Errol Morris on His Movie--and Long Friendship--With Stephen Hawking

The late Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time is one of history's least likely best-sellers. Yet the book was a pop-cultural phenomenon, selling more than 10 million copies and popularizing everything from advanced cosmological theories to the phrase "turtles all the way down." It was also adapted into a documentary of the same name by Errol Morris. A Brief History of Time (which is currently streamable on FilmStruck) was Morris' first major documentary after The Thin Blue Line and the first of his portrait films. Combining interviews with Hawking, his family, his friends, and his colleagues with clips from Disney's bizarre live-action sci-fi film The Black Hole, archival images, and, of course, a Philip Glass score, A Brief History of Time is the kind of film that only Morris could make. After Hawking's death on Wednesday, I called up Morris to talk about making the film, why Hawking was his generation's celebrity scientist, and their friendship, which continued for decades. Isaac Butler: What drew you to the book--or to Hawking--as a subject?