Hercules and Xena |
Hercules and Xena track at Dragoncon 1998 track report |
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Hercules and Xena |
Hercules and Xena track at Dragoncon 1998 track report |
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Hercules and Xena track at Dragon*con 1998 track report
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This report is drawn from a longer report which was sent out as a private report to various friends and attendees. I had intended to write up a fuller report on the convention, but I just haven't had time to attend to it. So I'm going to just post the message here and hope that will serve well enough. And the reason I haven't posted the FULL report I did write is that there are things in the original which I don't feel are appropriate for inclusion on the Web site. First of all, I think the track was successful despite some serious setbacks. One of the post-convention happenings for me has been the opportunity to participate in a directors' level discussion analyzing what worked and what went wrong. A lot of things went wrong. This year was DragonCon's largest convention yet by some estimates (although I saw one person suggest attendance was down). I don't have any official numbers to report yet. But the highest number reported so far was 20,000 people in attendance. The convention began Thursday (September 2). I stayed so busy in the weeks prior to the convention that I sort of naively forgot to memorize the schedule. To be honest, I was expecting to get a grid with all the sessions on the track. Instead I got a program book that was laid out in a very wordy manner track-by-track. It turns out the person who did the program book had been assigned the task three weeks prior to the convention, so she had a lot of catching up to do. Anyway, I thought there was one extra session in the track, and there wasn't. But things turned out okay since hardly anyone showed up. Steve Sears did come to the convention, and he managed to find the track. DragonCon was divided among three facilities: the Hyatt Regency Hotel (main programming), the Atlanta Merchandise Mart (gaming tournaments and space-oriented programming, including the B-5 and Star Trek tracks), and the Atlanta Apparel Mart (dealers room, media tracks such as Sliders, Highlander, Xena/Herc, gaming). The walk from the Hyatt to the Apparel Mart was the longest but not so bad for me (I used to live there, of course). A lot of people did complain about the heat down on the street, but they didn't seem to realize you could make most of the journey from the Merchandise Mart to the Apparel Mart through a breezeway going over the street. The Apparel Mart has been renamed the Appalling Mart by attendees (and the directors have taken to using the name). They hired a lot of security guards for the convention but made no effort to prepare them for the event. So the guards were actually ripping down signs and turning people away from the third floor where the track programming and gaming was located. After our welcome session, which had about twenty people in attendance, Steve Sears asked me if there was anything I wanted him to do. Since I had expected low attendance on Thursday I'd scheduled him for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I told him to get lost (in a nice way) because I didn't want him to see an empty room. So we didn't really see him again that day, except one time when he looked in on the (nearly empty) room. Danielle did a great job of finding people to work with about the signage and getting word out on Thursday. That evening I also talked to another dircector who contacted Mike Dillson, head of con security. We'd had many complaints about people having to fight their way past the guards. The Appalling Mart had blocked off the escalators and elevator and people had to walk up a spiral staircase, which was hard to find because they were being shunned away from it. I've since read reports that the guards sitting outside the conference center on the third floor didn't even know where it was and were sending people back downstairs. Friday things improved but only slightly. We had Steve scheduled for 7PM and I was afraid no one would show up so I finally asked Danielle to watch the track while I went to speak with Ed Kramer. When I got a chance to talk to him he told me who to speak to about the Appalling Mart security and promised he would announce the media tracks in main programming right away. This he did and by 4:00 people started finding us. I'd also talked to Pat Henry, the liaison with the Appalling Mart and Merchandise Mart (he's also the convention treasurer). He promised he'd bring up the security issues at a 2PM meeting with the Appalling Mart management. I never found out what happened at that meeting but security did seem more cooperative. Steve's first session went over rather well. We had a room capacity of 100 and about 35-40 people showed up. I wish it had been more, but then the intimate feeling might have been spoiled. I've actually sat in small sessions with famous people before and they do tend to go over well. Steve warmed to the audience and they warmed to him. He let his hair down (what there was of it) and the fans came out with a lot of smiles on their faces. Josepha Sherman is a marvelous lady. She has a lot of energy and has spent a lot of time at conventions. She was also in high demand and we were lucky to get her for as many sessions as we did. As it turned out the convention info pack she'd been given omitted her last session we discussed it with her on Saturday and she was able to make it. I'll get back to Josepha shortly. Joanna Sandsmark, of course, couldn't attend because she'd contracted a severe sinus infection that prevented her from flying. She'll try to make it next year, however. And she did manage to send "Bitter Treat" to Steve, who brought it to the convention. Anyone who hasn't seen it should -- I think even marginal Xena fans would love it. It's just a short parody of "The Bitter Suite" with overdubbed songs and dialogue. Keith DeCandido is an interesting fellow and a good panelist. He appears at a lot of conventions and is an old friend with Josepha. So they do handle a panel well together. Missy Good was a trip. This was the first time she'd been asked to sit on convention panels and she was tickled pink. I think she was a bit intimidated at first and she sort of sat back in awe as she watched Keith and Josepha work the crowd (the panel was "fanfiction versus Professional Fiction"). Keith and Missy have written fanfiction, of course, and Josepha and Keith are professionally published. I felt the discussion went very well. Josepha even admitted to writing some fanfiction, though she didn't give any specifics as I recall. A couple of people suggested to me that Josepha came down a little hard on the fanfic at first, but I don't believe that was her intention. Josepha, being a published writer, gets approached quite often by fans wanting to get published. Although the Hercules/Xena fanfiction community is maturing beyond traditional fanfic (and probably other fanfic communities have, too), she was just being pre-emptive. We used to get a lot of questions at XOR and in alt.tv.xena from fans who wanted to send stories in to Renaissance, and Josepha has dealt with STAR TREK and HIGHLANDER fans as well as XENA fandom. One of the interesting (and perhaps more bizarre) segments of the fanfic/profic panel occurred when they started talking about slash fiction. Missy and Keith briefly summarized some of their fiction but they also referred to some pieces they had read elsewhere. The most hilarious anecdote concerned Ares and Hercules. I'm not sure I want to go that way too far, but when Keith said Ares told Herc the next morning they had to kill everyone who know anything about what happened, everyone in the room lost it. That had to be by far the funniest moment in the entire track. Saturday we had steady attendance of 30-40 people per major session. I was getting a little burned out on the videos (although Danielle has a great selection of Herc/Xena-related videos -- Kevin Smith fans absolutely would have loved to be there) so I took one of the sessions and just chatted with the fans. We had a great time and people kept coming into the room and sitting down. I don't remember what we talked about but it was fun. :) BTW -- we got the tapes from Kevin Smith and Robert Trebor. Both were very funny but much, much too short. Rob's tape was made as he sort of wandered around Santa Monica and nearby places. He gave us a running commentary on his day and had the script supervisor for Xena say "Hi". He told us he was going to see "The Avengers" for free, turned the recorder off, and came back and told us it was CRAP! (I like it, but most people seem to hate it). Rob also told us that he actually used to live and work in Georgia and that he was looking forward to coming back next year (July 1 - 4, 1999). Kevin's video was a bit hastily done. I think Zepgirl said he'd forgotten about it. Anyway, she called him and he sent it to her from New Zealand. It's great. He's standing in his back yard, long hair hanging down, and he starts out by saying hello to all the fans at DragonCon (he forgot where the convention was being held, but that was okay). He goes on to talk about how he has to work while we're doing all that "con stuff" -- eating, drinking, talking, drinking, talking, etc. It's one of those "it's not so much what he said as how he said it" kind of things. But he said he wished he could be with us (doing all that con stuff) but he just had to work. Then he leans down into the camera and says, "Such are the ways of my taskmasters. It's cruel. I feel like the boy who has fallen down the mine shaft. Just me and the pit pony down there in the darkness." And he closed out by giving us the God of War's permission to ROCK ON! So, it wasn't like having either Rob or Kevin there but it was better than not having anything at all. And Danielle's videos included a biography of Kevin, a special (from NZ television) which included interviews with Michael Hurst, Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, and other people. She also had a video which showed how the stunts are set up and filmed. We were joined at the last minute by Elonka Dunnin of Simutronics. They run a game over the Internet called HERCULES AND XENA: ALLIANCE OF HEROES. She will be a guest at DC next year (or perhaps will run a track on Internet gaming) and she was just thrilled to pitch in and help out like a real fan. So she filled in on a couple of panels, something she was really not prepared for. Steve's first panel came Saturday afternoon with Josepha. The panel was on writing professionally for television fandom. They provided some interesting anecdotes and Steve drew on his experience with SWAMP THING for a lot of discussion. I didn't know that Scott ("Perdicus") Garrison had starred on SWAMP THING. I was never really a fan, I'm afraid. A lot of people stayed for autographs after the session and Steve was tired enough that he just waited there for his second "An Hour With Steven Sears" session Saturday evening. Both Friday and Saturday Steve showed us the third season Xena blooper reel. He only told me a few days prior to the convention that he was bringing it. The video opens with Steve sneaking into Robert Fields' office. He's ostensibly looking for the tape but starts rifling Rob's wallet and stuff while Rob himself sleeps in the background. After robbing Rob blind Steve takes the tape and starts to leave. Then he stops to pick up a hat, gets caught, and Rob "knocks" Steve out. Then we get a lead-in for the bloopers. Of course there are missed lines, but some of the more memorable scenes include: Ted and Renee waiting while a prop man fits some arrows in a tree (for "Fins, Femmes, and Gems"). Ted is wearing a dress and Renee points out for the camera (by gesturing toward herself) that he has "popped out". There is another scene (for "Been There, Done That") where Xena is standing in the middle of a lot of dead people in a town and Hercules comes running into view. He stops, turns around, and says, "Oops! Wrong show!" And I guess my favorite consists of Renee trying to deliver a line to Lucy. Lucy has her back to the camera and Renee turns around. She looks in Lucy's face and breaks out laughing. "Don't do that!" she says. So she turns back and tries again. Whatever Lucy is doing (we never learn) cracks her up again. Back and forth, back forth. So finally Renee demands, "Don't LOOK at me!", turns around, turns BACK to Lucy, delivers the line, and takes off for the nearest exit. Last scene I remember they filmed several times. Xena, Gabby, and a couple of con men come into a temple to check on the wounded Joxer. The first time they all walk up to the table where Joxer is supposed to be and Xena pulls back a blanket to find he's gone. Next time Renee and the other actors drop back while Lucy approaches the table. She pulls back the blanket and a man (I think it's Rob Tapert -- maybe Ted, out of costume, but I didn't get a good look) jumps up at her. Lucy goes bonkers. And there's other "blooper stuff" on the bloopers reel, but that's what I remember most vividly. Steve's second session (Saturday evening) went a little differently. We had some new faces in the room that night so he recapped some of the things he'd said the night before, but he discussed some of the behind-the-scenes stuff more candidly (no spoilers were forthcoming -- TV Guide and WHOOSH! tell us more than he did). He talked about how the scripts are decided upon (apparently Steve, RJ Stewart, Rob Tapert, and Liz Friedman don't get much work done when they are together), how some changes occur, and especially how unusual Xena scripts are in that they are very short and yet film very long. Steve's scripts tend to be very, very short (one was barely over 30 pages -- normal is about 47 pages) and yet they are the episodes which have to be cut the most. Steve did talk a little bit about Hercules, but he really doesn't work with the other show. Sunday evening he had some nice things to say about Kevin Sorbo -- apparently Kevin is very well liked by everyone at Renaissance. Mostly what he discussed was how the two shows literally have to compete for resources. And H:TLJ actually runs ahead of X:WP in schedules. So, H:TLJ comes up with ten shows, requests resources, and then X:WP comes up with ten shows. He said sometimes the competition comes close to blows when they both need sets and other resources, but he spoke highly of the New Zealand production teams. The crews all vote on whether they work overtime, and Steve said they often vote to do it (which is unusual for New Zealand). He also discussed how the actors take their profession very seriously. He mentioned one actor who delayed appeared in X:WP by a couple of days because he needed to finish out a play he was doing. The play didn't pay nearly as much as X:WP but the actor put acting first. Sunday we had an interesting panel called "Looking out from the inside". None of the panelists had any idea of what I wanted them to talk about, which was okay as I had to whip up all the panel ideas at the last moment for the program book anyway. I had Elonka, Steve, Josepha, and a fellow from Wizards of the Coast (who were there demonstrating the Hercules and Xena card games). WOTC gave us a couple of boxes of cards to give out to the fans, and one of the local fans came in with refrigerator magnets that had scenes from the show and some fan art on them. I've got four or five of the magnets and some of the card decks. Anyway, I fed questions to the panelists. I trid to prompt them to tell us some of their experiences with fandom and how it affected their work. Steve and Josepha were at one end of the spectrum and the gaming people were at the other end of the spectrum. So, the gaming people needed input from fans and the people writing the shows and books don't (which we knew). But they were able to share some interesting experiences about how fans cope with the various aspects of their work. Josepha's worst fan experience consisted of some drunk guy following her into a restroom. I don't remember Steve's worst fan experience. Of course, the best fan experiences were all warm fuzzy feeling things. :) I honestly don't remember them all, but the panel only dealt with four questions that I posed. There were a few from the audience on one of the topics, but we came pretty close to filling up the hour, and I think it went over well. We wrapped up Sunday with a "What can we do next year" and about 10-15 people came to listen and make suggestions. Actually, we had a video session scheduled just before that and it sort of turned into the same thing. Of course people would like guests from the shows, but Steve sat in on the last session and he pointed out that some of the actors have now experienced speakers fees and they want more. And DragonCon will not pay the fees. Steve did suggest that we may have good luck with Kevin Smith or Scott Garrison. Scott doesn't get invited to conventions very often, but then, he's not really a big player on either Herc or Xena. And, of course, Robert Trebor is coming (without a fee) next year. Of course, I think one of the things which most hurt the track was that I waited so long to announce it. I'll be promoting the 1999 track more aggressively than I did the 1998 track. A lot of people were interested in the fanfiction. I've asked Missy to come back next year and to help me coordinate the fanfiction parts of the panel. Danielle will also continue in the number two position. Some of the things which happened outside the Herc/Xena track were interesting. The Mighty Rasillion Art Players did a performance of BUFFY: WARRIOR PRINCESS on Saturday afternoon. This was the Xena musical I'd been told would be performed Saturday night. I'm still not sure what happened, but I talked to the director of the company and he told me they had some actresses take ill and DC changed the schedule on them. So they compromised on BUFFY: WARRIOR PRINCESS. They might do the Xena musical next year. They haven't decided yet. Crossed Swords, a stunt group that appears at conventions, did a skit for the Masquerade (which was pretty danged good -- but DC's Masquerade is legendary, I hear) based on Xena. The woman who played Gabrielle, erri Osborne, actually attended the Herc/Xena track in costume. Except for the belt she was almost a perfect Gabrielle. You can see a rather bad picture of Terri at Terri's actually a big Babylon-5 fan and she didn't get interested in Xena until some friends told her she looked like Gabrielle. She saw "A Day In The Life" and started watching (and did the costume). If you like B-5 fanfic, btw, Terri has posted some stories on her site. She's a very talented writer. I enjoyed reading them. Crossed Swords is interested in doing something with us next year as well. Finally, we took Steve out to dinner Sunday evening. We compromised on Chinese food and I dragged everyone up to north Atlanta to a fairly decent restaurant called The Golden Buddha. I think there were about nine of us there (me, Danielle, Steve, Rori Klion, Missy Good, Elonka Dunnin, Terri, and a couple of roommates). Steve answered more questions about the shows and we briefly discussed what I should do for next year. I also suggested to him that Lucy Lawless would make a great Arwen for Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS movies (http://www.xenite.org/faqs/lotr_movie.htm). I cannot say Steve will actually pass on the suggestion, but he did write something down as we finished speaking about it. So, we'll see. :) He did tell me at one point that Renaissance would probably lose some of their production crew to Jackson's project. They're not sure of how many yet, but the New Zealanders like to work. On the other hand, he also said some of the crews would stay with Renaissance out of loyalty. So it will be interesting to see if either show slips on its schedule because of the movies (which start filming next May). After dinner Rori had to get to the airport, so Danielle took her back. Somehow it came down to me, Steve, Elonka, Missy, and Terri wandering around Buckhead looking for a quiet bar (there is no such thing). Buckhead is a small city inside the perimeter (I-285 -- the highway which runs around Atlanta) where the yuppies go to mate (or think they will). I warned the others about this and they didn't believe me, but as we were leaving I was able to point out packs of young women prowling the street looking for male egos to destroy. Anyway, at the bar we had some pie, colas, coffee, whathaveyou. We talked about writing, fandom, and got around to asking Steve about his career. He told us some interesting stories about how he got started (he was writing advertisements that go on shopping carts when RIPTIDE bought his first script). The neatest part of the reminiscing came when he described how his partner (Burl someone -- whomever is the exec. prod. or script supervisor on TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL) and he drove into the parking deck the first day they were on staff with RIPTIDE. Until then they had had to park on the roof with other freelancers, but as they drove up past the parking spaces they saw two empty spaces off to the side. Steve said he hit the brakes, jumped out of the car, and ran over to stand next to his name (on a plate on a wall). His partner did the same thing. They must have stood there looking at each other for ten minutes, he said, just in total awe at what two waiters had accomplished. Steve also gave us some advice on how to get into writing for television (some of this came out in the late evening sessions at the track). But I don't think any of us were harboring those kinds of ambitions. There were other things I don't think I shuold repeat. Some of the stories got a bit personal -- not so personal that he would tell only close friends, obviously, but personal enough I don't feel comfortable repeating them. And that is all I remember. |
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