JR: When did meet you Ted Bonnit?

EM: Ted was interested in a book I had worked on about the Kennedy assassination and conspiracy theories. We had talked in general about the whole phenomena of conspiracy theories and how it applied to many things.

JR: Are conspiracies still a pet hobby of yours?

EM: I hate to tell you, but I think reality has outpaced the conspiracy theorists. We're living in one giant conspiracy. There's no way out. Nobody bats an eye anymore. This is really off the track, but when you stop and just think about what has transpired in the last five years or so, it's mind-boggling. It turns normal people with normal questions into lunatic freaks when you say something like "that guy in the White House stole the election," people might call you a crank. It is a conspiracy.

JR: We do have to live with stunning contradictions. How about Dan and Dave? It seems, on a more personal level, that they lived with a few glaring contradictions.

EM: Yes, Dan being a devout Catholic with all girls in his family, yet here he is in a business where everything in their life is paid for by the exploitation of women. We're not there to excoriate. We want people to question it in themselves. We don't want to point fingers. I'll be quite honest with you. I don't really know how I feel about it.

I met Margaret, Dan's wife, and I do not know if she was fully aware of what Dan did for a living. It's a different generation. In some respects, it's a portrait of men and women of that generation. If she said "Well I don't know how I feel about that," then Dan's answer would be "Well how do you feel about the food on the table?" That would be the end of the conversation. Dan was a bear in his younger days. He could just steamroll people. We're making a movie about a guy like that who has mellowed out.

The thing about Dave that made him so fascinating was his relationship with Carole. That was a successful marriage. The other thing that was fascinating is that Carole and Dave were very different. Politically, they were 180 degrees opposed. Carole was a liberal, thinking woman. Dave is a real conservative republican. Carole was the nicest, most articulate, intelligent woman married to a sleaze-meister. Dave is a bright articulate guy, but Dave just knows what he likes. He likes being a bad boy. He knows what he can get away with, and he'll do it.

Dave might be offended that I'm saying this, but the dynamics of exploitation are really interesting to me. It's a fine line. Let's say you're a young woman and you want to be in the movie business and you meet a guy like Dave Friedman and he says "Honey I'll put you in the movies." And then, you start shooting a movie and he says "OK take your top off." They go through all that, and the woman might start thinking, "OK. Did that. It wasn't horrible, the money's good. People pay attention to me. Not a bad way to make a buck." Now, the dynamic is virtually the same if you're talking about a guy pulling a woman into prostitution. It's the same, yet it's totally different. Dave just operates on this whole other level where there's a camera involved, as opposed to the direct exploitation as "OK, you go with him. I take the money."Then, he's just pimping, but with a camera, it's different. It leaves you scratching your head.