Report by: Beth Gaynor
Wow, I'm amazed we haven't seen more reports from this weekend's New York City events. I wasn't planning to write about it, so forgive some rambling and fuzzy recollections, but here's the scoop from what I saw this weekend:
Saturday afternoon was the Broadway flea market, a huge event that took over an alley (and then some) where the Broadway shows and organizations did all manner of things to raise money for an AIDS charity. The Grease booth was fairly small, but included a gaggle of Lucy/Xena stuff, including autographed items. They even had some Xena cookies. The Lawless stuff was selling like crazy. The fun thing to me was the incredible variety of people who would show interest in the Lucy Lawless memorabilia - watching a pair of grandmothers chirrup "What did Lucy sign on the Xena poster??" was great fun.
The charity flea market also had an auction of all kinds of backstage events and rare items. I heard second-hand that the backstage visit to Grease with Lucy sold for $2700. Wow!
Going to Grease was surreal - that's the best way I can describe it. As soon as you reach the Eugene O'Neill theater's block, you're in the Lawless Zone. Lucy's name is all over the theater front, the barricades seem to be in front of the stage door 24 hours a day, people are always hanging around, and Lucy's in everyone's conversation. I walked past the theater while one of the matinees was going on and there were already a dozen or so people hanging out at the stage door. Right before and after the shows, the crowd is 20-40 bodies deep. One of the people I talked to said that last week the crowd stretched all the way across the street with people hoping for a glimpse of Lucy. Again, I saw every age, race, color, and creed hanging around with curiosity at a chance to see "that Xena chick." I never realized how wide Xena's appeal - or at least recognition - is until this weekend.
I got to see Grease's Saturday evening performance; my seat was in the center of the theater, at the back of the floor. Watching Lucy sing and dance, chug-a-lug, belch, crack gum, make out behind the football bleachers, hula-hoop, and just generally razz it up was tons of fun. I was reminded of Meg a few times, but actually, a lot less than I expected. The crowd was a Xena crowd all the way, but a good audience to the rest of the cast and show, too - everyone cheered the performances all around. Show-stealer awards go to the woman who played Cha Cha, the dancing fiend with epileptic shimmies and her own Hispanic version of the war cry, and the Teen Angel, who brought the house down with his James Brown/Rick James-style Beauty School Dropout. Lucy reminded me that she's got the talent to back up her success: her dancing was good enough to go, her singing very nice, and when she performed "There Are Worse Things I Could Do," I could see the tears in her eyes from my seat in the back. Wow - the lady pulls the crowd with her wherever she wants them to go. Her performances are just as engaging live as they are on the TV screen. And all this with a cold! She was suffering from a cold this weekend - these darn season changes get us all.
Sunday was the Xena convention, including Lucy's appearance. Lucy seemed to have a lot of fun with the crowd, including doing tons of posing for the hundreds of picture-takers. When she heard people in the back yelling at the people in the middle who were standing up and blocking the view, Lucy yelled out "Yah, siddown. You guys in the cheap seats." Cracked me - in the cheap seats - up. Betsy Book and Tom Simpson, of Whoosh! and Tom's page fame, got their turn at the mike and told Lucy about their engagement, which brought on a warm round of hugs from her. Those two rascals will do anything for an excuse to get up close and personal. <heh - just kidding, guys> We didn't get too many new questions for Lucy. She did mention The Debt, the two episodes that are coming up when Xena and Gabrielle go to China, as being an incredible dramatic challenge - and great episodes. Brad Carpenter from Renaissance also talked specifically about The Debt I and II, and told us to prepare for our socks to be blown off.
Other comments that I can think of off the top of my head:
- Lawless said she's loving New York and doing Grease, but that it's also making her appreciate X:WP all the more. She talked for a while about how incredibly happy she is with the Xena role. It was music to all our ears.
- When asked who her favorite character to play on the show BESIDES Xena is, a dozen people immediately started shouting "Meg! Meg!" Lucy agreed, and said Meg is the most fun to play.
- One man brought his little boy up to say hi to Lucy - it looked like the kid was maybe about five. Lucy came up to him with her microphone and asked the boy's name, and the little guy said "John." She said hello and asked him where he lived, at which point the kid broke into a case of the stunned giggles and almost killed the crowd with cuteness. Lucy joked around with him for a moment, got him loosened up again, and then asked him, "John, what's your favorite part of the show?" Without missing a beat, that little kid replied with "AIYIYIYIYIYI!" and brought the house down. I was sick and tired of hearing imitations of the Xena war cry by the end of this weekend, but I did love that one.
Lucy left to return to the Grease stage, and honestly, I thought the convention got better after that. Around a quarter of the audience left - - and apparently, that quarter included the most obnoxious crowd folks and the ones who were taking up Lucy's time with the smarmy "I adore you, please kiss my kid" so-called questions, because after that everything seemed much more laid back and the other guests got some excellent questions and comments from the crowd.
Robert Field gave a great presentation about film editing, including showing us uncut and re-cut footage from A Day in the Life to show us how the editing process works and some of his options as he edits. Did you know that, in the original footage that they shot for the breakfast fight in ADiTL, Gabrielle tries briefly to straighten out the frying pan before she gives up and throws it over her shoulder in disgust? Also, Minya does not originally call Callisto a "witch;" her phrase got a bit toned down for the final version. Darn the network standards, anyway. And for his finale, he showed his blooper reel. Most of them I had heard of before, but it still put me on the floor to see Renee getting hit by a dozen eels and fish (yuk!) and Lucy up on a cross singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts." We even got to see Callisto and Velaska have prop problems and Argo display how little he cares about the camera when it's time to perform bodily functions.
(Interesting side note about seeing the outtakes of Renee getting hit by all those fish: every other time she says her line, it's "She likes what she's doing. <whap!>" The only time she says "She likes what I do. <splap!>" is what ended up getting used in the show. Just a little added info about that much-discussed moment.)
Brad Carpenter from Renaissance gave us lots of information about merchandise and production plans. Most of it wasn't new. To the eternal videotape question, he said the current plan is to release the animated movie in January, then Xena's original appearances on Hercules in February, followed by Young Hercules, then - the plan is - Xena eps. When he asked us what episodes we'd like to see, about three dozen of us shouted "All of them!" at the same time. He told us we'll most likely see the Callisto trilogy first, but that there are no plans to release the tapes in broadcast order. He also promised that the action figures are on the way, including 12-inch dolls of Xena and Gabrielle and then six-inch figures of X, G, and Callisto (!). He explained that production of figures takes around 18 months, so it'll probably still be mid-year 1998 before we see these guys, but he promised the quality of the figures will be fantastic.
Robert Trebor, Salmoneous, was the last guest to appear. He was (as always, from what I've heard) a lot of fun, and had a great time with the crowd. Robert reminisced a lot about all the years he's spent in New York City, and passed on the news that he may have a chance to do A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum soon. The Xena tour on Broadway continues! He didn't have much new news to pass along, other than to confirm that he isn't signed yet to do any episodes for season 3, but he also reminded us that the same was true last season, and he still did Miss Amphipolis.
The rest of the packed morning was filled with various videos from Creation, including some season 4 clips.
<<MINOR SPOILER PARAGRAPH>>
We got to meet the priestess in Warrior... Priestess... Tramp (Lea? Leia? Leeah?), who as it turns out has a New Zealand-ish accent and is something of a snoot - she's a Hestial Virgin. We got to see Joxer get put very directly in harm's way in Been There, Done That, and to my relief and admiration, no one cheered. Not loudly, anyway. We also got to see some more of Xena's sanity problems in this week's The Furies, including the fantastic line "I'm a lunatic with lethal combat skills."
<<OK, END OF SPOILERS. RESUME NORMAL READING>>
Whew, that's all I can think of to tell about. All in all, the weekend was fantastic, amazing, blown-away good times, but some of it was disturbing, too. I consider myself a fair Xena lunatic, but some of the folks I saw this weekend scared me. I listed to people, men and women, make incredibly crude remarks about Lucy and their attraction to her. I saw people scream and yell after they had managed to get her autograph or get a look at her. I listened to a half-dozen people confess their undying love and devotion to a woman they know only from their TV screens. I have a problem in general with people who are too busy mooning over magazine and TV/movie stars to deal humanly with the people in their lives right around them, and this level of fanaticism was scary. It obviously made Lucy uncomfortable, and didn't make me feel too good, either. I guess it's all part and parcel of the stardom gig and of having a runaway hit on your hands, and the bad has to be taken with the good. But I hate how tough it makes it on Lucy - and makes all the fans look - when some people go stark raving mad. Nobody wins.
But there were great moments with the fans, too. I got to meet quite a few online folks and enjoyed a few hours sharing hard-core nutball-ness with new/old friends, although I also know I missed tons of people. I watched fans helping to get kids closer to Lucy and give them a chance to see her, and tons of others who gladly gave over their money to the charities we saw over the weekend, and chatted with many friendly, funny people. There's a lot of good things that come out of this fan business as well.
Whew, my congratulations if you've actually managed to read through this entire ramble! See y'all at Valley Forge!
- --Beth