tell that story. I'm friends with Mark Danner who's the person who's written about torture from the beginning, even before the beginning of the war. I think he's an American hero. I just didn't want to make those films. I wanted to make something odder. I often think when I'm directing commercials - I direct a lot of commercials and one rule of thumb is that if you do things in the same way you get the same results. If you make the same documentary, you're going to wind up with more or less the same story. I just felt that for me to tell one more version of the story of the torture memos, the complicity of this administration... I have my strong feelings about it, don't get me wrong, but I decided there was an untold story that I didn't know anybody else would tell if I didn't tell it. The story of these people who've been demonized. Who are they? These photographs that have been misunderstood, what do they really show? I'm interested in how photographs reveal and conceal. They do both, at the same time."

Morris on his habit of bringing unlikable characters to film compassionately:

"I don't even know where this damn quote comes from. But I once read that art is extending compassion where it's never been extended before. I think there's some truth to that. I do like the idea of these people who are utter pariahs. Fred [Leuchter, of Mr. Death] is beyond the pale in many ways. He's an electric chair repairman who also happens to be a holocaust denier. Fred has an awful lot of politically incorrect notions floating around in his head. With a large group of people that limits his social acceptability. But I like Fred. I don't understand Fred, but he's one of my all time favorite characters. Lynndie? I like Lynndie England. I've done interviews that I'm really, really proud of, but the two interviews in S.O.P. that I'm really proudest of are of Lynndie England and Jeff Frost. They are so unexpected and endlessly interesting. Jeff Frost agonizing about the keys and how he should have taken both keys. He's completely worried. It's a moral issue. Should he have taken those keys? It consumes him. If he had, then they wouldn't have gone into the shower room and they wouldn't have taken the pictures and now it's caused all this trouble. I love this kind of endless moral questioning. Of course I feel like saying to Jeff that hey there was a murder. A MURDER."

On whether his next movie might be a little lighter:

"I wanted to do another version of Fast Cheap. I wanted to go back to something more romantic and quirky. I'd like to do a hybrid film [documentary + narrative] actually. If I can get the right actors and the money, I'm gonna have a go at it."

On who he's supporting in this year's Presidential election:

"I've given money to Obama. I would be happy with either Hillary or Obama, I'd prefer Obama. I just hope to God a Democrat wins. I don't think this country can afford more of the same. The war has been costly not just in terms of gross national product but in other ways. It has completely undermined what I think is great about America and I think that someone has to acknowledge that."

On why he feels the war has undermined the country:

"Certainly it's important to remember - I remember McNamara telling me this story that he had an argument with Johnson about the necessity of raising taxes. He felt that it was just unconscionable that you'd wage war in a deficit. Obviously, this administration feels differently. To me the biggest loss has been a sense of American values, of who we are. We are now a virtual monarchy in this country, a spineless congress, and an executive branch that believes they aren't accountable to anybody or anything. What do you do about that? Hopefully elections will change things. The country is so angry so polarized, so hopelessly divided. I wasn't alive during the American Civil War but this seems much, much worse to me than Vietnam."

On why we're so misinformed:

"Because there's a glut of information available but less good information so people are less interested in investigative reporting. Newspapers are downsizing. I don't know what it all means. I've never thought of myself as picking up the slack but I do see myself as telling stories that I think need to be told and if I'm not going to do it then I don't know who will. That's my choice."

Morris on the importance of documentaries in the current environment:

"Documentary filmmaking has certainly changed in the last twenty years. It's become much more mainstream, and there's a greater diversity in documentaries. There's reality television, reenactment television, diary television, personal documentaries of one kind or another. There are historical films and entire documentary channels. There's what I do, whatever that is. It's a bestiary."

Errol Morris on the use of Danny Elfman's score:

"I've always had a lot of discretion about putting the music where I wanted since the very beginning with The Thin Blue Line. I learned the lesson early with Phillip [Glass] that if he was going to do my music for me that he was going to put it in certain places and I might not agree with those choices. So I would move things around. Danny Elfman is really a great collaborator. He works fast, and does great work. We really like each other and we like working together. He knows how to write for movies and, in a way, it's like defeating some of those impulses, not underscoring emotion in every scene. He wrote a lot of cues and gave me room to stop him and encourage him, to develop them and make them work better. It was good."