The last thing I want to do in this short account of famous people I've met at the Seattle International Film Festival over the more than two decades I've covered it is give exact dates for this and that encounter with this and that celebrity. Just know I was there, the celeb in question was there, and the encounter happened.

For example, one morning I was at the front of a tour boat that had just left Lake Union and turned into the canal leading to Lake Washington. I know for certain it was a SIFF event; what I cannot recall exactly is why I was on that boat at 11 a.m., which feels rather early. Nevertheless, there I was, gazing at the water, the banks of the canal, the cloudy sky above it.

As the boat slipped into Lake Washington, Richard Harris—Professor Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films—appeared next to me. It seemed Harris, dressed as a geezer rather than a wizard, wanted a bit of fresh air and also something nice to look at. Where in the world am I? his face seemed to say as he beheld the same tableau of water, land, and clouds. It was then that I pointed out Xanadu 2.0, Bill Gates's otherworldly Medina mansion, a complex of buildings surrounded by a forest. The wizard's attention was instantly captured. He peered around, found it, and was clearly overwhelmed by deep feelings. Without turning to me—such was the spell of Xanadu 2.0—he said, "That man is a genius."

Another moment involved a partially forgotten conversation with Rose McGowan in a totally forgotten hotel lobby filled with remembered sunlight. I also recall her wearing something tight-fitting and red, with theatrically high heels, and feeling a bit awkward during our brief exchange because I wasn't a big fan. She kept asking for my thoughts on the SIFF film she was in town to promote, Southie. Sadly, her performance in that film—like the one that made her famous, Gregg Araki's 1995 The Doom Generation—was not, in my opinion, memorable.

I do recall my long conversation in a Sheraton hotel room with the very talented actor Deborah Kara Unger. We sat at a table facing a window. It was a rainy day. And though the purpose of my being there in her ordinary presence (she wore a tracksuit) was to discuss her performance in a SIFF film (I can't recall its name), we ended up discussing everything else under the sun: life, death, the essence of cinema, the rise and fall of cities. We talked for more than an hour, and I clearly recall a large part of that conversation was devoted to her role in David Cronenberg's masterful interpretation of J.G. Ballard's literary masterpiece Crash. She drank black coffee. I sipped red wine.

I also remember when I ate at the same table with Spike Lee. (Social media was mature enough at that point to preserve the details of the event for eternity.) It was exactly 10 years ago. SIFF was honoring the famous director's career at a dinner in a space behind Caffe Vita on Pike Street. Two pro-ballers who happened to live in Seattle at the time sat on either side of him.

He ignored me for much of the night—but at one point, he asked, as if out of obligation, who the hell I was. I told him I was the guy behind Zoo, the film about a man who died after getting fucked in the ass by a horse. His interest was caught. Lee wanted to learn more and immediately stopped chatting with his baller buddies. Our conversation lasted for about 30 minutes. One thing all New Yorkers love, famous or not, is any bizarreness that beats the regular bizarre they experience daily in the Big Apple. I ate chicken. Lee ate steak.