THC: How did you feel making a movie about men who themselves, some would argue, are not connected to what's really going on in the world.

JD: I feel like what distinguished the group was an interest in the real world. As intellectuals, what really distinguishes them is that they really wanted to do things relevant to real world situations--they weren't arguing fine points of arcana. My feeling is that intellectual argument is an inherently interesting thing, not only an important thing; there's drama there. People in New York have said to me that we were selling out crowds around the block, and people were surprised. People said this is a political film, that political films do not draw well. Now we'll see what happens in Boston.

Someone overheard someone in the crowd saying "I think maybe content is making a comeback," and that's something I really liked a lot. It's because there are so few people thoughtfully addressing an issue, and these four men are not pundits--they're men who think in long paragraphs and very long and complicated ways, and my experience in New York was that a lot of people were hungry for that.

THC: Were you yourself surprised that there was such a response?

JD: Two things [that] you always think: you always think when you're making it that if you make it right, people will come; and I think that you've got to go into something like this with that inner confidence that people are going to come. On the other hand, I really was surprised, and it was enormously gratifying to the filmmaker to think that you had something that you wanted to see on film, and to think that's why you do it, because it's dear to your own hearts.

THC: It's also exciting to imagine what people might think about it a hundred years from now.

D: Yeah, it's exciting to think that it's going to be preserved.