Both as the leader of the Velvet Underground and in his long solo career, Reed was synonymous with the New York underground scene before becoming an influential elder statesman in his later years. At SXSW 2008, he gave the Keynote speech alongside promoting the concert documentary Lou Reed's Berlin, which screened during the SXSW Film Festival. In his Keynote, he discussed Berlin, the often-maligned album that was the subject of the film, as well as his development as a songwriter and his career of alternating commercial success with commercial failure.