holy celebrity-sighting, batman!

brace yourselves people. i have just come from a Q & A session with KEVIN SPACEY, yes...THE Kevin Spacey of The Usual Suspects, Seven, American Beauty, etc - fame!!! is that not just insane?!?

ok...so jessica isawa calls me last night around 10pm asking me if i want to go to a free screening of a new Kevin Spacey movie at the HUB. i'm like...of course...i love movies and i love free, so having the love of free movies - i totally wanted to go. she then told me it was going to be at 3pm and i was bummed because i have class until 3:30 on thursdays. so i declined, not wanting to skip class and all since it is a 2-hour, twice weekly class. and she mentioned that a VIP associated with the movie would be there to answer questions after the screening, and that it might be Kevin Spacey himself. i was thinking how cool that'd be, but also that it seemed a tad unlikely. so as of last night, i wasn't going. so earlier today, jessica and i had planned to meet up for lunch and when i walked into the HUB, people were already in line at 11:45am for the 3pm screening. it suddenly hits that Kevin Spacey is really coming to the HUB. so...after some inner conflict and struggle, i decided to skip class - which...i still feel kinda bad about. BUT, the thing is, this is like a once in a lifetime chance, and jessica had two tickets - one for her and one for me. and this is only a big deal because i guess the tickets were given out yesterday and not this morning like she thought. and when she went this morning, they told her that the giveaway was the previous day. BUT they did happen to have TWO tickets left! i don't know how to categorize that, but it put me over the edge of deciding in favor of the movie.

so, we waited in line from 12:45pm until screening time and we got emily chu and june nishimura to join us and when they finally let us in to the auditorium, we ran for some decent seats, which i think we got. so we saw the movie, The Life of David Gale and afterwards, Kevin Spacey came on stage and it was just sooooooo cool!!! he was totally funny, sarcastic, cracking jokes and telling stories, and answering questions. And he appeared to be pretty down to earth, well, at least that's what it felt like to me. it's funny listening to the people who asked questions, most of them would preface the question with some gushing of how much they love his movies, work, etc and then toss in "i'm an aspiring actor and so..." like seriously, who isn't an aspiring actor? yeesh. the questions were of the usual variety, probably stuff he's answered a bagillion times, but he made the answers fun and entertaining and added to them, which was great. at this point, i doubt there are a lot of original questions out there to even ask.

anywho...i suppose that i could've come up with something, but just ditching class to go there was enough "carpe diem" for one day. :) we were like 30-40 feet away from him, and granted, it's not close, but hey, we were all in the same room with the guy so that's pretty dang awesome. and i think jessica got some photos, so i'm getting double prints of those... *crossing my fingers that they turned out well*

and the movie was good too. really intense and graphic at times. the basic premise is that a philosophy professor who is also an advocate of getting rid of the death penalty finds himself on death row awaiting execution for rape and murder. it flashes back between the past and present to tell his story and it has so many levels and there is so much humanity and even commentary about the human condition and about how it is that people end up at point b from point a. i have to see it again just so pick apart some of the issues, ideas, and themes. it's totally a movie that you'd end up talking about as you're walking out of the theater because it provokes thinking about issues like capital punishment, etc. it's a great story - not because it's happy and makes you feel good, but because it's gritty and maybe controversial and shakes up our cozy little worlds.

i'm dazed.