Sean Astin meets Terry Pratchett
My life is so boring and uneventful, I shall instead tell you what happened to my friend Maree today, here in Auckland. To quote from her e-mail:Well, that was fun!
I was at Terry's signing at Whitcoulls this lunchtime, standing in the queue, shuffling forward as you do, when I couldn’t help but overhear the people behind me chatting. Two NZers and a short guy with a LA accent. His two companions were introducing him to the Discworld - but not doing a great job of articulating the complexities. When queried about Terry's new book, they seemed at a loss, so I turned round and said, "It's about a guy who is given the choice between resurrecting AnkhMorpork's moribund Postal Service and being hanged and he has to think about it."
"Oh, wow, that's cool," he replied.
I then showed him the two graphic novels I was carrying and explained about the Discworld (he demanded from his friends that they had to take him to Borders to get them right away). The discussion moved on to which book he should start off with. I recommended 'Mort' where Death takes an apprentice. He loved that idea. By this time the line had moved a bit more and the penny that had been slowly tumbling in my mind finally dropped. So I picked up a copy of Sean Astin's book (There and Back Again) and asked if he would sign it for me. He did, with reference to our conversation.
When we reached Terry, he gave him a copy of his book, and Terry looked up and said brightly, "Oh yes, you were in Harry Potter!"
Sean looked at me helplessly and shrugged. "I get that all the time," he said.
Sean Astin (Sam Gamgee) is in NZ flming a Hercules miniseries. There's an article about it here.