The book is written in the first person, but that I is the most deceptive, tricky pronoun. There are two of us. I’m a chronicler of this character at the center who is, but in a necessary sense is not, me. He doesn’t have my retrospect or my leisure. He doesn’t know what’s around the next bend. He’s ignorant of consequences. He moves through the book in a state of innocence about the future, whereas of course I as the writer, from the time I begin writing the first paragraph, do know what the future holds. I know how the story is going to turn out. Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me. Cinéma vérité looks for performers in everyday life; without them, you really haven’t got footage. Some people have whatever quality it is that makes them interesting on film—a kind of self-confidence or self-assuredness mixed, perhaps, with a degree of vulnerability—and other people don’t have it, but as a filmmaker you know it when you see it.
