My Top Five Comic-Con Moments

26Jul10

The latest chapter of the saga that has been my life of late is a trip down to (sometimes) sunny San Diego for Comic-Con 2010, where I helped promote and cover press events/panels for TheCinemaSource.com. And considering how easily I am star-struck, what a chapter it was. 

My expectations were muddled going in. The convention is singular in its reputation as the gold standard of pop-culture/sci-fi gatherings, and any celebrity whose recent work could be even remotely tied into the event’s content was billed to be on-hand promoting themselves amongst the bravest and most eager genre fans. But I didn’t know how accessible those people and that content would actually be to a media plebian like me, even with my handy press pass. Thus, my mind was promptly blown. 

Below are my own personal Top Five Comic-Con Moments, in order of general awesomeness. Some were unexpected successes, some odd accidents, others the kind of disappointments whose memory will likely have me cringing for months. 

So yes, I’ll definitely be back next year. 

5) Sidewalk Run-in With Drunken “Community” Cast

 

Not sure why the cast NBC’s hilarious new comedy “Community” fit in at Comic-Con, but no complaints here—the show is one of last season’s best new additions, and it’s one I look forward to weekly. 

Saturday night found us heading past the SyFy/EW party, but when we were about a block away I saw a group ahead of us laughing and clearly inebriated. One woman in the group turned around and I recognized her immediately: it was Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays the bubbly Shirley on the show. We locked eyes, mine widened, and she smiled. “Hey!” she said. “Hey!” I replied, but not before noticing that she was accompanied by Danny Pudi (Abed), Alison Brie (Annie), Donald Glover (Troy) and Gillian Jacobs (Britta). I freaked out, gushed that I love the show and was super excited to see everyone out, and we start chatting as they stumbled toward the party. We talked for a minute, and they revealed that they start shooting the new season Monday (today) and were making the most of the weekend. I wished them a great night, but they insisted on this photo, deliriously dark and blurry though it may be, before heading into the party. Pull my arm, why dontcha… 

 

4) Ryan Reynolds Probably Turns Kid Gay at Green Lantern Panel 

 

Everyone can agree that, despite being a necessary component to Comic-Con, audience Q&As can be pretty damn awkward. Comic-Con seems to have embraced this fact, thankfully, and between a litany of questions posed by a colorful variety of fans, one stood out: a boy, who can’t have been a day older than nine, asked actor Ryan Reynolds (who plays the title character in Warner Brothers’ upcoming “Green Lantern” adaptation, the first from the DC universe) what it was like to recite his famous oath. Reynolds’ smoldering answer, and the young lad’s reaction, is one for the memory books. 

 

3) Round Table with Tina Fey (and Will Ferrell) 

As someone who tends to geek out and freeze at even the most minor celebrity encounter, this Thursday-morning brush with my absolute favorite TV actress/writer, Tina Fey (along with the legendary Will Ferrell) was a quite an emotional hurdle. I was admitted to the roundtable session for “Megamind”, the upcoming animated feature with voice work by the two comedy icons, and within minutes I was seated just feet away from Liz Lemon herself. 

The other reporters were asking questions, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. She’s stunningly beautiful in real life (as are most of the actresses I encountered this weekend) but having spent so many hours watching and re-watching episodes of “30 Rock”, I was more surprised by the how different she wasn’t. Her walk, her facial ticks, the part in her hair… it was all exactly as it should have been, precisely as expected. But there was something about this being “real life” that made that idea seem almost too much to take. She didn’t make much eye contact but there was a flickering second or two when she did look at me. And for now, as I sit wrapped in my Slanket stuff handfuls of Sabor de Soledad into my mouth while watching a “Designing Women” marathon on Lifetime, that will just have to be enough. 

2) Making Charisma Carpenter Look At Me Like This: 

Of all of Comic-Con’s celebrity guests this year, one unlikely name attracted me most of all: Charisma Carpenter, who played the bitchy, self-obsessed cheerleader Cordelia Chase in TV’s “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” and the less self-obsessed but equally bitchy Cordelia Chase in its spin-off series “Angel.” Something about Cordy fascinated me from the beginning; her writing was sharp and smart, her delivery was impeccably timed and she was always—despite her deeply 90’s outfits and a penchant for being unceremoniously abducted by demons—nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous. She’s the epitome of a gay icon, and I loved her instantly. (The 100th episode of “Angel,” which I won’t spoil explicitly, left me a blubbering mess.) 

I had heard Charisma would be there months ago as part of the “Butterfinger Defense League” campaign with Lou Ferrigno and Erik Estrada, and there was no mention of her appearance in the schedule, but I poked around and figured out when/where she’d be and planned my day accordingly. I arrived as indicated and waited in line for more than an hour (during which I caught my first in-person glimpse of her, looking incredibly hot in a cop-like jumpsuit and perfect hair.) I just hoped to get a photo with her, and squeeze in a few words in about how I excited I was to meet her, and tell her that Cordelia was my favorite character ever on TV, and that I appreciated her time. But we were told at the last minute that there would be no photos allowed, and that we’d barely have time to say anything to the talent. This left me crestfallen and slightly flustered, so in between the awkward seconds in which I completely ignored Ferrigno and Estrada as they signed my photo, Charisma and I shared the following dialogue. 

Charisma: Hi!
Thomas: Hi, Charisma! I’m very excited to meet you.
Charisma (smiling): Oh, great!
Thomas (sincerely, but inadvertently creepily): Like, more excited to meet you than I am to meet anyone else at the whole con…” 

At this moment Charisma’s face changed into a kind of weirded-out sneer (see above photo for a pretty accurate depiction) and I realize I had seriously botched this most important of encounters. This is where I should have followed up with “…because Cordelia is my favorite character of all time,” or something to make me seem less deranged, but Ferrigno is already signing the photo and there was, tragically, no time to save face. It was over even more quickly than it began. 

I was, and remain, devastated over this hack job. I can only hope that one day I’ll get another shot, that she won’t remember me, and that it’ll be a time and a place more conducive to my expression of absolute (but harmless and certifiably un-creepy) adoration. 

1) My Interview With Joss (Fucking) Whedon 

 

Ok, let’s be real here. I’m pretty amateur when it comes to on-camera interviews, especially with celebrities. My fear of embarrassing myself in front of important people, much less my idols, is acute. Crippling, even. It’s something I hoped to work on at Comic-Con. 

Friday night found us at a promo party for “Jackass 3D”, and despite my performance anxiety, I managed to sum up the courage to approach almost all the idiots in the movie (Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man and others) and shoot what amounted to surprisingly not awkward interviews. I left the party drunk on success—and, admittedly, lots of free Bud Light—and we made our way to a red carpet event for “Spartacus: Blood & Sand”, where later, to my utter shock and delight and horror, Joss Whedon himself made his way towards us. 

I wasn’t doing the interviews at that event, but after succeeding with the jackasses earlier that evening, this was one I simply had to do. As a relatively new but no less rabid Whedon fan, I immediately had the questions I wanted to ask (about “The Avengers”, which he just announced he would direct hours before, and about the afterlife of “Dollhouse”, his most recent cancelled FOX show) and before I knew it I was shaking his hand and firing away. 

Joss and I on the red carpet of the "Spartacus" party

The result was a thrilling success. It’s nothing special as far as interviews go, but it’s already one of the highlights of my brief career. I’ll link to the video as soon as it’s posted to the site, but here’s a rudimentary photo as proof. 

I’m struggling to readjust back to life after such a whirlwind experience, but I got what I wanted in retrospect. Celebrity isn’t as terrifying as it was a week ago. These people’s time is more valuable than mine, it’s true,  because everyone wants a piece of it. But ultimately, they’re just people. And that’s nothing to be afraid of. 

Here’s to Comic-Con 2011—may it hold more famous people, more stale nachos and rubbery pizza, and maybe even some Charismatic redemption.

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