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MERIN: You direct both documentaries and narrative features. How does your work on one genre affect or inform your work on the other?
SANDERS: Actually, I think a lot of people who see film, don’t always know the difference between film and reality, especially if the film is based on a true story.

As for my work, I try to deal with documentary as though it’s a dramatic film, and I try to tell the dramatic film as though it’s reality.

I think the only difference is that in dramatic films you have to create everything: the set, the characters and so forth. In a documentary, you’ve got reality--although I hate the word reality, or rather I love the word reality, but they’ve ruined it with reality TV. That’s so wrong. Why don’t they call that a talent show, these weird survival things, that have nothing to do with reality. Nobody calls them on that, and I don’t understand why. They’re creating a situation for improvisation, maybe, but it’s not reality at all and it shouldn’t be called that.

MERIN: While you’re making a documentary film, do you think of your subjects as actors? Do they become characters?

SANDERS: Yes. Like in Fighting For Life, Crystal’s father--well, I told him that if he came to Hollywood he could be a great character actor. I do think of them as actors. They’re all movie stars. I’m drawn to people who project, and who could be stars. Even in a documentary film, you really are creating a star.

I have this euphoric feeling that everybody could be a star if they have the right director.

I wander down the street and see people who could be stars. It’s not about good looks. Like Dustin Hoffman, who isn’t the handsomest man in the world, but who is totally fascinating.

MERIN: When you’re dealing with your subjects--or shall we call them actors?--do you direct them?

SANDERS: In Fighting For Life, it’s completely cinema verite--except when I’m talking with someone, and I don’t do that much, and when I do, it’s usually on the run, or in the field.

It’s like breaking the fourth wall in the theater--but nothing is staged, nothing rehearsed. I don’t tell anybody anything. My job is to get the access and have the camera be in the right place at the right time at all times, and capture what’s happening as though if this were take three or four, it couldn’t be any better. I tell the subjects, we’re invisible. I just give them enough direction to let them know to pay no attention to us. Otherwise people may feel self-conscious. It’s almost a kind of hypnosis--you tell them you’re invisible and then they don’t see you. But I do tell people they can show emotion--because sometimes they’re so professional--or shy--they don’t show what they’re feeling. So, I give them that freedom to show their feelings. It’s guidance rather than direction, and that helps tremendously.

MERIN: Of the various phases of filmmaking, which do you like best? Research, pre-production, shooting or editing?

SANDERS: I love the research, because you’re there alone or with one person studying everything in depth, traveling unencumbered with equipment. I love the problems of pre-production--it’s a lot of work, just solving the puzzles, but it’s great. Shooting is the most stressful--you’re holding the crew together, and anything can happen--even foul weather can interrupt the word. But it’s fun. The editing is incredibly painstaking--it takes a long time, I say it takes three times longer than you thought it would take. There’s the preparation to edit, the digestion of the footage. You have to see it so many times, it gets in your blood. And then there all the iterations of the cuts--you think it’s good, but go away from it for a day or two and take another look and realize it isn’t working. Finally you get it to work.

I’d say I like all the phases. I’ve been at this a long time, and couldn’t dream of doing anything else.