Scott Hamilton Kennedy, who grew up in Berkeley, California, can pinpoint the movie that changed his young life. When he was around 10 years old, Kennedy saw “Breaking Away.” “It was the first time I saw myself and my friends in a movie,” he said. “Quirky people with soul and faults. They were funny and nervous.” Kennedy went on to start his own production company and direct music videos before making his Oscar-nominated documentary “The Garden.”

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. My wife.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Laughter.

Q. What comforts you?
A. My wife and my daughter.

Q. What inspires you?
A. Surprises inspire me — things that you don’t expect to happen in your life, and they work out.

Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Scruffy, sometimes funny pink man.

Q. If you could live in any time, past, present or future, which would it be?
A. I gotta go with now.

Q. What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
A. Guinness.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Good vacations.

Q. If you could only take one more journey, where would you go?
A. Africa.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Same, only better.

Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. George Clooney’s.

Q. What is your favorite holiday?
A. Summertime, because my wife is a teacher and we get a lot of time off.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Ski trips with the family.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. My flatscreen TV.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To be patient.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to have a beer with?
A. John Belushi.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.