Got to meet one of my filmmaking heroes at HotDocs Film Fest a few weeks ago, documentary legend Frederick Wiseman.

More than a couple times on my own films I’ve started out trying to do something in a Wiseman mode but then quickly changed courses when I realized how difficult it is to simply observe. When future historians or aliens or androids or whoever comes along next wants to see what American (and sometimes French) life was like during the last bunch of decades, they could do no better than cooking up some space corn, settling into their retractable hover-boy, and tuning into any one of  Wiseman’s treasures.

He’s currently in post-production on a new film set in Jackson Heights, Queens—widely considered to be one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world.