Who Are These People
(And What Are They Doing Here?)

Your job title is Associate Programmer/ Kodak Connect Producer - but who are you really? I'm not sure I'm deep enough to answer this question... Born and raised in bucolic Concord, MA, I guess you could say I am officially a long way from home.

Job titles aren't very descriptive, and the festival would obviously fall apart without you. What do you really do around here? As you might have guessed from the dual title, I'm positively swimming in hats. Sometimes I'm making sure our AFI FEST filmmakers get the chance to meet film industry movers and shakers during Kodak CONNECT. Other times I'm attempting to ensure that said moving and shaking includes a stint at AFI. And then for several glorious months this summer I was watching upwards of 15 hours of films a day while helping to determine which ones would be a part of this year's program. My Mom calls this 'getting paid to watch movies' and describes it as 'the job you were born to do.' I agree with the latter sentiment, but I'm not sure I like her tone.

Why do you work for AFI Fest? The parking. Free, all-day, secure parking smack dab in the middle of Hollywood for 11 days. It's just amazing. Also, we get serious discounts on day-old popcorn.

What's your favorite thing about the fest? Putting faces to all the names that were flashing across my TV all summer. And then buying the owners of those faces drinks.

What's one movie you are really looking forward to? I'm not going to fall victim to your little ruse and come off as the sort of Associate Programmer who plays favorites. So let's just go with Iron Man. It looks completely rad.

After this is all over, what's the first thing you're going to do? Two days of sleep and then an embarrassingly long shower. Maybe some Chinese?