just, here he is, ask him some questions get your shoes signed? I am very jealous
Yeah, surprisingly. No films shown. No questions from the moderater. He just came out and started taking questions. Super accessible. We were all pretty close to him. It wasn't a big stadium or anything. It was smaller than a lot of classrooms I've been in. I'd call it pretty intimate. A couple of people walked right up to him during the Q&A to hand him something. It was a pretty comfortable atmosphere, but still always a special moment. And that was pretty amazing, because for me, this was as big a "celebrity meeting" as could be. He's probably the biggest hero of mine, and I really enjoyed finding him to be so approachable. It was inspiring to me, actually. I think it always is when you meet your hero, and be able to poke through that mythic cloak and see him as a person.
The room wasn't totally packed. And it felt like maybe 2/3rds of the people were Berkeley people who just enjoyed his movies and thought what the hell, might as well come see him, and then 1/3rd were die-hard fans, who travelled many a mile to see him for just a couple of hours. I guess he's not as generally well known as I had thought... For most of the people in the crowd, this was a pretty cool way to spend the evening, and for a select few, this was a night that would generate untold good vibes that could basically radiate throughout their life in a one-good-thing-leads-to-another sort of way.
Hopefully that conveys the mood of the evening for you. The more I think about it, the more important and special it was to me.
P.S. He did not specifically mention Maya's name. A couple of people mentioned his "girlfriend," respectfully. His mention of Fiona was only in discussing Extraordinary Machine (what happened with Brion and Apple during that, to which he replied "you'd have to ask them."), the Paper Bag video, and the show with Elliot Smith.
