R. J. Cutler

“I grew up on Long Island, and from as early as I can remember, as far back as first grade, I had two real passions - one of them was putting on plays, and the other was journalism. I was directing plays and editing school papers from first grade on, all the way through college.”

“On some level, you could say you wouldn't have 'In Style Magazine' at all had Anna Wintour not decided to put celebrities on the cover of 'Vogue' from her earliest years as Editor in Chief.”

“I will say this: I think 'Big Brother' is the biggest snooze known to mankind.”

“No matter how much you've done before, you wonder if there will be a light at the end of this particular tunnel. It's the nature of the beast, and it's a part of what compels us. Every movie is a new lesson you learn making your way through it.”

“We're having such a great time on 'Nashville' that building on the relationship seemed an obvious next step. Lionsgate is the perfect home for the kind of scripted television I want to produce and direct.”

“Feature filmmaking is a very powerful medium. It has a hold on me now.”

“I think the biggest challenge we faced in making 'The September Issue' was the fact that people in the fashion world are very suspicious of cameras. They're used to a camera being the enemy, something that is prying and looking to catch you in a compromising position, something that's judging you.”

“Cheney refers to his vice presidency... as one of the most consequential vice presidencies in American history. And it clearly was.”

“I believe a democracy needs men and women of conviction in its positions of leadership in order for us to succeed. That's the subject of 'A Perfect Candidate,' a film I made 20 years ago about Oliver North and Charles Robb.”

“There is a fundamental notion at the core of American identity that, in this country, any little boy or girl can grow up to be president.”

“As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.”

“I discovered the theater when I was in the first grade.”

“Directing plays lacked the immediacy and connection to real world events that journalism offered; journalism lacked the drama, theatricality and subjective storytelling of theater. It wasn't until I had the idea of making a documentary film about the 1992 presidential campaign that these two passions came together in 'The War Room.'”

“I'm very curious to know what it's like, death - I always say to my wife, 'I wonder if we'll have the 'New York Times' when we're dead.'”

“Living in L.A. keeps me in my car a lot, and I'm constantly flipping back and forth between the following Sirius/XM Radio stations: NFL Radio, MLB Radio, POTUS, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News.”

“I don't think it's a coincidence that 'The War Room' and 'A Perfect Candidate' are films that have been consistently shown and available for rental for 20 years. These are films that are more about the moment in which they were filmed: they also have a great deal to say about larger issues about who we are as a country.”

“For eight months, from January to August of 2007, I filmed with Anna Wintour and her team at 'Vogue' as they created the September 2007 issue of the magazine.”

“Belushi was one of my very first heroes. At a time when film, television, and music were undergoing tectonic shifts within American culture, he was at the center of it all. At that moment, he had the number one show on television, the number one film at the box office, and the number one record on the charts.”

“The only thing documentary filmmakers have to work with, at least the way I make films, is trust. That's been true of everyone from James Carville and George Stephanopoulos to the kids in 'American High' to the soldiers in 'Military Diaries' to Anna Wintour to Dick Cheney.”

“'The September Issue' is really a film about Anna Wintour's relationship with long time 'Vogue' Creative Director Grace Coddington. The two of them have been working together for two decades, and the extraordinary symbiosis between them has left an indelible mark on the fashion industry.”