It's a story straight out of a Spalding Gray monologue. In today's NYTimes Magazine, the filmmaker Hugo Perez writes about his brief encounter with Gray on the Staten Island Ferry on the evening the performer went missing. They shared small talk about the view; since then Perez is haunted by his New Yorker decision to not act the fan and let on that he recognized Gray.
In an unsettling coincidence, I've posted about Perez before, in Sept. 2001; we were both taken by the same Albert Maysles speech at a 1997 screening of Salesman. The Maysles quote Perez came away with is especially poignant now:
"Most people never get the chance to have themselves truly represented and thereís nothing that they'd rather do than have people. . . somebody, and in the odd circumstance a filmmaker so much the better, pay attention to who they really are, to give them that recognition. It becomes a sacred duty."
