At precisely 11 a.m. Marker met me at the door of his modest apartment in a working-class neighborhood. He was tall, handsome, completely bald and, like me, seemed a little nervous. He welcomed me in perfect American English. There was no hint of his age except in his Old World graciousness. I followed him past walls of shelves containing videos, past the well-kept kitchen into a room full of books. I observed leather-bound books, books by Jules Verne and Rainer Rilke. Although Marker has authored many books himself I didn't see any of them. Everywhere were images of cats and owls, which I remembered from Sans Soleil were his favorite animals. A backroom was filled with video- and sound-editing equipment. As Marker stood in front of the console I suddenly saw him as a captain of a giant spaceship, looking in fact like Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation. When I mentioned this to him, he pulled up his ears and said he'd prefer to be Spock.

And then, when he showed me his computers, he surprised me again. I'd read that Marker was considered both a man of the 18th century and of the 22nd. Indeed, he once wrote "I betrayed Gutenberg for McLuhan long ago." Sans Soleil clearly showed that the man wasn't intimidated by technology, but I wasn't prepared for what followed. Marker launched into praise of his simple Apple II GS, and then complained bitterly about Apple's abandonment of what he considers a wonderful machine. He knowledgeably commented on how Roger Wagner's HyperStudio was one of the most flexible and witty systems he'd ever used for creating interactive media. We then carried on a conversation about, of all things, encryption software. I was amazed at the depth of his computer savvy. Here was a legendary filmmaker fascinated with personal computers and interactive media.