Con report of absurd length
Happy (belated) birthday, dtissagirl!
I am beyond behind in posting about (or, for that matter, watching) TV, and RL has been rather frantic since I got back, but I wanted to write the con up while I still remembered it. And while LJ is still up! (Although there's every reason to believe this move will be much smoother, wasn't the great blackout of ought five caused by the last data center move? What I'm saying is, I have the same username on insanejournal and journalfen, though I haven't actually set much up. *g*)
asta77 actually flew into San Francisco on Wednesday evening, and we spent Thursday roaming the city, going to the Yves St. Laurent exhibit at the de Young and eating yummy vegetarian Japanese food in the Mission with thedeadlyhook and toysdream.
And then, on Friday, we embarked on the Roadtrip of Doom, aka I Had No Idea the Scenery on the 5 Was Even Uglier in Late Fall. It was, in a word, brown: the hills, the fields--plowed under from summer tomatoes, and in most cases bare dirt yielding a steady upward curl of dust to the air--and most of all the air itself, from the dust and the exhaust and the geography. We couldn't see the Tehachapi range until we were almost in the Grapevine; once we climbed above 1000 feet or so, the air cleared out like magic, and the rest of the way was beautiful, in that arid, sun-baked, scrub-spotted Southern California way. Unfortunately, I apparently don't speed quite as much as I used to; we didn't arrive in Burbank until after 4, when 50mm, simplystars, sugargroupie, and kernezelda were leaving for their hockey game. So asta77 and I settled in for SciFi Friday, and there was mocking, oh yes.
Saturday we picked up our will call tickets--for which, I must mention again, Creation charged us a $7 per ticket "mailing" fee--and in the process had the first of many, many disorientingly line-free experiences over the weekend. Seriously, my reference point for conventions is Dragon*Con, the lack of lines was downright weird. You could just walk into the panels and take a seat! Overall, I had expected to be pretty annoyed by the Creation con experience, but we actually got the being-nickel-and-dimed-to-death part of it out of the way when we bought our tickets, and we only got tickets to the con itself, not any of the many extras; once we were there, it was a pleasantly well-run experience. And did I mention the total lack of lines?
Saturday Raelee Hill Panel
Raelee Hill was utterly adorable. Her panel wasn't very long--about 35 minutes. (Anthony Simcoe and Kent McCord's panels were about the same length.) Someone asked her about an Australian cop show she'd done called Water Rats, and she described herself as looking like Holly Hobby with a gun and being, in retrospect, way too earnest, but she had enjoyed the role a lot. Apparently there were quite a few physical stunts, which was new for her. Someone asked her about knitting, because she's a knitter, but more so an embroiderer, and she talked about how there's always a lot of waiting while you're filming scenes, and described how Wayne Pygram would be sitting around in his Scorpius costume and slippers, reading the sports page, while she sat around in her Sikozu gear and slippers and embroidered, and I was immensely entertained by that mental image. Someone asked her about the change in Sikozu's look between the show and the miniseries, and she said the new hair and makeup person had wanted to put her own stamp on the look of the show, but Raelee had agreed to it because she thought it showed that at that point, Sikozu was really with Scorpius. She also described having to call her agent and tell him that she'd "had a bit of a trim," which he was not super happy about.
I was still getting the hang of the lighting in the room, so my pictures for the first couple of panels are kind of crappy. Although it's hard to tell when she's sitting down, Raelee Hill is about 7 months pregnant, and apparently a fan actually put his hand on her belly in the elevator without asking; she was accompanied by security on Sunday when we saw her walking around. NOT ON, FANDOM. Women's bodies are not public property, whether they're visibly pregnant or actors in a show you love or just strangers walking around.
Saturday Anthony Simcoe Panel
I was expecting Anthony Simcoe to be really hyper, but while he was lively, he did not make me want to shoot him full of elephant tranquilizers, and he was funny and engaging. Someone asked a really good question about how Australian actors seem much better at faking American accents than the reverse, and he talked about all of the different American kids' programs Australian children--including his own sons, now--grow up on, and the prevalence of American cultural products, and how the reverse isn't really true. He thinks it's easier to pick up an accent when you've been hearing it all along like that. He also mentioned doing post-production recordings of various non-American works to basically Americanize the dialogue for the American releases, and seemed to think Americans are missing out on a lot of diversity because of our dominance of the entertainment market, although he thinks that's changing some now.
Someone asked him something about the makeup, and he talked about how long it took to put on and take off, but also how freeing it was in a way, because it had allowed the show to cast someone like him as the muscly warrior guy--someone who doesn't have the look but can actually act--rather than the reverse, which is usually the case. Someone asked him what he's working on now, and he's not really doing any acting at the moment. His last project was a small role in Nim's Island, with Jodie Foster, and for various reasons he didn't have a very good experience. For the past few years, he's built a business doing media consulting for the some of the members of the front bench of the Australian Labour Party, and that's going really well, and now that they're back in power he's quite busy and really likes what he's doing, suit and tie and all. He talked about the American election, and how exciting it was to watch from the outside. He said he'd actually been offered several roles in the last year, including two leading man parts--which are apparently a rarity for him--and he turned them down.
Saturday Kent McCord Panel
He's no Kent McCord! Oh wait, he is.
I didn't realize quite what a history Kent McCord has in the industry; he was really interesting. He talked about his start on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, where his character was also named Kent; he joked that Ozzie was not one to get fanciful with the character names, and if you look at the list of actors and characters on that show, wow is that true. He also talked about his role on Adam-12, and told a hilarious story about memorizing the Miranda rights he'd been given on a card, and then getting shot down by the police consultant during filming because real police officers always read them off the card so that they could testify in court that they'd given the full and correct text. He still knows them by heart! He also talked about having been cast in the original Battlestar Galactica, which fell through, and then having been cast in something else Galactica-related and having that fall through, and not wanting to go down to Glen Larson's office when the call for Galactica 1980 came in until there was actual paperwork.
He talked about getting the call to film Farscape, and getting off the plane in Sydney and basically going in to film and having them use the clothes he'd brought with him. Someone told him he was the first character to have a complete wardrobe. I guess things were a little chaotic there at the beginning! Someone asked him about how he differentiated between all of the different versions of Jack Crichton he played on Farscape, and he credited the writers for that. He also talked a little about his family; he's been with his wife for a very long time, has three children in their thirties and forties, and his relationship with his sons was what he drew on for the relationship between Jack and John Crichton. He had also had high praise for Ben Browder. He's not working on any acting projects right now, but he's active in the SAG.
Saturday Claudia Black Panel
Claudia Black is so amazing! *ahem* Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way...
She spent some time talking about what she's been up to since the last Farscape convention before she took questions, mostly about motherhood and how much she misses sleep. She talked about filming the birthing scene in Peacekeeper Wars, and how two women on set who were pregnant at the time couldn't be around for the shoots because it freaked them out so much. She'd wanted a water birth herself for her first child, but it wasn't going to work with her hospital in Sydney; instead, she went into labor at a friend's wedding, near the biggest water birthing hospital in Australia, and now she knows that that scene was much more dire than reality. She got the home birth she'd talked about wanting at Dragon*Con for the second. It was at about that point that she spilled a little water on herself while drinking, and got up to mop herself up because she didn't want to look like she had "pee pee pants," and advised the audience that money is a much more effective bribe than jelly beans for toilet training. So, definitely been keeping busy. She talked a bit about doing a lot of voicework while all this was going on, and how ideal that was for the circumstances. She said the cliche is true and having children makes you take on the world's problems in a very different way, and she has a much harder time with the news now. She talked about the American election, and how exciting it was to see so much engagement with and participation in democracy.
She also joked about going natural with her hair, and said it looked like a psychotic poodle. I... will not argue with that. (I think she actually said something about this being what it looks like when she gets out of the pool, but I'm not entirely sure I heard her right.) She talked about how someone had mistaken her for Catherine Keener recently, which while flattering on one level was also a little concerning, since Catherine Keener is older than her. She then launched into an involved and hilarious story about how a bathroom attendant in Las Vegas had mistaken her for Cher.
I think I remember most of the questions, but I definitely don't remember the order.
I think someone asked her how old her children would have to be before she let them watch Farscape; either that or she described the question coming up while talking about what a weird job acting is to explain to kids. Her answer, totally deadpan: "Thirty." A fan gave her an Aeryn doll with a really detailed little leather costume, and her husband has it in his home office; her son asked about it, and she was relieved to have a relatively innocent answer.
Someone asked if they'd heard her on a radio report about a recent earthquake in LA; they had indeed. Her neighbor works for CBS radio, and had interviewed her. She talked about how she'd been on hold with an airline--and she loathes being on hold, especially since hold times in the US are much longer than they are in Australia--and how she'd put the airline on speakerphone, and then the earthquake started and she'd gotten in a door, which was when the airline picked up. She had to shout across the room that she was in an earthquake, at which point the airline guy patiently informed her that she wasn't calling 911, but she wanted him to know that she would be right there to book her flight once the shaking stopped, because she was really worried that he'd hang up on her and she'd have to go through the whole thing again. Now that she's been through an earthquake, she feels like a real Angeleno.
There was a question about what happened with her role on Life, and she'd been too heavily pregnant when they wanted to re-shoot some of the scenes. She talked about how amazing it is when things come together so that you're (a) cast in a pilot that (b) actually gets picked up, and (c) you like the show because it's actually good, and (d) you really like working with the rest of the cast. She's still in touch with people on the show and says they hope to write something else for her. Here's hoping. She said that at one of the up-fronts or other big network conventions, two of the seven questions asked to NBC executives had been about Claudia Black, and credited fans for that. She also talked about her role on Moonlight; the Cleaner was actually written for her, but she wasn't able to do it originally so they'd brought in other actors. Then, finally, she was able to take on the role toward the end of Season 1. Apparently the Moonlight folks had big plans for an entire arc for her in Season 2, not realizing that once they'd brought her in, there would be no Season 2; here she joked about all of the shows she's killed. (I'm sorry she lost the work, and in general shake my fist at Hollywood that she doesn't have work coming out of her ears, but I can't help but to feel like I dodged a bullet there. I did not so much enjoy the episode of Moonlight I watched for her.)
Someone asked when she thought Aeryn had finally finished her journey as a character, and mentioned a quote about it not being so much what you're willing to die for as what you're willing to live for. She talked about thinking of Aeryn as a work in progress for most of the show, and identified the moment in the miniseries when she told John to go ahead and use the wormhole weapon, because she didn't want their son to live in the universe that would come to be if he didn't, as the moment when Aeryn was finally finished.
Someone (who I think might have been from Vancouver himself) asked her what she thought of Vancouver, and whether Stargate had increased her visibility. She thinks Vancouver is a lovely city, and she is getting recognized more now, especially now that Farscape is now finally airing in Australia (!). She said it was nice that her friends finally had a chance to see what she'd been a part of back then. She also wanted to make it clear that Ben had followed her to Stargate, and told the story of finding out he'd been cast from her husband via text while coming out of the tube in London.
There was some joking about the fact that on Stargate, every planet looks the same, and they all look remarkably like British Columbia, and she talked about how the way Farscape had really tried to showcase the geographic diversity of the Sydney area was one of the things about the show that was especially neat. I'm not sure if it was from that, or because of a question, that she talked about shooting the "Infinite Possibilities" episodes, and not having a stunt double, and getting to "fang it" in the dune buggies and just run around in the sand, and how much fun it was to shoot those episodes. It was also pretty dangerous; she had to pay attention to both acting and not getting thrown out of the cars; Ben pulled a hamstring during the shooting, and she said she knew how bad it had to be because he suddenly got very quiet. (She talked about how much fun she'd had shooting these episodes at Dragon*Con too.)
Someone asked about her chemistry with Ben, and mentioned that she had met her own fiance after going online in the Netherlands looking for information about Farscape and finding one guy who could answer her questions. Claudia was touched by that and gave her a hug. She then talked about how she'd always really clicked with Ben, from the moment they started reading lines together.
There was a question about whether she'd had an opportunity to keep any props from Farscape, and which ones she really would have liked to keep. The cast had been offered the opportunity to purchase some of the props before the set was broken up and disposed of. One thing she would have liked to have kept was one of the big cannon guns.
Someone asked how she'd prepared for the role of Aeryn, and she talked about being really uncoordinated, and about starting martial arts training from a young age if she'd had to do it all over again, and just having to wing it a lot of the time.
Saturday Humongous Dinner
asta77 and I did not have tickets to the cocktail party, so we watched a couple of episodes of The X-Files instead. It sounds like that might have been both the thriftier and the more entertaining option. Then we met up with simplystars, sugargroupie, and 50mm for dinner at the hotel restaurant, where the portions were RIDICULOUS. We're talking plates the size of serving trays and whole steamed heads of broccoli on the side. It was surreal. Not as surreal as the service, but pretty darn weird. There seemed to be no point other than to serve more than any one human could possibly eat at a sitting, so that you were actively forced to be wasteful.
Sunday Francesca Buller Panel
asta77 and I also did not have tickets to the breakfast (are you sensing a theme?), so this panel was our first activity of the day. Francesca Buller was also adorable, and very gracious. Especially since a couple of the questions she got were what I would consider to be invasive and cringey and deeply Not Okay. I go to these things to hear the actors talk about their work. If they want to tell personal stories, that's great, because hey, these people are entertainers who know how to tell a story, and they often lead interesting lives. But there's a difference between them telling and the audience asking, especially when the asking is so much more about the questioner's issues than anything about the actor's work or life.
So, anyway, most of the work-related questions were about how she'd developed each character she'd played. She really loved doing the show, and had wanted to do more, but apparently the Australian actor's union has pretty stringent rules about the number of roles that can go to non-Australians. Ro-NA was the hardest character for her to play with Ben, and was all about the meek body language. (I know Ben has talked about how hard it was to throw her around; I'm not sure if that was the issue for her.) Raxil she saw as sort of a sexless "what is that" person, so it was all about the voice for Raxil. Akhna, on the other hand, she got a grip on by walking around in the boots.
She talked about how special Farscape had been for her and Ben, and how much memorabilia they had in their home, because it was still a big part of their lives. They'd had a fire come really close to their neighborhood at one point, and Ben was up on the roof with the hose; she made him evacuate with them by pulling the "if you really love me" card. Losing the house would have been awful, but it also would have meant losing the memorabilia from the show.
Someone asked her what she's worked on recently, and she did one of those SciFi original films. She talked about how excited the creature guy was about this claw he'd made, and how high her standards for such things were after Farscape.
Sunday Ben Browder Panel
Ben Browder talked for a really long time before he took questions. Which, given some of the questions he got asked, was probably a good thing. (People! "You are hot!" is not even a question! "Can I get a handshake?" is at least a variation on the old "Can I get a hug?" And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
Also, there were props:
After he put on the hula skirt and the coconuts, he talked about being in a college production of South Pacific that his football coach had seen, which had raised some questions about his commitment to football. He actually did a bit of song and dance from one of the musical numbers, and he has a really good voice! I mourn the Farscape musical episode that wasn't; the cast can actually sing.
Then there was a skull, with obligatory Hamlet soliloquy:
And a beard that is actually worse than the one he had to wear in "Jeremiah Crichton," so if you think that's impossible, may I refer you to this:
And bunny ears:
And a captain's hat:
And some kind of toy gun that he swore was shooting autographed bullets as he fired it at the audience:
And a rubber chicken:
And a Viking hat:
Don't ask. I DON'T KNOW. But the whole time, he was telling funny stories about acting school in London, and the terrible English train system, and going to see Fran in a play where she played a teenage punk transgendered something (waitress, maybe?) and had chest hair.
Someone asked when he'd had a moment of "I can't believe this is actually my job and someone is paying me to do this!" and he talked about shooting "Infinite Possibilities" and how much fun they'd all had running around in the dunes, and how he'd pulled a hamstring, which hadn't been as much fun--basically, the same stories Claudia had told the day before. It's funny that those episodes are so wrenching for fans, but that the actors remember them as exhilarating fun. It must be very different on the other side of the camera; I'm sure that's just a small example.
There was a question about how he'd gotten into writing, and he talked about sitting down and writing down scripts longhand, and showing them to people, and then writing more. I think there was actually a separate question about whether he'd been a hardass about making the cast stick to his own scripts, and he said he couldn't be, because that would be hypocritical. They'd all done their share of ad libbing; the rule on the show was that you could only do it if you made the dialogue better. Right now, though, he's spending a lot of time coaching a 12-year-old boys' football team at the local school, and coaching 16-year-old girls' pole vaulting. He talked about how 12 year old boys need to be wrapped in bubble wrap until they're 30, and told some funny stories about how kids on his team had hurt themselves before they'd even gotten on the football field.
Someone asked if he'd had the opportunity to buy the PK black ops vest when the show was over, and then gave him what I think (though I'm a little confused about what exactly was going on there) was the actual vest:
Ben seemed really overwhelmed by the gesture, and put it on fondly, but he wouldn't keep it.
I feel like there was more, so I might come back and edit this post if I remember anything else. But since I'm omitting some of the cringiest stuff, yeah, this is a much shorter report than it could be. Boundaries. Boundaries are good.
Sunday Late Lunch
Who knew that I could be so detailed in my ranting about Enterprise, a show I dropped about halfway through the first season and just followed through hearsay after that? Actually, now sugargroupie and asta77 know, that's who. In turn, I got to hear about True Blood, and then to boggle at it myself later that night. Ranting in Denny's is totally part of the con magic, as far as I'm concerned.
Sunday Ricky Manning Panel
Ricky Manning was... wait for it... wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt.
So were a lot of other people; I wish I'd been able to get a clearer picture:
He got a question about the story that they'd used the shirt off his back to film "Crackers Don't Matter," and he took the opportunity to set the record straight. He'd been wearing the shirt in a writers' meeting, and someone had wanted to use it, but--thinking like an American, as he put it--he'd suggested calling the company up and getting them to donate some shirts for promotional consideration. And it worked, so everyone was happy.
Someone asked him about his favorite episodes that he hadn't written, which he (and I) thought was a good question. Unfortunately, I can't remember any specific episodes he named, if he did name any; he talked about really liking the ones where they pushed it. (I'm afraid that by this point I was a little fried in general.)
Then he talked about the project he'd put together during the writer's strike, which is a webisode-pilot-thingie called Fusion that you can watch here. I'm not completely used to the compressed webisode format in general, but I thought it looked interesting; it did a good job of establishing a premise that has a lot of possibility, although I'm not in love the voiceovers at the beginning and end. It was made by a lot of people donating their time, and is damn impressive for that. The two actors were actually there for the panel, and received a huge ovation. They had a little bit of a deer in the headlights look, which might have been because there were a bunch of people cheering them at a Marriott in Burbank, or might have been because there were a bunch of people in Mambo shirts and one guy who was actually dressed up as Ricky Manning wandering around. They can't say they don't know what they're getting into now.
Sunday Humongous Dinner Redux, and Beyond
Sunday we had dinner with the Saturday night people, plus kernezelda, pdxscaper and her friend (whose LJ name I don't know--help?), and themonkeycabal and somedaybitch. Funny, snarky fans are the best. Especially when your dinner service turns into a piece of surreal performance art. It took our poor waiter more than two and a half hours to stagger from order to (incorrectly written up) bill. We had a lot of theories, some of which involved periodic disappearances into an alternate dimension between the kitchen and the restaurant, and/or proximity to a black hole making time at our table move more slowly than it did closer to the kitchen.
And then Monday morning, asta77 and I drove to San Simeon, where we discovered that yes indeedy, the tickets for the Hearst Castle tours do sell out when you don't book them online in advance, just like the website warns. We did the tour on Tuesday morning instead, before the drive back to San Francisco. (I've uploaded photos here.) And then she left me. WAH.
As I said before, I had a really good time--especially seeing so many friends who I don't get to see very often--and I'm extremely glad I went. My only regret was that we didn't get to see more of LA while we were there. Or really any of it besides Bob Hope Airport and environs. (Scenic!) Maybe next time.
It's also nice to be home, though, especially since we've had a run of spectacular weather this weekend. So for no other reason than that it was also on my camera, the view from my back deck at sunset last night:
I am beyond behind in posting about (or, for that matter, watching) TV, and RL has been rather frantic since I got back, but I wanted to write the con up while I still remembered it. And while LJ is still up! (Although there's every reason to believe this move will be much smoother, wasn't the great blackout of ought five caused by the last data center move? What I'm saying is, I have the same username on insanejournal and journalfen, though I haven't actually set much up. *g*)
asta77 actually flew into San Francisco on Wednesday evening, and we spent Thursday roaming the city, going to the Yves St. Laurent exhibit at the de Young and eating yummy vegetarian Japanese food in the Mission with thedeadlyhook and toysdream.
And then, on Friday, we embarked on the Roadtrip of Doom, aka I Had No Idea the Scenery on the 5 Was Even Uglier in Late Fall. It was, in a word, brown: the hills, the fields--plowed under from summer tomatoes, and in most cases bare dirt yielding a steady upward curl of dust to the air--and most of all the air itself, from the dust and the exhaust and the geography. We couldn't see the Tehachapi range until we were almost in the Grapevine; once we climbed above 1000 feet or so, the air cleared out like magic, and the rest of the way was beautiful, in that arid, sun-baked, scrub-spotted Southern California way. Unfortunately, I apparently don't speed quite as much as I used to; we didn't arrive in Burbank until after 4, when 50mm, simplystars, sugargroupie, and kernezelda were leaving for their hockey game. So asta77 and I settled in for SciFi Friday, and there was mocking, oh yes.
Saturday we picked up our will call tickets--for which, I must mention again, Creation charged us a $7 per ticket "mailing" fee--and in the process had the first of many, many disorientingly line-free experiences over the weekend. Seriously, my reference point for conventions is Dragon*Con, the lack of lines was downright weird. You could just walk into the panels and take a seat! Overall, I had expected to be pretty annoyed by the Creation con experience, but we actually got the being-nickel-and-dimed-to-death part of it out of the way when we bought our tickets, and we only got tickets to the con itself, not any of the many extras; once we were there, it was a pleasantly well-run experience. And did I mention the total lack of lines?
Saturday Raelee Hill Panel
Raelee Hill was utterly adorable. Her panel wasn't very long--about 35 minutes. (Anthony Simcoe and Kent McCord's panels were about the same length.) Someone asked her about an Australian cop show she'd done called Water Rats, and she described herself as looking like Holly Hobby with a gun and being, in retrospect, way too earnest, but she had enjoyed the role a lot. Apparently there were quite a few physical stunts, which was new for her. Someone asked her about knitting, because she's a knitter, but more so an embroiderer, and she talked about how there's always a lot of waiting while you're filming scenes, and described how Wayne Pygram would be sitting around in his Scorpius costume and slippers, reading the sports page, while she sat around in her Sikozu gear and slippers and embroidered, and I was immensely entertained by that mental image. Someone asked her about the change in Sikozu's look between the show and the miniseries, and she said the new hair and makeup person had wanted to put her own stamp on the look of the show, but Raelee had agreed to it because she thought it showed that at that point, Sikozu was really with Scorpius. She also described having to call her agent and tell him that she'd "had a bit of a trim," which he was not super happy about.
I was still getting the hang of the lighting in the room, so my pictures for the first couple of panels are kind of crappy. Although it's hard to tell when she's sitting down, Raelee Hill is about 7 months pregnant, and apparently a fan actually put his hand on her belly in the elevator without asking; she was accompanied by security on Sunday when we saw her walking around. NOT ON, FANDOM. Women's bodies are not public property, whether they're visibly pregnant or actors in a show you love or just strangers walking around.
Saturday Anthony Simcoe Panel
I was expecting Anthony Simcoe to be really hyper, but while he was lively, he did not make me want to shoot him full of elephant tranquilizers, and he was funny and engaging. Someone asked a really good question about how Australian actors seem much better at faking American accents than the reverse, and he talked about all of the different American kids' programs Australian children--including his own sons, now--grow up on, and the prevalence of American cultural products, and how the reverse isn't really true. He thinks it's easier to pick up an accent when you've been hearing it all along like that. He also mentioned doing post-production recordings of various non-American works to basically Americanize the dialogue for the American releases, and seemed to think Americans are missing out on a lot of diversity because of our dominance of the entertainment market, although he thinks that's changing some now.
Someone asked him something about the makeup, and he talked about how long it took to put on and take off, but also how freeing it was in a way, because it had allowed the show to cast someone like him as the muscly warrior guy--someone who doesn't have the look but can actually act--rather than the reverse, which is usually the case. Someone asked him what he's working on now, and he's not really doing any acting at the moment. His last project was a small role in Nim's Island, with Jodie Foster, and for various reasons he didn't have a very good experience. For the past few years, he's built a business doing media consulting for the some of the members of the front bench of the Australian Labour Party, and that's going really well, and now that they're back in power he's quite busy and really likes what he's doing, suit and tie and all. He talked about the American election, and how exciting it was to watch from the outside. He said he'd actually been offered several roles in the last year, including two leading man parts--which are apparently a rarity for him--and he turned them down.
Saturday Kent McCord Panel
He's no Kent McCord! Oh wait, he is.
I didn't realize quite what a history Kent McCord has in the industry; he was really interesting. He talked about his start on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, where his character was also named Kent; he joked that Ozzie was not one to get fanciful with the character names, and if you look at the list of actors and characters on that show, wow is that true. He also talked about his role on Adam-12, and told a hilarious story about memorizing the Miranda rights he'd been given on a card, and then getting shot down by the police consultant during filming because real police officers always read them off the card so that they could testify in court that they'd given the full and correct text. He still knows them by heart! He also talked about having been cast in the original Battlestar Galactica, which fell through, and then having been cast in something else Galactica-related and having that fall through, and not wanting to go down to Glen Larson's office when the call for Galactica 1980 came in until there was actual paperwork.
He talked about getting the call to film Farscape, and getting off the plane in Sydney and basically going in to film and having them use the clothes he'd brought with him. Someone told him he was the first character to have a complete wardrobe. I guess things were a little chaotic there at the beginning! Someone asked him about how he differentiated between all of the different versions of Jack Crichton he played on Farscape, and he credited the writers for that. He also talked a little about his family; he's been with his wife for a very long time, has three children in their thirties and forties, and his relationship with his sons was what he drew on for the relationship between Jack and John Crichton. He had also had high praise for Ben Browder. He's not working on any acting projects right now, but he's active in the SAG.
Saturday Claudia Black Panel
Claudia Black is so amazing! *ahem* Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way...
She spent some time talking about what she's been up to since the last Farscape convention before she took questions, mostly about motherhood and how much she misses sleep. She talked about filming the birthing scene in Peacekeeper Wars, and how two women on set who were pregnant at the time couldn't be around for the shoots because it freaked them out so much. She'd wanted a water birth herself for her first child, but it wasn't going to work with her hospital in Sydney; instead, she went into labor at a friend's wedding, near the biggest water birthing hospital in Australia, and now she knows that that scene was much more dire than reality. She got the home birth she'd talked about wanting at Dragon*Con for the second. It was at about that point that she spilled a little water on herself while drinking, and got up to mop herself up because she didn't want to look like she had "pee pee pants," and advised the audience that money is a much more effective bribe than jelly beans for toilet training. So, definitely been keeping busy. She talked a bit about doing a lot of voicework while all this was going on, and how ideal that was for the circumstances. She said the cliche is true and having children makes you take on the world's problems in a very different way, and she has a much harder time with the news now. She talked about the American election, and how exciting it was to see so much engagement with and participation in democracy.
She also joked about going natural with her hair, and said it looked like a psychotic poodle. I... will not argue with that. (I think she actually said something about this being what it looks like when she gets out of the pool, but I'm not entirely sure I heard her right.) She talked about how someone had mistaken her for Catherine Keener recently, which while flattering on one level was also a little concerning, since Catherine Keener is older than her. She then launched into an involved and hilarious story about how a bathroom attendant in Las Vegas had mistaken her for Cher.
I think I remember most of the questions, but I definitely don't remember the order.
I think someone asked her how old her children would have to be before she let them watch Farscape; either that or she described the question coming up while talking about what a weird job acting is to explain to kids. Her answer, totally deadpan: "Thirty." A fan gave her an Aeryn doll with a really detailed little leather costume, and her husband has it in his home office; her son asked about it, and she was relieved to have a relatively innocent answer.
Someone asked if they'd heard her on a radio report about a recent earthquake in LA; they had indeed. Her neighbor works for CBS radio, and had interviewed her. She talked about how she'd been on hold with an airline--and she loathes being on hold, especially since hold times in the US are much longer than they are in Australia--and how she'd put the airline on speakerphone, and then the earthquake started and she'd gotten in a door, which was when the airline picked up. She had to shout across the room that she was in an earthquake, at which point the airline guy patiently informed her that she wasn't calling 911, but she wanted him to know that she would be right there to book her flight once the shaking stopped, because she was really worried that he'd hang up on her and she'd have to go through the whole thing again. Now that she's been through an earthquake, she feels like a real Angeleno.
There was a question about what happened with her role on Life, and she'd been too heavily pregnant when they wanted to re-shoot some of the scenes. She talked about how amazing it is when things come together so that you're (a) cast in a pilot that (b) actually gets picked up, and (c) you like the show because it's actually good, and (d) you really like working with the rest of the cast. She's still in touch with people on the show and says they hope to write something else for her. Here's hoping. She said that at one of the up-fronts or other big network conventions, two of the seven questions asked to NBC executives had been about Claudia Black, and credited fans for that. She also talked about her role on Moonlight; the Cleaner was actually written for her, but she wasn't able to do it originally so they'd brought in other actors. Then, finally, she was able to take on the role toward the end of Season 1. Apparently the Moonlight folks had big plans for an entire arc for her in Season 2, not realizing that once they'd brought her in, there would be no Season 2; here she joked about all of the shows she's killed. (I'm sorry she lost the work, and in general shake my fist at Hollywood that she doesn't have work coming out of her ears, but I can't help but to feel like I dodged a bullet there. I did not so much enjoy the episode of Moonlight I watched for her.)
Someone asked when she thought Aeryn had finally finished her journey as a character, and mentioned a quote about it not being so much what you're willing to die for as what you're willing to live for. She talked about thinking of Aeryn as a work in progress for most of the show, and identified the moment in the miniseries when she told John to go ahead and use the wormhole weapon, because she didn't want their son to live in the universe that would come to be if he didn't, as the moment when Aeryn was finally finished.
Someone (who I think might have been from Vancouver himself) asked her what she thought of Vancouver, and whether Stargate had increased her visibility. She thinks Vancouver is a lovely city, and she is getting recognized more now, especially now that Farscape is now finally airing in Australia (!). She said it was nice that her friends finally had a chance to see what she'd been a part of back then. She also wanted to make it clear that Ben had followed her to Stargate, and told the story of finding out he'd been cast from her husband via text while coming out of the tube in London.
There was some joking about the fact that on Stargate, every planet looks the same, and they all look remarkably like British Columbia, and she talked about how the way Farscape had really tried to showcase the geographic diversity of the Sydney area was one of the things about the show that was especially neat. I'm not sure if it was from that, or because of a question, that she talked about shooting the "Infinite Possibilities" episodes, and not having a stunt double, and getting to "fang it" in the dune buggies and just run around in the sand, and how much fun it was to shoot those episodes. It was also pretty dangerous; she had to pay attention to both acting and not getting thrown out of the cars; Ben pulled a hamstring during the shooting, and she said she knew how bad it had to be because he suddenly got very quiet. (She talked about how much fun she'd had shooting these episodes at Dragon*Con too.)
Someone asked about her chemistry with Ben, and mentioned that she had met her own fiance after going online in the Netherlands looking for information about Farscape and finding one guy who could answer her questions. Claudia was touched by that and gave her a hug. She then talked about how she'd always really clicked with Ben, from the moment they started reading lines together.
There was a question about whether she'd had an opportunity to keep any props from Farscape, and which ones she really would have liked to keep. The cast had been offered the opportunity to purchase some of the props before the set was broken up and disposed of. One thing she would have liked to have kept was one of the big cannon guns.
Someone asked how she'd prepared for the role of Aeryn, and she talked about being really uncoordinated, and about starting martial arts training from a young age if she'd had to do it all over again, and just having to wing it a lot of the time.
Saturday Humongous Dinner
asta77 and I did not have tickets to the cocktail party, so we watched a couple of episodes of The X-Files instead. It sounds like that might have been both the thriftier and the more entertaining option. Then we met up with simplystars, sugargroupie, and 50mm for dinner at the hotel restaurant, where the portions were RIDICULOUS. We're talking plates the size of serving trays and whole steamed heads of broccoli on the side. It was surreal. Not as surreal as the service, but pretty darn weird. There seemed to be no point other than to serve more than any one human could possibly eat at a sitting, so that you were actively forced to be wasteful.
Sunday Francesca Buller Panel
asta77 and I also did not have tickets to the breakfast (are you sensing a theme?), so this panel was our first activity of the day. Francesca Buller was also adorable, and very gracious. Especially since a couple of the questions she got were what I would consider to be invasive and cringey and deeply Not Okay. I go to these things to hear the actors talk about their work. If they want to tell personal stories, that's great, because hey, these people are entertainers who know how to tell a story, and they often lead interesting lives. But there's a difference between them telling and the audience asking, especially when the asking is so much more about the questioner's issues than anything about the actor's work or life.
So, anyway, most of the work-related questions were about how she'd developed each character she'd played. She really loved doing the show, and had wanted to do more, but apparently the Australian actor's union has pretty stringent rules about the number of roles that can go to non-Australians. Ro-NA was the hardest character for her to play with Ben, and was all about the meek body language. (I know Ben has talked about how hard it was to throw her around; I'm not sure if that was the issue for her.) Raxil she saw as sort of a sexless "what is that" person, so it was all about the voice for Raxil. Akhna, on the other hand, she got a grip on by walking around in the boots.
She talked about how special Farscape had been for her and Ben, and how much memorabilia they had in their home, because it was still a big part of their lives. They'd had a fire come really close to their neighborhood at one point, and Ben was up on the roof with the hose; she made him evacuate with them by pulling the "if you really love me" card. Losing the house would have been awful, but it also would have meant losing the memorabilia from the show.
Someone asked her what she's worked on recently, and she did one of those SciFi original films. She talked about how excited the creature guy was about this claw he'd made, and how high her standards for such things were after Farscape.
Sunday Ben Browder Panel
Ben Browder talked for a really long time before he took questions. Which, given some of the questions he got asked, was probably a good thing. (People! "You are hot!" is not even a question! "Can I get a handshake?" is at least a variation on the old "Can I get a hug?" And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
Also, there were props:
After he put on the hula skirt and the coconuts, he talked about being in a college production of South Pacific that his football coach had seen, which had raised some questions about his commitment to football. He actually did a bit of song and dance from one of the musical numbers, and he has a really good voice! I mourn the Farscape musical episode that wasn't; the cast can actually sing.
Then there was a skull, with obligatory Hamlet soliloquy:
And a beard that is actually worse than the one he had to wear in "Jeremiah Crichton," so if you think that's impossible, may I refer you to this:
And bunny ears:
And a captain's hat:
And some kind of toy gun that he swore was shooting autographed bullets as he fired it at the audience:
And a rubber chicken:
And a Viking hat:
Don't ask. I DON'T KNOW. But the whole time, he was telling funny stories about acting school in London, and the terrible English train system, and going to see Fran in a play where she played a teenage punk transgendered something (waitress, maybe?) and had chest hair.
Someone asked when he'd had a moment of "I can't believe this is actually my job and someone is paying me to do this!" and he talked about shooting "Infinite Possibilities" and how much fun they'd all had running around in the dunes, and how he'd pulled a hamstring, which hadn't been as much fun--basically, the same stories Claudia had told the day before. It's funny that those episodes are so wrenching for fans, but that the actors remember them as exhilarating fun. It must be very different on the other side of the camera; I'm sure that's just a small example.
There was a question about how he'd gotten into writing, and he talked about sitting down and writing down scripts longhand, and showing them to people, and then writing more. I think there was actually a separate question about whether he'd been a hardass about making the cast stick to his own scripts, and he said he couldn't be, because that would be hypocritical. They'd all done their share of ad libbing; the rule on the show was that you could only do it if you made the dialogue better. Right now, though, he's spending a lot of time coaching a 12-year-old boys' football team at the local school, and coaching 16-year-old girls' pole vaulting. He talked about how 12 year old boys need to be wrapped in bubble wrap until they're 30, and told some funny stories about how kids on his team had hurt themselves before they'd even gotten on the football field.
Someone asked if he'd had the opportunity to buy the PK black ops vest when the show was over, and then gave him what I think (though I'm a little confused about what exactly was going on there) was the actual vest:
Ben seemed really overwhelmed by the gesture, and put it on fondly, but he wouldn't keep it.
I feel like there was more, so I might come back and edit this post if I remember anything else. But since I'm omitting some of the cringiest stuff, yeah, this is a much shorter report than it could be. Boundaries. Boundaries are good.
Sunday Late Lunch
Who knew that I could be so detailed in my ranting about Enterprise, a show I dropped about halfway through the first season and just followed through hearsay after that? Actually, now sugargroupie and asta77 know, that's who. In turn, I got to hear about True Blood, and then to boggle at it myself later that night. Ranting in Denny's is totally part of the con magic, as far as I'm concerned.
Sunday Ricky Manning Panel
Ricky Manning was... wait for it... wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt.
So were a lot of other people; I wish I'd been able to get a clearer picture:
He got a question about the story that they'd used the shirt off his back to film "Crackers Don't Matter," and he took the opportunity to set the record straight. He'd been wearing the shirt in a writers' meeting, and someone had wanted to use it, but--thinking like an American, as he put it--he'd suggested calling the company up and getting them to donate some shirts for promotional consideration. And it worked, so everyone was happy.
Someone asked him about his favorite episodes that he hadn't written, which he (and I) thought was a good question. Unfortunately, I can't remember any specific episodes he named, if he did name any; he talked about really liking the ones where they pushed it. (I'm afraid that by this point I was a little fried in general.)
Then he talked about the project he'd put together during the writer's strike, which is a webisode-pilot-thingie called Fusion that you can watch here. I'm not completely used to the compressed webisode format in general, but I thought it looked interesting; it did a good job of establishing a premise that has a lot of possibility, although I'm not in love the voiceovers at the beginning and end. It was made by a lot of people donating their time, and is damn impressive for that. The two actors were actually there for the panel, and received a huge ovation. They had a little bit of a deer in the headlights look, which might have been because there were a bunch of people cheering them at a Marriott in Burbank, or might have been because there were a bunch of people in Mambo shirts and one guy who was actually dressed up as Ricky Manning wandering around. They can't say they don't know what they're getting into now.
Sunday Humongous Dinner Redux, and Beyond
Sunday we had dinner with the Saturday night people, plus kernezelda, pdxscaper and her friend (whose LJ name I don't know--help?), and themonkeycabal and somedaybitch. Funny, snarky fans are the best. Especially when your dinner service turns into a piece of surreal performance art. It took our poor waiter more than two and a half hours to stagger from order to (incorrectly written up) bill. We had a lot of theories, some of which involved periodic disappearances into an alternate dimension between the kitchen and the restaurant, and/or proximity to a black hole making time at our table move more slowly than it did closer to the kitchen.
And then Monday morning, asta77 and I drove to San Simeon, where we discovered that yes indeedy, the tickets for the Hearst Castle tours do sell out when you don't book them online in advance, just like the website warns. We did the tour on Tuesday morning instead, before the drive back to San Francisco. (I've uploaded photos here.) And then she left me. WAH.
As I said before, I had a really good time--especially seeing so many friends who I don't get to see very often--and I'm extremely glad I went. My only regret was that we didn't get to see more of LA while we were there. Or really any of it besides Bob Hope Airport and environs. (Scenic!) Maybe next time.
It's also nice to be home, though, especially since we've had a run of spectacular weather this weekend. So for no other reason than that it was also on my camera, the view from my back deck at sunset last night: