FedCon report, long version, second part
May. 10th, 2005 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBefore I get into reporting, let me point out once more that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bimo and muffinmonster have posted photos, if you're curious.
Saturday's first panel was a joint one, with Dominic Keating and Jolene Blalock (who arrived later). Dominic Keating - whose character's name btw I could not remember without looking it up, which tells you something about the problem I had with the only four episodes of Enterprise I watched (i.e. they weren't bad, but the characters weren't exactly distinguishable from each other, whereas with the simultanously watched Firefly a single episode sufficed) - was a riot. Not in the question-deflecting series of gags way Brent Spiner practiced; he did answer questions. But he also joked a lot, and on his own expense, too, telling we should all call him Dominique as this was what his chair during the first season had said, how having played Vidal Sassoon commercials and a hair dresser in a British comedy came in handy if one wanted a cheap haircut, etc. He had a filk version of the Enterprise theme song prepared and sang it for us. It went something like "...they should have made me Captain, and put me in the catsuit, too, 'cause I've got tits and ass, just as much as Jolene Blalock..." (He was dared later to repeat it when she was on stage, which he did; she laughed about it, hugged and pinched him to confirm same.)
Once Jolene was there, they were asked about the cast Halloween party with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, at which Connor Something Or the Other was dressed as Rocky and Scott Blakula Dr. Frankenfurter. "And the trick was to find shoes Scott's size," Dominic Keating said, "because he's got really big feet and we all know what that means..."
Quoth a fan, quick as lightning: "What size do you have?"
DK, deadpan: "Medium. About avarage."
Poor Scott B. apparently got much teased on set, as he did a commercial for a Canadian beer back in the dark ages, which some cast members found and persuaded the producers to put it on the view screen when he had to do a really serious scene; the entire cast got bottles of that beer to hold, too.
Jolene Blalock got asked as a follow-up to her previous panel, during which she had said that if she hadn't become an actress, she'd have wanted to become a librarian, what her favourite author was, and she replied she liked Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis best. Judging by a lot of confused expressions, I don't think many of the audience had read either gentleman.
The most amazing story the two told were that apparently, three individuals, one of whom they suspected to be Bill Gates because he was a fan of the show, had offered to put up 75 millions to finance a fifth season - and Paramount had declined. J.B. said that undoubtedly, there would be a new Star Trek some day, but not until the "sleeping bears" as she called them were out of the Paramount offices.
Next on the menu was Andrew Robinson. Who was different from all previous panelists. He had as much routine and practice as Brent Spiner but went for the complete opposite presentation, i.e. he hardly made a joke, made an effort to answer all the questions, and was very intense, very serious, and very committed. He had just finished directing Brecht's Mother Courage in Los Angeles, which he called one of the best anti war plays of all time (which it is) and gave a summary for those in the audience who hadn't read or seen it. War and US politics in general were very much on his mind; he was biting and completely unambiguous in his condemnation of the current administration, using phrases like "fearmongering", bitter puns like "a terrorist behind every Bush", and talking about the way the extreme right wing was dominating the law-giving process now. Of course, speaking about such things in front of a mainly German audience means talking to an audience where the majority agrees with you, but I had the impression he'd have said the same in front of an American audience as well.
Naturally, he didn't just talk about politics. New bits of information re: Garak to me were that he (A.R.) is claustrophobic (appparently where Garak's claustrophobia came from) but that the make-up process, as gruelling as it was in this regard, helped him to create Garak and separate the persona from himself. He didn't like Mirrorverse Garak because he had played psychos and thugs for much of his career, and what he loved about Garak was his complexity and ambiguity, which weren't there in the Mirrorverse version. For the same reason, he hated the episode Empok Nor. "I thought it was a cheap trick," he said. "Garak is given a drug and turns psycho. So what?" He's not planning to write any more about Garak, because he feels he said what he had to say about the character in A Stitch In Time; the later short story he wrote originally because he wanted to kill Garak off, in the end couldn't bring himself to do so.
Dirty Harry and Hellraiser were probably the most important things he did pre-DS9, and he enjoyed doing them; in Hellraiser, he liked playing the evil brother Frank more than the good brother Larry, and mimiced for us his favourite scene, which was Frank coming down the stairs, trying out his new skin (which apparently he had taken from his brother - if I got that wrong, forgive me, Hellraiser fans, I haven't seen the movie).
After this panel, I met up withmuffinmonster & friend, both of whom were dressed in Harry Potter school clothing on Saturday, and looked adorable in same, and we had lunch, talking about OotP and who was going to die in HBP. Then they withdrew to their hotel, which as opposed to mine was nearby, to rest a bit, while I stuck around, both because I wanted to get my autographs - and this was when the autograph session began, going by ticket numbers - and because I wanted to see the J.G. Hertzler and Robert O'Reilly panel. (Incidentally, during the panels a guy from the organization came in and held up a sign so we could see which numbers' turn it was for the autographs; 200-400, 600-800, etc.) Hertzler and O'Reilly, who played Martok and Gowron respectively, were two entertainingly insane guys, though not as insane as they were the next day. They did a Klingon rap song for us, got an audience member to perform a sketch involving chicken and two roosters (you had to be there) with them, and clowned a lot, but did answer questions. As I mentioned in my brief report, when asked what he preferred, DS9 or TNG, Robert O'Reilly, who had played Gowron in both, said from a shooting pov TNG, because of the working environment. On TNG, he said, the cast was genuinenly friends with each other and very welcoming, hanging out with each other and the guest stars between takes, with their trailer doors wide open, whereas on DS9 it was strictly a working environment; not that the cast disliked each other, but they were collegues, no more, no less, did their thing and then went and were by themselves, or went home.
They both described some accidents during shots of fights with the bat'leth (poor Herztzler with Martok's eye supposed to be blind and covered once hit a camera man), and O'Reilly did a Patrick Stewart impersonation, complete with the Picard maneuvre. (For non-TNG fans - that little tugging of the uniform Picard did.) And sung the song from Soldiers of the Empire, though they only knew the first few lines whereas the Klingon fan club in the audience knew the entire lyrics.*g*
After their panel, the host, Marc Lee, showed us some trailers for upcoming movies, including the one for Serenity. Considering that Firefly never made it to the German screen, you could tell the true Joss Whedon fans in the audience who imported those episodes either via DVD or, err, other means and cheered when the trailer showed. Marc then asked whether we'd be interested to see some Serenity crew members and Joss next year for FedCon. Were we ever. I hadn't planned on going immediately the year after, but if they pull off that one, by all means.
A few trailers later, my numbers were finally called and I went over to the autograph sessions, taking my place among the most recent 200 folks allowed in the room. At this point, the actors had already signed over 1000 pictures each, but were gamely carrying on, and I got my autographs along with the rest. Which is one of the good things about FedCon; it might not have the charme of little conventions, but it is tightly organized, and if they promise you something, they do deliver it.
Next up was the costume contest, which was great fun. First there were individual costumes, then groups, than interactions. This year, there were far more Star Wars and Stargate costumes than there were Star Trek ones, but there was one DS9 ensemble with a beginning that had me in stitches, a Vorta singing a Founder (yellow plastic in a bucket with eyes painted on it) to sleep. The winners were one of the Stargate Gou'alds (spelling?) for best individual costume, "The Gay Jedi" for best group, and "The Happy Hippos" (i.e. Hippos who were also the classic trilogy SW characters, i.e. one hippo in Leia's white dress and hair style, one with Han's jacket, one with the Vader helmet etc.) for funniest. Out of competition was an old series Battlestar Galactica sketch (excellent costumes, funny jokes, too, except for the one about "we won't be defeated by a bad revival" which naturally brought out my new BSG fan snark).
Then we got treated to some martial arts by a professional stunt group, who did a great job. One of them had broken his arm the day before but still soldiered on. We were suitably impressed and cheered.
By now, the really, really big room was packed, for now it was time for Leonard Nimoy's panel. Which started around 8.20 pm. At 8:45 pm, Stephen Furst's panel started, so I only got about ten minutes or so for the Nimoy panel. As during the opening ceremony on Friday, the fans had been advised not to ask too personal questions involving the room number or the underwear of an actor, Nimoy (who looked younger than he was) opened his panel with taking a pair of boxers out of his jacket for demonstration. Then said he was ready to answer all the questions... about William Shatner. I only got to hear the story about the horses before my Babylon 5 loyalities rushed me on my way.
Only about 20 other hardcore B5 fans were there. Poor Stephen Furst upon hearing whom he was scheduled against had assumed nobody would show up, and when hearing we were there, said, looking at us, whether we were the "We Hate Leonard Nimoy" club. Naturally, we assured him it wasn't we loved Mr. Nimoy less, but him more. By the end of his panel, there were about a hundred people there, so it wasn't all that depressing for him, and anyway, he appared to be a cheerful, affable man. Who does walk like Vir does. Describing his audition, he said he saw all the competition having the Centauri hair style on, so he rushed into the bathroom and tried to get his hair to conform with a bit of soap, and when coming into the office explained this to the producers in a babble, upon which they said "oh my god, it's Vir" and kept him.
Due to the original lack of people, I asked questions for the first time at this convention, such as which of the episodes he directed on B5 and Crusade were his favourites. He liked The Illusion of Truth best, and The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father next. Of his episodes as an actor, he loved Sic Transit Vir most. Generally, he prefers directing and producing to acting now. He told a great story of how he, Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas were always playing poker between takes and Andreas was always losing and being paranoid because he suspected Peter and Stephen were sending secret Centauri signals to each other. Andreas Katsulas was his favourite actor of the cast (he mentioned the elevator "dead, dead, dead" scene he had with him), and Peter Jurasik next.
It became a bit awkward when someone else asked him about Samwise Gamgee. Because as it turned out he had neither seen the LotR movies nor had read the book, and the guy asking the question had of course wanted to make a comparison between Sam and Vir. He rephrased it and explained that as Sam was the secret hero of LotR, did Stephen see Vir as the secret hero of Babylon 5? Stephen said that he saw Vir primarily as Londo's conscience, his Jiminy Cricket. Certainly, he added, Vir grew the most of all the characters, from shy aide to Emperor, but his primary function in the story was the one as Londo's conscience. (Which was such a modest Vir thing to say. I went all awwwww.)
Asked about the B5 movie that fell through, Stephen said that the studio people wanted to recast Londo and everyone else with movie stars and that JMS wouldn't stand for it, so the project came to nothing. I must say, I'm glad of it. A B5 movie would have been nice, but not at that price. Go Joe, you prickly creator, you.
When the panel was winding down, and there was only one question left, I couldn't resist and asked after the (in-)famous prank JMS had played on Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, the fake season 4 script. "Oh yeah," Stephen said. "Because Joe just didn't have enough to do, what with all the producing and the writing, so he wrote an entire fake script in which Londo and G'Kar have a one-night-stand, and had it copied and given to the entire cast as the real one. And we were reading it and calling each other, and Andreas was like, argh, no, I can't do this, and I was like yeah, sure, I want to see that!"
With that great final note, Saturday ended for me. (There was the Kevin Sorbo panel, but a) he didn't do that much for me as Hercules, and b) he fired Robert Hewit Wolfe for writing too intelligently after the second season of Andromeda. No really, the official justification was that the scripts were too difficult, to arc-y and not enough about Sorbo's character.) (There was also the James Horan concert, but I just was too tired.)
Sunday started with Clare Kramer's panel. Clare Kramer had played Glory on BTVS, not one of my favourite villains (though I loved season 5 itself). She herself came across as a nice person, her hair straight, not curly like Glory's; she wore jeans and a t-shirt and zilch make-up. (Not that there's anything wrong with make-up, mind.*g*) She was asked about the cast, naturally, specifically about James Marsters and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The JM question was "what does he look like in person, and is he really hot", to which she replied that last time she saw him, he still had the platinum Spike hair, so did look like Spike, and yes, was hot and fun to work with as he was nice. Then the SMG question came, which, though phrased more discreetly ("is it true that she's not so social as the rest of the cast and more standoffish" etc.) basically amounted to the "is it true she's a bitch" thing. That was when Clare Kramer really got passionate about a co-star, saying that in her own experience, it was anything but true. "On the contrary. Coming to an established show already in its fifth season is a bit like coming to a new high school; friendships and cliques are totally established. I felt very nervous. And she was the one who welcomed me, and did everything she could to put me at ease. I'm not saying the others weren't nice, but she was the one who really went out of her way." The first scene they had was a fight scene, and Clare Kramer was afraid of doing something wrong or stupid, hitting the star of the show, and SMG joked with her until she relaxed. Clare went on to say that "I don't know who started these rumours, or why. But Sarah is the one who had the most work on that show. Who had to be there for every episode for seven years, and had to be good all the time. And she was. If Buffy was such a quality show, that was in great part due to her professionalism and dedication." Considering that BTVS has run its course and that even in the very unlikely case of a movie, it's not as if there will be any Glory appearances, I'd say Clare has no other reasons to say what she did than that she meant exactly that - SMG was nice to her and is an actress she admires.
Later on, she also told an anecdote about filming the scene with the snake; apparently the snake got out of its confinement, and she and SMG stood on their chairs and refused to get down until it had gotten caught again, feeling a bit silly but insisting all the same.
Asked about the Ben/Glory backstory, she said the writers never specified it but that in her own mind, Ben was created specifically to be a prison for Glory; he never was a child but came into being as an adult with Glory inside.
She described the process of shooting a fight very thoroughly, including the shots (i.e. close-up, medium shot and long shot) and when stunt people are used and when the actual actors. By the time she made Bring it On, she did her own stunts, but not many ony BTVS, obviously. One of the first acting engagements she ever had was in In and Out with Kevin Kline; she was very young then and thunderstruck about how handsome Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck were in person, telling her mother on the phone, with the long-suffering mother saying "I know, dear, I know".
After Clare, astronout Rick Searfoss took the stage, describing everything between weightlessness and the view from space to getting indignant when someone asked the "was the landing on the moon all a fake" question. It was a good final note to go out on for me. I caught the first five minutes of another Hertzler & O'Reilley panel, but as I could see it was basically going to be a repetition of the other one, I decided to leave, with the long journey back to Munich in mind. I tried to reachmuffinmonster but only got the voicemail, and then got my suitcase from the wardrobe and beat it. It was a great convention, and I was only sorry I couldn't bring lots of lj friends along!
***
Completely unrelated and probably only funny if you've watched both Blake's 7 and Angel: what would have happened during the second season of B7 if it had been an American production.
bimo and muffinmonster have posted photos, if you're curious. Saturday's first panel was a joint one, with Dominic Keating and Jolene Blalock (who arrived later). Dominic Keating - whose character's name btw I could not remember without looking it up, which tells you something about the problem I had with the only four episodes of Enterprise I watched (i.e. they weren't bad, but the characters weren't exactly distinguishable from each other, whereas with the simultanously watched Firefly a single episode sufficed) - was a riot. Not in the question-deflecting series of gags way Brent Spiner practiced; he did answer questions. But he also joked a lot, and on his own expense, too, telling we should all call him Dominique as this was what his chair during the first season had said, how having played Vidal Sassoon commercials and a hair dresser in a British comedy came in handy if one wanted a cheap haircut, etc. He had a filk version of the Enterprise theme song prepared and sang it for us. It went something like "...they should have made me Captain, and put me in the catsuit, too, 'cause I've got tits and ass, just as much as Jolene Blalock..." (He was dared later to repeat it when she was on stage, which he did; she laughed about it, hugged and pinched him to confirm same.)
Once Jolene was there, they were asked about the cast Halloween party with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, at which Connor Something Or the Other was dressed as Rocky and Scott Blakula Dr. Frankenfurter. "And the trick was to find shoes Scott's size," Dominic Keating said, "because he's got really big feet and we all know what that means..."
Quoth a fan, quick as lightning: "What size do you have?"
DK, deadpan: "Medium. About avarage."
Poor Scott B. apparently got much teased on set, as he did a commercial for a Canadian beer back in the dark ages, which some cast members found and persuaded the producers to put it on the view screen when he had to do a really serious scene; the entire cast got bottles of that beer to hold, too.
Jolene Blalock got asked as a follow-up to her previous panel, during which she had said that if she hadn't become an actress, she'd have wanted to become a librarian, what her favourite author was, and she replied she liked Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis best. Judging by a lot of confused expressions, I don't think many of the audience had read either gentleman.
The most amazing story the two told were that apparently, three individuals, one of whom they suspected to be Bill Gates because he was a fan of the show, had offered to put up 75 millions to finance a fifth season - and Paramount had declined. J.B. said that undoubtedly, there would be a new Star Trek some day, but not until the "sleeping bears" as she called them were out of the Paramount offices.
Next on the menu was Andrew Robinson. Who was different from all previous panelists. He had as much routine and practice as Brent Spiner but went for the complete opposite presentation, i.e. he hardly made a joke, made an effort to answer all the questions, and was very intense, very serious, and very committed. He had just finished directing Brecht's Mother Courage in Los Angeles, which he called one of the best anti war plays of all time (which it is) and gave a summary for those in the audience who hadn't read or seen it. War and US politics in general were very much on his mind; he was biting and completely unambiguous in his condemnation of the current administration, using phrases like "fearmongering", bitter puns like "a terrorist behind every Bush", and talking about the way the extreme right wing was dominating the law-giving process now. Of course, speaking about such things in front of a mainly German audience means talking to an audience where the majority agrees with you, but I had the impression he'd have said the same in front of an American audience as well.
Naturally, he didn't just talk about politics. New bits of information re: Garak to me were that he (A.R.) is claustrophobic (appparently where Garak's claustrophobia came from) but that the make-up process, as gruelling as it was in this regard, helped him to create Garak and separate the persona from himself. He didn't like Mirrorverse Garak because he had played psychos and thugs for much of his career, and what he loved about Garak was his complexity and ambiguity, which weren't there in the Mirrorverse version. For the same reason, he hated the episode Empok Nor. "I thought it was a cheap trick," he said. "Garak is given a drug and turns psycho. So what?" He's not planning to write any more about Garak, because he feels he said what he had to say about the character in A Stitch In Time; the later short story he wrote originally because he wanted to kill Garak off, in the end couldn't bring himself to do so.
Dirty Harry and Hellraiser were probably the most important things he did pre-DS9, and he enjoyed doing them; in Hellraiser, he liked playing the evil brother Frank more than the good brother Larry, and mimiced for us his favourite scene, which was Frank coming down the stairs, trying out his new skin (which apparently he had taken from his brother - if I got that wrong, forgive me, Hellraiser fans, I haven't seen the movie).
After this panel, I met up with
muffinmonster & friend, both of whom were dressed in Harry Potter school clothing on Saturday, and looked adorable in same, and we had lunch, talking about OotP and who was going to die in HBP. Then they withdrew to their hotel, which as opposed to mine was nearby, to rest a bit, while I stuck around, both because I wanted to get my autographs - and this was when the autograph session began, going by ticket numbers - and because I wanted to see the J.G. Hertzler and Robert O'Reilly panel. (Incidentally, during the panels a guy from the organization came in and held up a sign so we could see which numbers' turn it was for the autographs; 200-400, 600-800, etc.) Hertzler and O'Reilly, who played Martok and Gowron respectively, were two entertainingly insane guys, though not as insane as they were the next day. They did a Klingon rap song for us, got an audience member to perform a sketch involving chicken and two roosters (you had to be there) with them, and clowned a lot, but did answer questions. As I mentioned in my brief report, when asked what he preferred, DS9 or TNG, Robert O'Reilly, who had played Gowron in both, said from a shooting pov TNG, because of the working environment. On TNG, he said, the cast was genuinenly friends with each other and very welcoming, hanging out with each other and the guest stars between takes, with their trailer doors wide open, whereas on DS9 it was strictly a working environment; not that the cast disliked each other, but they were collegues, no more, no less, did their thing and then went and were by themselves, or went home. They both described some accidents during shots of fights with the bat'leth (poor Herztzler with Martok's eye supposed to be blind and covered once hit a camera man), and O'Reilly did a Patrick Stewart impersonation, complete with the Picard maneuvre. (For non-TNG fans - that little tugging of the uniform Picard did.) And sung the song from Soldiers of the Empire, though they only knew the first few lines whereas the Klingon fan club in the audience knew the entire lyrics.*g*
After their panel, the host, Marc Lee, showed us some trailers for upcoming movies, including the one for Serenity. Considering that Firefly never made it to the German screen, you could tell the true Joss Whedon fans in the audience who imported those episodes either via DVD or, err, other means and cheered when the trailer showed. Marc then asked whether we'd be interested to see some Serenity crew members and Joss next year for FedCon. Were we ever. I hadn't planned on going immediately the year after, but if they pull off that one, by all means.
A few trailers later, my numbers were finally called and I went over to the autograph sessions, taking my place among the most recent 200 folks allowed in the room. At this point, the actors had already signed over 1000 pictures each, but were gamely carrying on, and I got my autographs along with the rest. Which is one of the good things about FedCon; it might not have the charme of little conventions, but it is tightly organized, and if they promise you something, they do deliver it.
Next up was the costume contest, which was great fun. First there were individual costumes, then groups, than interactions. This year, there were far more Star Wars and Stargate costumes than there were Star Trek ones, but there was one DS9 ensemble with a beginning that had me in stitches, a Vorta singing a Founder (yellow plastic in a bucket with eyes painted on it) to sleep. The winners were one of the Stargate Gou'alds (spelling?) for best individual costume, "The Gay Jedi" for best group, and "The Happy Hippos" (i.e. Hippos who were also the classic trilogy SW characters, i.e. one hippo in Leia's white dress and hair style, one with Han's jacket, one with the Vader helmet etc.) for funniest. Out of competition was an old series Battlestar Galactica sketch (excellent costumes, funny jokes, too, except for the one about "we won't be defeated by a bad revival" which naturally brought out my new BSG fan snark).
Then we got treated to some martial arts by a professional stunt group, who did a great job. One of them had broken his arm the day before but still soldiered on. We were suitably impressed and cheered.
By now, the really, really big room was packed, for now it was time for Leonard Nimoy's panel. Which started around 8.20 pm. At 8:45 pm, Stephen Furst's panel started, so I only got about ten minutes or so for the Nimoy panel. As during the opening ceremony on Friday, the fans had been advised not to ask too personal questions involving the room number or the underwear of an actor, Nimoy (who looked younger than he was) opened his panel with taking a pair of boxers out of his jacket for demonstration. Then said he was ready to answer all the questions... about William Shatner. I only got to hear the story about the horses before my Babylon 5 loyalities rushed me on my way.
Only about 20 other hardcore B5 fans were there. Poor Stephen Furst upon hearing whom he was scheduled against had assumed nobody would show up, and when hearing we were there, said, looking at us, whether we were the "We Hate Leonard Nimoy" club. Naturally, we assured him it wasn't we loved Mr. Nimoy less, but him more. By the end of his panel, there were about a hundred people there, so it wasn't all that depressing for him, and anyway, he appared to be a cheerful, affable man. Who does walk like Vir does. Describing his audition, he said he saw all the competition having the Centauri hair style on, so he rushed into the bathroom and tried to get his hair to conform with a bit of soap, and when coming into the office explained this to the producers in a babble, upon which they said "oh my god, it's Vir" and kept him.
Due to the original lack of people, I asked questions for the first time at this convention, such as which of the episodes he directed on B5 and Crusade were his favourites. He liked The Illusion of Truth best, and The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father next. Of his episodes as an actor, he loved Sic Transit Vir most. Generally, he prefers directing and producing to acting now. He told a great story of how he, Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas were always playing poker between takes and Andreas was always losing and being paranoid because he suspected Peter and Stephen were sending secret Centauri signals to each other. Andreas Katsulas was his favourite actor of the cast (he mentioned the elevator "dead, dead, dead" scene he had with him), and Peter Jurasik next.
It became a bit awkward when someone else asked him about Samwise Gamgee. Because as it turned out he had neither seen the LotR movies nor had read the book, and the guy asking the question had of course wanted to make a comparison between Sam and Vir. He rephrased it and explained that as Sam was the secret hero of LotR, did Stephen see Vir as the secret hero of Babylon 5? Stephen said that he saw Vir primarily as Londo's conscience, his Jiminy Cricket. Certainly, he added, Vir grew the most of all the characters, from shy aide to Emperor, but his primary function in the story was the one as Londo's conscience. (Which was such a modest Vir thing to say. I went all awwwww.)
Asked about the B5 movie that fell through, Stephen said that the studio people wanted to recast Londo and everyone else with movie stars and that JMS wouldn't stand for it, so the project came to nothing. I must say, I'm glad of it. A B5 movie would have been nice, but not at that price. Go Joe, you prickly creator, you.
When the panel was winding down, and there was only one question left, I couldn't resist and asked after the (in-)famous prank JMS had played on Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, the fake season 4 script. "Oh yeah," Stephen said. "Because Joe just didn't have enough to do, what with all the producing and the writing, so he wrote an entire fake script in which Londo and G'Kar have a one-night-stand, and had it copied and given to the entire cast as the real one. And we were reading it and calling each other, and Andreas was like, argh, no, I can't do this, and I was like yeah, sure, I want to see that!"
With that great final note, Saturday ended for me. (There was the Kevin Sorbo panel, but a) he didn't do that much for me as Hercules, and b) he fired Robert Hewit Wolfe for writing too intelligently after the second season of Andromeda. No really, the official justification was that the scripts were too difficult, to arc-y and not enough about Sorbo's character.) (There was also the James Horan concert, but I just was too tired.)
Sunday started with Clare Kramer's panel. Clare Kramer had played Glory on BTVS, not one of my favourite villains (though I loved season 5 itself). She herself came across as a nice person, her hair straight, not curly like Glory's; she wore jeans and a t-shirt and zilch make-up. (Not that there's anything wrong with make-up, mind.*g*) She was asked about the cast, naturally, specifically about James Marsters and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The JM question was "what does he look like in person, and is he really hot", to which she replied that last time she saw him, he still had the platinum Spike hair, so did look like Spike, and yes, was hot and fun to work with as he was nice. Then the SMG question came, which, though phrased more discreetly ("is it true that she's not so social as the rest of the cast and more standoffish" etc.) basically amounted to the "is it true she's a bitch" thing. That was when Clare Kramer really got passionate about a co-star, saying that in her own experience, it was anything but true. "On the contrary. Coming to an established show already in its fifth season is a bit like coming to a new high school; friendships and cliques are totally established. I felt very nervous. And she was the one who welcomed me, and did everything she could to put me at ease. I'm not saying the others weren't nice, but she was the one who really went out of her way." The first scene they had was a fight scene, and Clare Kramer was afraid of doing something wrong or stupid, hitting the star of the show, and SMG joked with her until she relaxed. Clare went on to say that "I don't know who started these rumours, or why. But Sarah is the one who had the most work on that show. Who had to be there for every episode for seven years, and had to be good all the time. And she was. If Buffy was such a quality show, that was in great part due to her professionalism and dedication." Considering that BTVS has run its course and that even in the very unlikely case of a movie, it's not as if there will be any Glory appearances, I'd say Clare has no other reasons to say what she did than that she meant exactly that - SMG was nice to her and is an actress she admires.
Later on, she also told an anecdote about filming the scene with the snake; apparently the snake got out of its confinement, and she and SMG stood on their chairs and refused to get down until it had gotten caught again, feeling a bit silly but insisting all the same.
Asked about the Ben/Glory backstory, she said the writers never specified it but that in her own mind, Ben was created specifically to be a prison for Glory; he never was a child but came into being as an adult with Glory inside.
She described the process of shooting a fight very thoroughly, including the shots (i.e. close-up, medium shot and long shot) and when stunt people are used and when the actual actors. By the time she made Bring it On, she did her own stunts, but not many ony BTVS, obviously. One of the first acting engagements she ever had was in In and Out with Kevin Kline; she was very young then and thunderstruck about how handsome Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck were in person, telling her mother on the phone, with the long-suffering mother saying "I know, dear, I know".
After Clare, astronout Rick Searfoss took the stage, describing everything between weightlessness and the view from space to getting indignant when someone asked the "was the landing on the moon all a fake" question. It was a good final note to go out on for me. I caught the first five minutes of another Hertzler & O'Reilley panel, but as I could see it was basically going to be a repetition of the other one, I decided to leave, with the long journey back to Munich in mind. I tried to reach
muffinmonster but only got the voicemail, and then got my suitcase from the wardrobe and beat it. It was a great convention, and I was only sorry I couldn't bring lots of lj friends along!***
Completely unrelated and probably only funny if you've watched both Blake's 7 and Angel: what would have happened during the second season of B7 if it had been an American production.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 05:34 pm (UTC)he fired Ron Moore for writing too intelligently after the second season of Andromeda
I think that was Robert Hewitt Wolfe?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 05:37 pm (UTC)Dang, just checked, and so it was. I just knew it was one of the DS9 gang and had confused the two. Have edited the mistake now.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 05:36 pm (UTC)I would have loved to see the Andy Robinson and Blalock&Keating panels. Keating's character, though much underused on the show, was always one of my favourites. And the four or five episodes of Enterprise in which he was given a halfway decent amount of screen time made it quite clear that D.K. is actually a pretty fine actor.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 06:07 pm (UTC)OMG! Stephen is a slasher too!
*is dead*
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 07:09 pm (UTC)(And it's Connor *Trinneer*, ok? All my friends must remember this, or I shall go on a mad fangirl attack and send you all pictures until you learn! Muahahahahaha!!!!!)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 09:48 am (UTC)Thanks for the link :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 09:54 am (UTC)