In assessing another primate’s similarities or differences to us humans, I think back to a memorable scene in your film “The King” about the subject of intelligent design being taught in schools. Did the social atmosphere we’re in, where evolution is concerned, affect the choices you made in conveying Nim’s story at all?
I think it can’t help but inform what you do. In this story are some profound ideas about the nature of evolution, the nature of language, and our relationships with animals generally. By telling this story, you necessarily have to ponder some of these ideas, but the story itself was my main focus here. I wasn’t really trying to get into the abstractions, though embedded within the story are these interesting and troubling ideas that I hope you reckon with as you watch the film itself.

I find that your work is striking often for what’s not being said. In “Man on Wire,” you never mention 9/11, yet the 21st Century viewer can’t help but regard Philippe Petit in the context of that event. So if this film considers evolution at all, you take the same kind of approach, don’t you?
In a sense. I don’t think there’s any kind of debate about evolution. It’s kind of baffling to me to live in the 21st Century and to have to have that discussion with people. I think evolution is a given in this story and implicit in the world itself.