Trivia

Werner Herzog promised that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever completed Gates of Heaven (1978), which he actually did at the movie's premiere. Les Blank's short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) shows the whole story.

In the 2002 Sight & Sound poll, he listed his ten favorite films as: Detour (1945), There's Always Tomorrow (1956), Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), A Man Escaped (1956) ("A Man Escaped), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), Stray Dog (1949), The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966), Human Desire (1954), Ace in the Hole (1951), and Psycho (1960).

Thinks of himself as a "detective director", and he did, indeed, work as a private eye in the early 1980s.

Morris has interviewed two former United States Secretaries of Defense for two of his movies: Donald Rumsfeld and Robert McNamara.

When he was growing up.in Long Island, he never cared much for movies and was into "maps, stamp collecting, and trilobites".

He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Thin Blue Line (1988) and The Fog of War (2003).

Morris' interest in films began at Berkeley when he found himself programming film retrospectives at the Pacific Film Archives. Douglas Sirk became a favorite.

Name of his production company is Globe Department Store.

Graduated from the Putney School in Vermont (1965).

Attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating with a B.A. in history (1969).