It's disconcerting when your preconceived notions of a person don't come close to meeting with reality. It fucks with your world view. I'm a huge fan of Douglas Coupland. I have been since I read Generation X back in college. Since then I've several of his books including Shampoo Planet and Microserfs. When I saw that Coupland was speaking in one of the sessions I had to go even though it conflicted with the first keynote of SXSW.
Coupland was there to promote the opening of his first movie, Everything's Gone Green. I expected him to talk some about the movie and the process of screenplay writing, and he did that. But most of what he did was babble in a nonsensical stream of consciousness mess making me wish someone had spiked his tea with acid and that this wasn't the real Douglas Coupland.
His talk was full of pregnant pauses, self-reflexive admonitions to himself, nonsequitors and pointless rambling anecdotes. I honestly felt sorry for the guy. I was desparate to get up and leave, but I was sitting in the first row of the room and I didn't want to embarass his, so I just sufferred in total silence while I wathced Coupland implode on the stage.
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