From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #90 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 Thursday, April 3 2003 Volume 03 : Number 090 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] Breakfast and David Franklin (Brutus) [KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Breakfast and David Franklin (Brutus) Sunday was the morning of the charity breakfast. It started at 10 a.m. so I figured I'd go over around 5 minutes to ten or so. Some of my buds who had gone before told me that people would begin lining up like around 7 or 8 or so. I gasped in horror. I certainly wasn't going to get up that early just to go stand on line. But one of the buds said she didn't mind being on line, she liked hanging around and talking to the fans. So the plan was one bud would go early, then another bud would join her about an hour or so later and then at 5 to ten I would stroll by and get on the end of the line. And so we did and got to sit together at the table the first bud had claimed. I had never been to a breakfast before. I didn't really see the appeal. I mean, I usually don't have to pay people to eat with me, you know? And especially, why would I want to pay people whom I don't really know to eat with me? Odd, just odd. Of course the good part is that it's for charity. And when I went, I found out that the charity is an extremely worthwhile one. The money raised goes towards the college bills of people who have cancer or are in remission or who have a parent who has cancer or has died of the disease. Cancer is such a disruptive force in the lives of those who are ill and their families. And school is one of the things that can easily get pushed aside, sometimes for financial reasons. So the James Ellis Foundation selects people to receive grants so that they can complete their schooling at Hofstra University. The best part of the breakfast to me was seeing the young people who had received the grants and who had been able to finish school in such dire and disheartening circumstances. One young woman talked about how important the fund had been to her, that without it she never would have been able to have graduated. She thanked us for our generosity and for our help. About three other recipients were also on hand. They also asked cancer survivors to stand. And I was suddenly startled to realize that I should also be standing. I had a melanoma in 1990 and so I am a cancer survivor. I stood up. Usually I ignore requests like this at public events. Whenever someone says, "Hey, where's everybody from?", I always think, "What's it to you?" and generally refuse to cooperate. But I felt that I had to stand for this because I am not ashamed of having had cancer. And because I suddenly realized how valuable it is to others with cancer to know that it does not kill everyone it strikes and it does not totally destroy your life to have had it. So I stood up and flashed on a lot of things that I hadn't really thought about before. The breakfast was fun because my buds were there. First we ate and then the grant recipients talked and then the Twister contest started. I hadn't seen people play Twister in years. Unfortunately, it was clothed, not nude Twister. Then the stars started to make the rounds. I'm just not very star struck, so the meet the stars part didn't really excite me. And we just seemed to spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for them to come to our table. I'd had enough after about an hour or so, but I felt that I should stick around just to be sure I gave it a full chance. The stars were fine and friendly and made an effort to talk to everyone at the table. But with 250 people at the breakfast, sitting at tables set for eight, there were about 31 tables in the hall. So there just wasn't a great deal of time they could spend at each table without getting terribly behind schedule. In fact, I think that you actually get about the same amount of face time with each star when you're getting an autograph from them. So I don't "get" the breakfast as being a place to really meet and mingle with the stars. The most interesting thing that happened at our table was that when Hudson came over, she picked up a red Sharpie marker that one of us had and wrote on the tablecloth, "Yo!" And underneath it she wrote, "The Hud". Well of course, there we were with this ruined tablecloth. The woman who owned the pen and whose seat Hudson had been sitting in wanted the tablecloth as a souvenir. I figured it was totally useless to the hotel since Sharpies are permanent markers. I figured we'd just steal it. The Sharpie owner wasn't sure what to do. I told her if she was worried about it, she should just ask Anita Ellis to ask the hotel if we could take it. Anita came by and we showed it to her and she reared up and yelled out, "HUDSON!" Hudson, who had just stood up from the table next to us to carry on her meet and greet, turned around, and gave Anita this very haughty, very supercilious look. "Whaaaat?' she drawled. Anita said something like, "What is this!" pointing to the ruined tablecloth. Hudson assumed this absolutely innocent face and immediately fired back in mock rage, "*I* didn't do it." She then pointed towards a woman at our table who had her back to her and mouthed, "It was her." Then they both walked off. I said to Ms. Sharpie, "You were supposed to ask Anita to ask the hotel to let us have the tablecloth." Ms. Sharpie looked at me, still grinning madly over the exchange between Anita and Hudson and said, "Oh." Now I'm not gonna tell you that Ms. Sharpie had a pen knife and cut out that section of tablecloth. Nope, I'm not gonna say that. That would be ratting. NOTE: At the breakfast, I thought I heard Hudson say that Hudson was actually her middle name and it had been her mother's maiden name. Actually, it's her grandmother's maiden name. Perhaps I had a bagel in my ear... The next most interesting and fun thing about the breakfast was when I was strolling around the hall looking at the Xena stuff that had been donated to be auctioned off. And I saw a picture of Gabrielle, that one where she's rallying the Amazons to kill the attacking Romans and has her fist up in the air, yelling encouragement. (I can't pull out the name of this ep-it's the one where Xena and Argo jump over the barricades and gallop out into the thick of battle, both of them screaming a war cry-a real heart-stopping scene.) Anyway, Renee had signed it. And also wrote across that picture of a cheering, triumphant Gabrielle "YES! I knew Flash could beat Argo in that race!" Very funny. So anyway, that was my experience at the breakfast. I know that many people love it, but it just truly isn't my cup of Jack Daniels. But I'm very glad they have it due to the enormous amount of money it contributes to a very worthwhile charity and I'm glad I got to contribute through it being part of the Gold Ticket Package. There are definitely worse ways to spend a Sunday morning. And yes, I do speak from experience. The con started at 12:40 p.m. with more music video contest entries, followed by a short film about Renee when she was playing in MacBeth. Sharon Delaney had gone to the play site and interviewed Renee and then filmed her as she prepared herself and psyched herself up for the part. She did some physical preparation-stretching and yoga, giggling when she had a little trouble getting her leg to go where it was supposed to. Then she got into costume and went off to a wall overlooking the sea and began to declaim her lines. I was very impressed with her handling of the material. She had the cadence down very well and made the material absolutely explicable. I always had trouble when I was younger reading Shakespeare, working my way through those long convoluted sentences and paragraphs loaded with archaic expressions. I could only enjoy and understand a Shakespeare play when I saw it performed in theaters or outdoors in Central Park, or when I heard it read by a skilled, trained actor on a recording. Renee did an excellent job of unraveling the dense, filigreed network of words, making the overt meanings and subliminal messages in Shakespeare's dialogue imminently accessible. She obviously did her homework at that "Shakespeare Camp" she went to. After that, David Franklin (Brutus) came out. He was another fun and witty guy. Kind, friendly and patient with fans too. The first thing he said was that he was a big fan of the show before he got on it. He just loved the strong characters. And so he decided that he was going to be on the show. He's Australian and he tried to get his agent to get him an audition. But PacRen didn't call actors in from Australia, they hired either locally or in L.A. So he was going to a wedding in New Zealand (wait-or did he just CLAIM he was going to a wedding in New Zealand?) At any rate, he went and visited the studio, casually telling them he was an actor and happened to be in En Zed because he was there for a wedding. They said, "Well, while you're here, why don't you audition for us?" So he auditioned and got the part. He said he was so happy he running around singing, "I'm gonna be on Xeeeena, I'm gonna be on Xeeena!" (Jeremy Callaghan who plays Pompey has essentially this same story-he's an Aussie who wanted to be on Xena because it was just so damn good. And he finally got to audition and won his first part with them, the young guy in Blind Faith.) David said he read the script and when he read the part that says, "Brutus gets dragged behind Xena's horse" he of course assumed that a stuntie would be doing that bit. But they just laughed at him when he mentioned that. And the next thing he knew, they harnessed him up and dragged him around the set for a while. My notes seem to say that he said something like "Watch that scene sometime and see me going, 'Oh! Oooohhhhhh!'" (Damn, I wish I had better handwriting...) He said that after he got to the con he realized that he was seen in a very specific light by many fans. So he said, "I feel like I should start off my appearance by saying, 'Hi. My name is David. And I am an Ephiny killer." He talked about the fight scenes being very hard to do because of his costume. That when they put his breastplate on, he became "Turtle Man" and found that his range of movement was very limited. He said that the director would be yelling, "Extend your arms!" and he'd yell back, "I am!" He said he also tried to look brave, stoic and heroic while being rigid and straight-jacketed. He said that he didn't care that he looked like Turtle Man because he was on Xena. That when he got on set, all he could think was "WOW! I'm on XENA!" He also, as do so many other Xena stars, praised the stunties for making him look good. He said he was amazed to see just how good the fight scenes came out when his Turtle Man moments were edited together with the stunties' work into a seamless, fluid fight. This is something I always find so charming. That some of the stars start off as fans and are just so jazzed that they got to be on the show. It's so kind of humble and endearing when they get all excited about being on the set and the little trials and tribulations they have to go through on such a physically demanding show. This ain't your common ordinary TV hour-you just don't see people being dragged behind horses on Law and Order. And this is certainly something we obsessed fans can understand-it would have been so kewl to be able to be on the set even just to watch them filming, never mind being able to be part of the show itself. One of the fans asked him what his agent said when he told him that he had gotten a part on Xena. David said, "What did he say? 'Good for you!'" Someone asked if the agent got his percentage and David laughed and said he did. He was asked something about the horrific battle he had with Gabrielle in Antony and Cleopatra. And he said that it was a fight to the death. And that "Gabrielle did me in." He was asked if he thought that Brutus was an honorable man. (grin) And he answered, "Absolutely. He was a man who would die for his convictions." He thought for a minute, then he said, "My god had feet of clay." David is also on Farscape and some of the fans asked him a few questions about that show. He said that he had met Wayne (whom I believe is Scorpius?) in real life but didn't recognize him because of the Scorpius costume. They had actually worked together for a couple of weeks before he realized that this was the guy he knew. He said that some people have a little trouble with his accent. Sometimes when he tells people he's "On Farscape", they hear "Firescape". And then they ask, "Are you a fireman?" He said what he liked the most about XWP was that it wasn't some pap, some typical American "telly" show. He said that he loved the core values of Xena. What the show and the characters stood for and what they fought for. He finished by praising PacRen for all the value they brought to New Zealand. He says there are now permanent sets in New Zealand, a "Xenaland in New Zealand". He was charming, amusing, diffident and didn't take himself at all seriously. Typical XWP star. Boy does that Tapert have an eye for good people... 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. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 13:23:38 -0500 (EST) From: cande@sunlink.net Subject: [chakram-refugees] Death In Changes DVD No pixels on my DVD. CherylA ========================================================= 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 #90 *************************************