I went to a festival pretending to work as a journalist to get free tickets and interview people I really admired. I remember one of these people was Guillermo del Toro.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I met Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu years ago during my college days, and I was in charge of international promotion of this movie festival he was invited to as part of the jury, and then he saw my work on a short film that was directed by a friend of mine.
I have a real thing for Mexican directors. And I love Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
The most memorable interviews for me are folks whose names I don't know: young civil rights leaders in the South, showing great courage as they walked into a town in the dark of night. A doctor working for 'Doctors Without Borders' in Somalia, operating by kerosene light in a tent. Those are the kinds of people that linger in your memory.
Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for 'Pop' magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.
I met all these important people and did all these stories, but I always had such excellent producers and assistants. I could show up to interview a world leader or a criminal and they would have things so well prepared anyone could have done it. It wasn't about 'me,' it was about 'us.'
The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.
I feel that I've worked with a lot of interesting people, and I have no regrets. I'm just curious about what I might have done if I'd had people in my life then who did explain what the publicity game was.
I worked with people I admire; Josh Lucas, who I'd worked with many many years ago on a pilot called The Class of 61 and Kurt Russell, and so there were a variety of different people that I enjoyed working with.
The person I've always wanted to interview but never met was Richard Burton.
I got to work with Eli Vargas. Great guy. Huge in Spain. He's a heartthrob there. Who else? Terry Crews - he was really funny.