LA Film Fest: A Conversation with Common

The annual LA Film Festival doesn't official start until Thursday, June 19th with Wanted, but I was able to get to one of the FREE events before its kick-off. Last night, the festival provided "A Conversation with Common, Artist in Residence", which proved to be an awesome evening of insights worth my 40 minute trek to the Westside on the Metro Rapid #720...

Truth be told, I was one of the people who only knew that Common is a hip-hop artist and with only some familiarity with his music. So the purpose of me attending this event was to just get to know more about an artist who seemed pretty cool...and he is. (For those of you who don't know, Common's also an actor, with his most recent gig in the film Wanted.)

The event was moderated by Garth Trinidad of KCRW who did a great job in providing an engaging conversation that moved through so much of Common's journey as an artist: his road from hip-hop artist to film, his roots in becoming a musician, and his many other interests (he recently started a high-end line of hats) and causes (he has a foundation and has written 3 children's books).

Through this conversation, one finds that Common provides his audience - particularly the dreamers and the artists - with hope and encouragement to go for it all. It's definitely a case of a living example - if he can do it, you believe you can too.

-Charity Tran, ExperienceLA.com Web Coordinator

Check out ExperienceLA.com's LA Film Festival picks in our LA Film Fest 2008 Newsletter!