Actually it was lunch, but you get the idea.

I've learned a lot about Mansor Puteh over the past couple of months. Mansor Puteh wants to publish 57 books he's written all at the same time. Mansor Puteh wants to be the representative of the Muslim World in Hollywood. Mansor Puteh sincerely believes that everything he says, writes, or thinks, is of earthshaking importance.

I sat down for lunch one day with Mansor. He had contacted me regarding an article I wrote for another publication, and was eager to tell me about his current projects. We'd been playing phone tag for a couple of weeks, and he'd been keeping me up to speed on his various television appearances and other media cameos.

He started explaining all the irons he has in the fire; Mansor's creative interests are an expressionist scattergram: painting, photography, movies, writing, music. I asked him his profession. "Storyteller," he told me. "There are stories everywhere. I want to portray the reality of Malays and Muslims looking out at the world, not looking in." What he's most known for, though, is film.