"I liked the idea of trying to portray dreams..." a British man is telling me as I fight an inexplicable urge to ask him how Batman is doing and what he might be up to these days.
The room is large, yellow and very crowded, though I don't remember if its with other actual people or if its just people-shaped chairs. I'm down in the middle of it all and, above me, is a stage filled with a strange selection of characters, both historical and fictional. Howard Hughes and Edith Piaf are there. Also, Kitty Pryde and that kid from Third Rock from the Sun.
"Those opportunities are very rare..." the British man adds, "and I felt a responsibility to really try and do something memorable with it."
There are murmurs from the crowd and I remember his wife assuring me that the British man is really very good at being asleep.
"[S]ometimes I wish he’d wake up earlier," she says, "But yeah, he’s very normal – he is!"
Howard Hughes begins to praise a Japanese man at the other end of the table.
"You couldn’t find more of a gentleman," he says, "He’s sweet, he’s kind and he’s extremely thoughtful in the work that he does."
The Japanese man -- who insists on referring to himself as Saito, even though I'm sure that's not actually his name -- begins to talk about how difficult life can be when there's no gravity while another man, who looks as a young clone of Patrick Stewart might, begins to speak on the merits of suits, tans, slippers and cardigans.
"[They] sent me up the top of the mountain and then down it several times," he adds, "giving me claymores and hand grenades and a rifle and I went back to business, which I enjoy thoroughly."
In the midst of pondering that, I suddenly realize that Howard Hughes shouldn't be here at all; I'm very nearly certain that he didn't survive the sinking of the Titanic. Nevertheless, he assures everyone present that he has no current plans to get fitted for a dress.
A woman hands me a microphone and I try to to ask the British man a question. He tells me that sex is sometimes disturbing and funny and wasn't the angle he was looking for.
"I’m so young," Kitty Pryde says me at one point, "that I’ve been in a time when everything is on the internet..."
I suddenly panic with the quick thought that maybe I forgot to get dressed this morning and showed up to the event in my underwear or that a test is about to happen and I failed to study. But no, everyone stands and walks out as I mull over something that Hughes had said.
"I felt kind of like a pinball," he had related, before inexplicably adding, "because I was bouncing from Moroccan to Moroccan and falling into various vending machines."
The room empties and, even though there is no one there left to speak, I can still make out a voice.
"Everything," he says, "is real, in essence."
Inception opens on July 16th. Listen to the press conference in its entirety at ComingSoon.net.
