Brian De Palma: Well, it didn’t start as a documentary. It sort of evolved because of the many dinners that [Baumbach and Paltrow and I] had together, talking about the kinds of things that directors talk about at dinner, in relationship to the movies they’ve made. And Noah and Jake were interested in a new digital camera, so they bought it, and they thought it might be interesting to record some of the stories I had told them over dinner.

So we went back to Jake’s apartment, and Jake operated the camera and Noah did the sound and they just basically asked me questions, recounting things that had had happened to me throughout my career.

I think they did a very good job illustrating what I was talking about. I did those interviews over five years ago, the footage sat around for a couple of years while [Jake and Noah] were making movies. And then they had some time to get back to illustrating what I was talking about, and did kind of a remarkable job. I don’t know if it’s good because I’m pretty honest about what happened to me, and I guess it’s very instructive to people getting involved in making movies, in Hollywood and elsewhere.

In the film, you talk a lot about the reception that different films of yours received, and also how well you thought they worked as movies, how good you thought they were. And two of the films that you seemed particularly proud of were “Casualties of War” and “Carlito’s Way.” I was heartened to hear that you think those movies are as good as many of your fans do, even though they weren’t necessarily your biggest hits.

Well, “Casualties of War” took, I don’t know, a decade to get made. I read the story in the '60s and was later given the option to develop that turned around, and an option to develop that turned around. And it was only after the success of “The Untouchables” that I was finally able to get control of the property. It was the best story, it illustrated a tragedy in the Vietnam war, and I was very fortunate to have a very talented screenwriter, David Rabe, who also had been fascinated by this story that he had read in The New Yorker, as I had, 20 years earlier.