One afternoon when I was working at the Maryland Film Office, I was putting a package of pictures together for a client. It was for the Superman movie, which was on again off again for a very long time. At one point Kevin Smith wrote a script for the film, but I think that he was so immersed in the comic book life of Superman that it made the script incredibly expensive to shoot.
Anyway, I was sitting down with (I'm pretty sure he was the location manager), discussing one of the files..."the highway to nowhere." He came into my office and at that time I had a really nice office, a corner office with two big windows and brand new office furniture. Apparently, he really enjoys checking out people's workspaces. I had a couple of pictures up in my office at the time, so the conversation then lent itself to photography.
The one picture that I vividly recall us discussing was this one that I took at Coney Island in New York City at the Siren Music Festival. My friend (at the time), was standing next to street vendor's cart wearing a pair of funky Bootsy Collins-esque glasses that read in big letters "2002". (I happen to love Bootsy Collins...I used to have a poster of him wearing his big star glasses hanging in my apartment on St. Paul street.) There was a petite Asian-Indian guy holding a pinwheel in the background. I was inspired by Wes Anderson and it worked. He really liked that picture and he told me that I had a good eye. Being a photographer himself, I was really very flattered by his positive comments.
Later, I looked him up online and viewed some of his photography. The most striking photographs were the ones that he took on the streets of New York City during 9/11. He must've lived in New York. It was incredible the way he captured the emotions of the people on the streets. In the pictures was a mix of confusion and horror expressed on their faces, totally unlike anything you've ever seen in a Hollywood movie. Almost hard to put into words.
The (new) Commercial Manager in our office came up to me and kept telling me "He's in Forbes. He's in Forbes." I suppose being in Forbes is cool, however I was really more impressed with the fact that he was a really nice guy.
