There's an amazing documentary called "Where Are We? Our Trip Through America" by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, two gay filmmakers who traveled through the American South in 1992 talking to strangers in parking lots, train cars, and parades. Occasionally intercut are the directors narrated observations, which are charming and set to images of the country whizzing by - sunsets, dilapidated downtowns, ponies running in a field. But mostly the movie is interviews, introductions, faces squinting right into the lens.

There are so many remarkable interactions, so many lightly embarrassed humans candidly answer their questions. A woman in an Elvis t-shirt who maintains a series of exquisite Graceland miniatures in her backyard breaks down crying while speaking aloud her biggest regret in life, that her husband's illness prevents him from traveling to Memphis with her. A young man, trying so desperately to be cool with a cigarette and a pair of sunglasses, says that he's going to make it big in Hollywood and that then he'll win back the hearts of his wife and his daughter, who left on account of his drug use. A woman on the bus divulges that getting shot at is her greatest fear because, well, once she was shot at and it was the most terrible thing she ever lived through. A young couple talks about their excitement to move into a brand new trailer sold to them by a former professional baseball player, how shocking to learn that the young mother with the impossibly large, curled bangs is only fifteen. There's a woman in her 80s doing splits in sequins in a parade and a very obviously coked-up casino owner and a Black woman frying chicken in a gas station diner for $3.45 an hour. And most affecting of all are the scenes that take place in and around a military base, shortly after the troops have returned from the Gulf War. The filmmakers meet up with a trio of gay soldiers in the midst of "don't ask, don't tell" who take them to the off-limits gay bar where we watch a lovely drag queen remove her makeup while belting "My Way" - the next day, on a beach, the three soldiers all talk about their decision to say "fuck it" and show their face on camera.

It feels so good - so deeply right - to watch these people talk, to look into their eyes, to hear what they're saying, even when it's repulsive (the man getting the haircut, intimately shot from below who says killing the media would be a good start). I miss people and the details of their lives (one reason I started working at a bar, wow is that small talk delicious). What's so compelling to me about this movie are the meaningful, transitive interactions with a stranger, encountered in passing. Those little sparks of affection between two people who just so happen to be within each other's world for a time. They feel rarer than gold. When was the last time you happened into a nice little chat?

Another true master of people's faces and the details of their lives is Les Blank, a documentarian whose films are so delightful and so sumptuous and so delicious, and not only because people are often cooking or eating in his pictures. Recently we had some friends over and made a mountain of food and held a little screening of "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers," a documentary about the myriad ways in which people in the bay area in 1979 enjoy, harvest, and deify garlic. Here's a man in a garlic-shaped hat talking about his garlic book. Here are the laborers who so deftly pick the plant. Here is a young Alice Waters of Chez Panisse being adorned with a tiara of flowers and garlic. Here is Blank himself holding sound equipment on a playground shouting at children, "hey, what do you think of garlic?" He really wants to know.

Less generous in fraternal spirit but equally thought-provoking are the chaotic tone poems of John Wilson, whose documentary series "How to with John Wilson" is the tv show I've probably enjoyed the most in the last couple of years. Linked in one episode, among a dazzling collection of footage of New York City and its weird residents: a tour of a scented bowling ball factory, an acappella festival deviously hosted by the NXIVM cult (that occurred ten minutes from my apartment, btw), party crashing at the private home of an energy drink mogul in south Florida. All of which is an incredible feat of access. He loves to take a hard left in interviews of people with unusual beliefs. He often attends professional conferences for aspects of society most people have never considered. But the segment of the show that most deeply caught my attention was the meetup for fans of Avatar, the 2009 blockbuster, a conference which John is casually invited to at a comic book shop. There we hear people speaking the Na'vi language from the films and eat blue foods, appropriate for the theme. And then we hear one attendee speak his truth, which is that before getting involved with the other Avatar fans he felt that his life was meaningless. There was no point to living any longer. But then another attendee - the man in the trilby seated across the semicircle of folding chairs - offered to come get him, wherever he was. And this was the kindest thing that anyone had ever done for him.

The greatest lie I ever told myself in the last couple of years is that there are defined endpoints between us. Often stuck within the walls of my apartment, I sometimes felt that I had exhausted all possible interactions with others, I had reached the bottom of the well. But the actual people are certainly out there, beyond the cruel flatness of our assembled screens, and if they are disarmed enough by your tiny microphone or your camcorder they just might spill, eyes glinting just past the lids.