As the Television Critics Association press tour's first week comes to a close, it's not hard to single out its biggest highlight: Saturday's panel discussion with Cameron Crowe about his "American Masters" documentary, "Pearl Jam Twenty," which will air on PBS on October 21 after a theatrical run starting in September.
This is not meant as a slight to Alan Ball, who revealed during an engaging "True Blood" presentation on Friday that he had just signed on for another season as its showrunner.
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It's not meant to belittle comedy legend Jerry Lewis, whose satisfyingly old school jabs during a session about his upcoming Encore documentary "Method to the Madness" served notice that the 85-year-old's still got it.
Also read: Jerry Lewis Kills at Encore Panel
And we're not taking anything away from Anderson Cooper, or "Beavis and Butt-head" creator Mike Judge, or the "Doctor Who" team, or Ken Burns, or even Elmo -- all of whom were on hand to pimp upcoming projects.
It's just that Crowe's 45-minute appearance was so entertaining -- and not in the breezy, "look at me!" and "ooh, I just revealed a delicious tidbit!" kind of way that is typical of massive promotional events like Comic-Con and the Television Critics Association summer press tour.
Dressed in a blue button down and blue jeans, the boyish director lucidly and energetically discussed not only his current project -- which "American Masters" creator and executive producer Susan Lacy described as an "insider hang" with the iconic Seattle band -- but also his thoughts about music in general and a "Say Anything..." sequel in specific.
"['Say Anything...' is] the only thing that I've written that I would consider doing that with," said Cameron, when begged by a superfan reporter in the audience to do a follow-up to the 1989 romantic comedy. "And I've thought about it from time to time, and talked about it with John Cusack once. This is the only story that [I've thought], there might be another chapter to that at some point."
(He added, amazingly, that, if he does ever do such a sequel, "we have to keep the guy that Lloyd Dobler has to drive home from the prom party -- he's got to come back.")
But the documentary talk was engaging enough on its own, probably because the documentary itself is an unqualified winner.
I know this because PBS screened "Pearl Jam Twenty" for critics at a late-night function on Friday, and the film went down even easier than the free beer and popcorn the network had on hand -- and I'm not even partial to the band's music.
