Nobody said it was easy to run a big event. But the Tribeca Film Festival, which begins its eighth sixth year next week, had a rough time by any standards.

If there was a key moment in Tuesday morning's opening press conference for the Tribeca Film Festival, it did not emerge as a handful of celebrities and festival sponsors blandly read prepared statements and stiffly gathered onstage like wooden robots of the publicity machine. Instead, an irresistible image appeared when two prominent members of the lineup suddenly broke this iron facade.

In the opening trailer for the Tribeca Film Festival, a flasher approaches two women in New York's Central Park. Rather than flee in terror, they begin to assess their assailant. "He's not wearing a ring," one of them observes. She proceeds to set up a date with him. Cue the tagline: "Think you've seen it all in New York? Think again."

The first full day of the Tribeca Film Festival was the embodiment of diversity: In the morning, it hosted press and industry screenings of obscure movies like the Asian dramas "Fish Eyes" and "Still Walking."

In the evening, Larry David and the Farrelly brothers walked the red carpet alongside baseball legend Luis Tiant.

A documentary driven by activism always risks alienating audiences opposed to its intentions.

The success of Kirby Dick's "Outrage," an engrossing survey of closeted conservatives in Washington, D.C.'s, inner circle, became immediately clear after the world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last night for one reason: Audience complaints about certain omissions from the movie did not preclude their overall appreciation for it.

The transient nature of movies on the film festival circuit often gets overplayed.

There are a number of instances of this at Tribeca: Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" will have its world premiere after the director screened a work-in-progress cut during the Sundance in January. However, the running time hasn't changed, and one imagines the content hasn't, either.

"Tribeca should be more like South by Southwest," a publicist friend told me the other day. He meant that the festival could benefit from more discoveries and breakout stories. It's a natural direction for the New York gathering, which definitely seems like it has a stronger program this year, if only because trimmed-down look.

Film festival panel discussions are always repetitive. Listening to a handful of experts analyze the state of the industry or its future can start to feel like watching reruns of Charlie Rose.

However, the conversation that took place today at the Tribeca Film Festival about "Tools of the Trade" was a welcome exception.

The subtitle said it all -- "Alternative Distribution, Marketing 2.0, and Beyond" -- and yet it said nothing, because there are a million directions that such a conversation could take.

Film festivals often require viewers to blurt out immediate reactions without allowing much time for contemplation before rushing off to the next screening. I had this experience yesterday, when my instincts told me to reach the verdict that a certain movie was "great" before -- upon deeper reflection aided by the insight of a colleague on Twitter -- that it might not deserve the praise.

To understand the Tribeca Film Festival within the larger context of New York's film community, it helps to understand the perspective of the 2009 festival's most active participant with long-standing ties to the city's history.