Welcome back to hot takes and deep dives.

And I am here with Mike Balaban.

He's originally sort of a New Yorker. You spent much of your life in New York.

44. 44 years in New York. And you recently moved to San Diego. And coincidentally, when I reached out,

you're like, actually, I'm in New York this week for New Fest. Let's just do it in person.

So Mike Balaban never planned on this as a career path. It was his personal passion for photography

that has evolved into a remarkable project documenting the lives of not only himself,

but also gay men who he encountered over the past 50 years. You have your Instagram account, which is

Bamer 47. I guess to start off, how are you doing? How is Newfest? And then we'll get into everything.

I'm doing fine. Newfest has ascended from $150,000 budget to $2.5 million over the last decade

while I've been on the board. And we are now

the largest LGBTQ film festival in the country. And we just finished a two-week retrospective of

125 films. Do you have a favorite gay movie? What really has touched you over the years?

Well, the one that first grabbed my attention, Newfest started in 88, and in 87, a movie called

Parting Glances came out. And that was the first time I saw myself on the screen.

An Upper West Side gay male white couple, and the problems they were having the separation

that was going to occur when one was running off to the Peace Corps and their best friend played by

Steve Bouchemmy in his first role who's straight in real life played an AIDS victim. So that was the

first time I saw a real slice of my life and me and it married me to Newfest. I've been going for 37 years.

You know, representation of our, of us in various forms of media on a mainstream basis is a

critical factor. Let's go back. Let's go back to the very beginning. Sure. What inspired you when you were a young kid,

what inspired you to carry around a camera and start documenting?

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