From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #45 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Saturday, February 15 2003 Volume 03 : Number 045 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] Con 03: Paris, Tim and the Missing Musetta [KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Con 03: Paris, Tim and the Missing Musetta We were welcomed to the con by one of the Creation boys (I never get straight which is which-it was the dark-haired one). Creation dedicated this con to Kevin Smith and the proceeds of many of the charity items were donated to his fund. Then they kicked off the con with a video homage to Kevin-it was very good. Someone said it was Michael Jackson's "Save Me." It showed Kevin's whole work career from when he was just a young pouty boy all the way up to being the God of War. I think Kevin got even more beautiful physically as he matured--like Lucy, he's a classic beauty and just kept getting better and better and better to look at. Then we watched a couple of the winners in the fan video contest. There was some really nice work there. Putting a video together is not easy but every entry Creation showed had the technical stuff down just about perfectly. Nice going, guys. Musetta Vander (Ilainus) was supposed to be the first guest, but she was running late. So Creation showed more fan videos for a while. You know what's interesting? All my Xena buds (and various strangers) who are not on any of the Xena lists kept asking me who Musetta Vander was. Last year the big puzzle was, "Who's Genia?" This year is was, "Who's Musetta?" (You know, I recently ran across a book with a GREAT title: "Who the hell is Wanda Fucha?" Just cracked me up when I first saw it...) Now last year, I wrote about the con and managed to get some stuff somewhat balled up. But it was innocent mistakes -like Gabrielle, "I never meant to lie". So it was a great surprise to me last year to watch the first Coffee Talk video when I got home, and to compare it to what I had written about it in the con report. I attributed some things that Lucy had said to Renee and vice versa. It was actually an interesting example to me of how one's perceptions of what happens can be skewed away from the reality of what actually did go on. So this year I decided to take notes right from the beginning. So after the videos, Paris Jefferson (Athena) came out. Paris was charming and witty and just like everyone else associated with XWP whom I've ever seen or read about, totally into self-deprecating humor. She told about meeting a Xena fan kind of unexpectedly. She was just out, without make-up, without any thought of being noticed. And this guy recognized her and said something like, "Oh, it's you! You know, you look..." And Paris said, I thought he was going to say, "You look good even without make-up and nice clothes." But what he said was, "You look better with the helmet on." She claimed to find it highly insulting, but kept laughing about the audacious tactlessness of the comment as she told us about it. She makes GREAT faces as she talks. Fans would come up to the mike and ask a question and when she started to reply, most of them would quietly go away and sit down. A couple of times, Paris would look out at the audience as she answered the question and then would turn back to the side and start talking to the now empty microphone. Once or twice she looked around, found the fan walking back to their seat and trilled out, "Oh, THERE you are!" (It amused me no end-maybe you had to be there.) Someone asked her about the relationship between Ilainis and Athena. And she said she thought it would have made a great scene if she had come out of their tent pulling a little piece of hair out of her teeth. (And she pantomimed doing that.) A common question at all the cons is, "Did you get involved in any practical jokes on set?" And the answer was no. Paris said she just never does practical jokes. Paris said she likes it very much when fans ask her about what her character was thinking or how she felt about some of the things that happened to Athena as a result of her actions and decisions. She's thrilled that we think about this stuff so much and say, "I thought you were doing this because of that", that we try to analyze it and make sense of it, treating it as serious work rather than just fluffy junk. (I'm paraphrasing here.) I had the impression that she appreciates that we understand that acting doesn't happen in a vacuum-that an actor is expressing her/his emotional response to events, creating a person with a past, a person who has lived a life and so has reasons for everything they do. She said she loves doing Period work. That playing act-up in old time costumes is really fun and rewarding for her. She said something about looking around 65 or so when she had make-up on for one role. And that one person asked her if she knew Judy Dench. (Presumably because they were obviously the same age was my impression.) She talked about how great it was to get to go to New Zealand to work because the country is just so beautiful and the people are just so nice. I believe she's British. She talked about the outrageousness of being on Xena. Just the grand scale of the themes and getting to play a goddess. She happily mentioned the joy of discussing catapulting a cow. (I related to that-I LOVE that line. And that ep.) She said that when she went down there, she would always try to get a few days of holidays in. She talked about being in a pub in a remote section of the country. And this guy walks in, just right out of the Bush. That he was all unkempt and looked like he'd been out there for a while. She mentioned that she doesn't usually say she's an actor because sometimes that makes things awkward and she loses the connection she's made with someone new. But she got to chatting with this guy and when he asked her what she was doing in New Zealand, she told him that she had just finished work on an episode of Xena. And then she said she kind of wanted to brag a bit and so told him she was scheduled to go to a party at Lucy's house the next night. And the guy said, "Oh yeah? That's great. I was at a party at Lucy's last weekend." She laughed and said that New Zealand is such a small country that there's like only about "one and a half nanoseconds of degrees of separation between people down there". She had nothing but praise for Lucy and Renee, for their down to earth attitude, their hard work and their generosity towards the guest actors. At one point, there was no one at the mike, so Paris said, "Let's ask random questions. Anyone named Joe?" And she got all happy when a guy in the back of the room raised his hand and said he was Joe from Pasadena. When that excitement died down, she asked, "Who's wearing a g-string today?" A number of people raised their hands, including Steve Sears, who was standing at the side of the stage taking pictures. "So am *I*" squealed Paris. Last and most certainly least, in my notes I see the sentence fragment, "Legs shaped like a ba-nah-na." Sadly, I have no idea to whom or what it refers. Anyone who was there remember? Okay, next up was a blooper reel, one of the old ones. But it was very obvious from the reactions of the audience that many of the people there hadn't seen them before. I heard a lot more "surprised" because it's all new laugh sounds rather than "Oh yeah, this was so funny" nostalgic laugh sounds. All weekend I met folks who were relatively new fans and who had never been to a con before. Man, they were just so JAZZED. It was a great deal of fun to watch them walking around all goofy-faced with joy at just the thought of being with "people like them." I remember my early con days-the relief of realizing "I'm not alone in my obsession." And then the dawning realization, "Hell, compared to some of the people here, I'm barely obsessed at all!" Next up was Tim. He was the usual Tim. He's had a baby girl since last year. I believe he said she was 10 months old. Someone mentioned to him that they were glad to see that his role on "Judging Amy" had been expanded some, since he had often commented in the past about how frustrating it was to have to play this very superficial and undefined character week after week. Someone else brought up that Sharon Gless would be guest starring on "Amy". He was thrilled about that and said something like, "I'm standing there on the set and I'm like, 'Hey, I'm standing here with Cagney and Lacey. Cagney and Lacey! Is that kewl or what?'" And Tyne invited him out for a drink with them and that made him feel even more cool. He said, "I'm all, I'm going out for a drink with Tyne and Sharon!" He sang for us, a couple of songs, making like a young, handsome Frank Sinatra lounge lizard. I wasn't taking notes because I've seen Tim so often, and I don't remember what he sang. After that was a movie made by two fans dressed up as Xena and Gabrielle. I ran into some friends whom I hadn't seen since last year, so we walked outside and visited so I didn't see the film. Then the Xena Charity auction ran, with Kevin Smith's family, Starship Foundation and the James Ellis Foundation being the recipients. (With one thing auctioned off for that William Shatner's horse charity. The biggest money maker of all the Creation charity auctions during the whole con was made from a HUGE signed poster of Lucy as Xena. The first person who got it paid $6,300 for it. She then donated it back to be auctioned off again. The second person who got it, got it for $2,000. And she ALSO donated it back for another auction. The third person who got it paid $1,000 for it. This money went to Kevin's family. So that poster made a grand total of $9,300 alone. The next highest amount of money was for an original production run of Xena's first Chakram, signed by Lucy and Renee. This went for $5,200 and was donated to Kevin's family. The next was for Lucy's Bitter Suite armor outfit. This was donated by a fan and went for $3,600, also to Kevin's family. The next highest was the HUGE hanging signed poster of Renee as Gabrielle. That went for $3,200 for the benefit of the James Ellis Foundation. Those were the big ones. Then there was Lucy's Annie outfit from Deja vu/Soul Possession that went for $1,000 for Kevin (one can assume that if she hadn't been hosting Joxer's soul, it would have drawn a few more bucks-grin), a fan made quilt, signed by Lucy and Renee, with pictures of scenes from eps went for $900 for Kevin. The bottle that Lucy drank from and Xena got drunk from when carrying Akemi's ashes in Fin went for $700 for Starship. Xena's whip signed by Lucy went for $450. And there were also numerous other things, signed calendars and plates and fan drawings. Altogether by the end of the three days, over $30,000 had been raised by the Creation auctions alone. On top of this amount, there was also the breakfast for the benefit of the James Ellis Foundation and a number of fan run auctions and fund-raisers going on. The generosity and kind-heartedness of Xena fans never ceases to amaze me. Next up was a preview of Coffee Talk 2. It was very poignant for me because my Coffee Talk video arrived at my house just after I had left there for vacation. So I still haven't seen it. *sigh* Due to my debacle with last year's Coffee Talk report, I shall forebear from saying anything about what I saw of this video at the con. Except to say that Julius is back in it, being a typical little kid, lying all over his mom, staring fixedly at the television screen, half listening and commenting on some of the things Mom and her buddy are saying. Again, I'd rank it as a real homey product-one meant indubitably for real good fans of those two. Next up: Danielle KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #45 *************************************