i went to the marshall curry dinner conversation not knowing anything about him other than that he was a documentary filmmaker. truthfully i haven’t seen many documentaries that aren’t crappy history channel specials about ancient aliens, but the few i have (jiro dreams of sushi, room 237, food inc, mistaken for strangers, and montage of heck being the five i can think of off the top of my head), i’ve really enjoyed. marshall told us a little bit about his journey from majoring in comparative religion, to his philanthropic projects, to his work in web design, to his decision to just buy a camera and final cut pro, and give a shot at making a documentary, something he’d wanted to do for a long time. i have a lot of respect for that. it’s so easy to say, “oh, well, that thing i want–it’s way too unrealistic to want. i’m just not even going to try.” but he went ahead and did it anyway. good on you marshall curry. also, he told us that, when he was a web designer, he worked with matt berninger, who later went on to be the lead signer of the national, which is crazy awesome. marshall curry even produced a documentary on the band called mistaken for strangers (which as i said, i’d coincidentally seen already). i’ll definitely be bragging about having me a guy who knows the guy from the national to all my friends now. anyway, after dinner i went to the showing of curry’s first film street fight, which i enjoyed quite a bit. (now i can tell people that i’ve seen six documentaries that i’ve really liked.) overall, i’d rate the evening a solid 10/10 and would recommend it to a top ten friend, especially if he or she happens to like the national.