EyeCon update: Jim, Sandy, Gabe, & more
Stream-of-consciousness update during a lull at EyeCon:
- Due to JP's shooting conflicts, he's not arriving in Orlando until very late tonight. So all of his events are crammed into Sunday, starting at 7am with an "intimate" breakfast with a fan who paid $900 for the privilege. Seriously, breakfast at 7 frickin' am with a person who is essentially a complete stranger--a famous and good-looking one, but still a stranger? Someone would have to pay me to do that. That's waaaaaaay too much stress to deal with at that hour.
- Gabriel Tigerman immediately endeared himself to me last night when he was introduced before the Ten-Inch Hero screening by coming around the large movie screen, spotting the crowd, and involuntarily saying "Oh my God!" Total deer-in-the-headlights look. I hope someone caught that on camera.
- Ten-Inch Hero is...pretty good. The plotlines are ridiculously cliched and contrived; it's like a Shakespeare comedy where everyone has to be married off at the end. I know my screenwriting groups would have torn the script apart. But the performances are quite good, particularly Jensen's and Clea DuVall's. The dialogue itself is good, unlike the plotlines it services. The direction is basically fine, but there is some completely gratuitous nudity that the director made an absurd attempt at defending during the Q&A after the screening as necessary to make the characters real and believable. Dude, if you need extended nude sex scenes to make us believe that the girl portrayed as slutty actually has sex with the guys she goes out with, then a. you're not a very good director, and b. your script sucks.
- There's a Thomas Kinkade store in the mall attached to the hotel. I dare someone to buy a Kinkade print and present it to Jared to sign. I'd do it, except a. that crap is expensive, and b. I'd have to buy a Thomas Kinkade print.
- Many other people, including my roomie,
_sin_attract, have already posted photographic evidence of Jim Beaver wearing an "I Read John/Bobby" T-shirt, so I'll give some context. Before he began his Q&A this morning, he mentioned that a fan had given him something and he wasn't really sure what it meant, but... And then he unbuttoned his overshirt (plaid, of course) to reveal the T-shirt. Which led to much squealing, screaming, and (in my case) literal facepalming. He later said something about reading Bela/Bobby fic, so I'm not sure he didn't know what the John/Bobby meant. - Gabe said that he knew that Andy had "arrived" as a character when a friend showed him an Andy fanfic. Which happened to be Andy/Ash. Gabe said that when he met Chad Lindbergh here at the con for the first time, it was like running into an old one-night stand. Hee. BTW, Gabe was a delight, and his background in improv (he started out with the Groundlings in LA) really showed when he managed to make even ridiculous questions interesting and funny.
- Sandy was quite charmingly nervous and flustered during her Q&A and pretty much begged people to stop her from babbling. Which wasn't easy. She insisted that she doesn't come off as ditzy when you talk with her one-on-one. BTW, the engagement ring she's wearing is her mother's ring, because she's always wanted it to be her engagement ring and because she doesn't "believe in spending money on jewelry." But Jared told her he wants her to have a ring that reminds her of him instead of her mother (all together now: Awwww!), so he's buying one for her.
- Samantha Ferris is a very cool chick. She apparently gave her very expensive heels away at the cocktail party last night because they hurt her feet so badly and she never wanted to wear them again. When asked about pranks that the guys play on set, she made a rather diplomatic reference to Jared having a "short attention span" and getting easily bored and thus distracting himself by playing jokes on people. She said that you worry if you can't see Jared, especially as it gets later in the day and the guys get tired and punchy. Jensen is apparently a little more restrained.
- Jim said that the guys haven't really pranked him except for the toe-twisting bit that Jared did in DALDOM. He promised that if Bobby comes back in season 4, he'll wait till about mid-season, when he's pretty sure the character's not in imminent danger of getting killed off, and then play a world-class prank on them.