Courtesy of Lissa Gibbs

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Lissa Gibbs and her husband, Peter Borck, are an entertainment power couple.

Gibbs is the director of education and cultivation at the Museum of Cultural Art, known as MOCA.

She directed the annual film festival at San Francisco's Film Arts Foundation and produced several TV shows, serving as a segment producer on "Life's Greatest Holiday Stories" (1997) on CBS and ABC's "The Best Commercials You've Never Seen (And Some You Have)" (1999). She also taught high school English in Los Angeles.

Her husband is no slouch, either. He's an art director who has worked on several film and TV projects, including "Bad Santa" and "Friday Night Lights."

Gibbs, 41, said they chose to escape the bustle of L.A. to return to her hometown.

"It's really very, very hard to have a quality family life in L.A.," she said. "You spend so much time in L.A. just figuring out how to maneuver through the social and career environments, not to mention the traffic."

Gibbs graduated from University High School in 1984, then studied English and film studies at the University of California-Berkeley, where she graduated magna cum laude and picked up a master's in visual design.

She married Borck, 50, in 2002, and the couple moved to Tucson in 2004 to raise their daughters, now ages 3 and 5.

She curates and produces film and video projects at MOCA, including the films and videos in "Invisible City," an exhibition of paintings, drawings and collages that also features Walther Ruttmann's 1927 silent film "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City." (Catch outdoor screenings from 8:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. nightly through Sept. 20. MOCA on the Plaza is at 149 N. Stone Ave. next to the Main Library Downtown.)

Gibbs also produces independent documentaries.

How did you meet Peter?

"We were neighbors in Los Angeles, and I passed his house twice a day walking my dog. We had a sidewalk courtship for six months before we even exchanged phone numbers. A very unlikely Los Angeles romance."

Any cool stories involving the Hollywood elite?

"I worked at Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco with the filmmaker Terry Zwigoff as he was making 'Crumb' (1994). He's this very wry, humorous, brilliant curmudgeon of a guy with a huge amount of talent who started out making documentary films and then successfully crossed over to feature narrative films. He's an amazing storyteller."

And you ran into him later on?

"I became a high school English teacher, and at the end of a very hard first semester I was walking down the hallway and saw a group of people standing outside my room — producers, location scouts, people with clipboards, all scouting my classroom in Los Angeles for their film, which turned out to be Terry Zwigoff's 'Ghost World' (2001). Terry said, 'Lissa, what are you doing here?'

"It was a wonderful coincidence, because we were both sort of fish out of San Francisco water there in the heart of Hollywoodland, and it continued because my husband — whom I hadn't even met yet — art directed Terry's next feature, 'Bad Santa.' During 'Bad Santa,' I would visit the set and get to hang out and chat with Terry, usually fantasizing about all the places we'd rather be. He's a very un-Hollywood kind of artist with a keen sense of social commentary."

What's the role of a documentary producer?

"Whether I'm producing a feature or documentary, short or long, it's my job to ask the right questions of the people who are creatively responsible so that they can reach their full potential and make a great work of art. Whether that person is a writer, cinematographer or director, as a producer my job is to provide the best context for her to do her work most effectively."

What film are you working on these days?

"I'm working with Michael Mulcahy on a personal documentary. When I work with people on personal documentaries, really my job is to ask difficult questions that maybe are hard for the filmmakers to ask themselves. This documentary is about adult children of divorce."

On the Internet Movie Database you've got two "thanks" credits on direct-to-video kids movies. How did those come about?

"I've given filmmakers advice about how to move forward with their projects and that's often why I'm given special thanks. Sometimes I'm not even aware I've been given a credit. Maybe I've given them funding ideas or inspired them creatively or connected them with a distributor, another producer, a funder, an investor. It just depends on the film and the person making it."

It seems like Tucson tends to draw its share of creative types who like to keep things low-key.

"I'd say that's definitely part of the reason creative people are drawn to Tucson, because they can work, they can think and have real lives of substance without spending a huge amount of time competing with others or doubting themselves. Tucson is a good place to think independently and work creatively. It's a harder place to make a living."

What's your favorite movie?

"An experimental film by Morgan Fisher, 'Standard Gauge,' is one of the most brilliant films I've ever seen. But I'm also a big fan of 'Escape From New York,' which I think is a fantastic genre film. I like genre films. I went and saw 'The Black Stallion' at the Fox the other day with the kids and it was so wonderful to see a film that was not driven by dialogue, that was visually driven and engaging. I miss seeing that kind of storytelling in current filmmaking."

If you're involved in filmmaking and would like to be featured in a Q&A, write to pvillarreal@azstarnet.com.