G2005 Con Report, part 2
Aug. 24th, 2005 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mandolinGood Lord. I meant to be able to post this part on August 11th. Even with getting sidetracked by the pool party and Otakon, I had no idea it'd take this long. I'm almost afraid to see how long Saturday's going to get since this is just Friday's part of the con report - but I couldn't skim over the quotes!
Friday, July 29
Well, in retrospect, I did hear about the missing cellphone on Thursday night. My system hadn't adjusted to the time zone yet, I was so tired by the time we got back I wasn't thinking clearly.
Jen and I got up at 8, intending to catch the 9 am shuttle to the Strip, but missed it and took our time with breakfast at the hotel buffet instead. It wasn't that impressive, really. Kathy was already long gone by the time we got up, having staff meetings to attend to. Con events didn't start til noon, so Jen and I figured we could take the shuttle to the Fashion Show Mall, check out the Forum Shops and the times for the Sirens show at TI. We also stopped in the Mirage again just at the right time to see one of the white tigers come out for a drink, a swim, a little bit of sun and to ham it up for all the people with cameras watching him from the other side of the glass. I bought a pen in the gift shop as well as a late birthday present for Innocence, who appreciates all things feline and fuzzy.
We outlined our Saturday plan while we were there, figuring the Thunder From Down Under show was best to catch since it was near a shuttle stop and late enough for Jen to catch it after the Grand Canyon tour bus got back (the brochure said the return time was 8:30, we estimated that traffic would make it closer to 10). The half price ticket place wasn't open and displaying shows yet, but Jen suggested I go there on Saturday to see if they'd post tickets. Near 11:15, we were entering the Forum Shops when I realized that I really did have to go catch the shuttle to be back by noon. We parted ways, and I took off running for the shuttle stop - but even though my watch said 11:25 when I got there, the 11:35 shuttle was already gone. I sulked for all of two minutes and decided to get a cab, and immediately realized I was going to need more cash.
I decided to stop at the ATM, but the one ATM card I had with me - the Bank of America account which didn't hold my life savings - was no use. Turned out that since I forgot to put money in the account to make up for the cash I'd sent via PayPal for the Tournament of Kings, the balance was under $23 so I couldn't withdraw cash and pay the $3 ATM fee as well. Oops.
The first panel I went to was Greg's Mug-A-Guest - which I chose largely out of pure laziness. Why? The Event Room the MAG was taking place in was right next door to my room. Greg tried to dodge the comic book questions, not wanting to scoop the panel later on: "Yeah, like word doesn't spread." But he did reiterate that they are definitely a go, although nothing's written yet. He talked about episodes of shows he'd written for, like Kim Possible - the super-speed shoes episode, which originally didn't have the Smash Mouth subplot when he wrote it. He also mentioned he'd written for Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! I've never watched the show, but Death and Plague (friends from college) do, so I was curious as to which episodes he wrote. So if you two are reading this and you care, he wrote the "evil circus" episode and the Moby Dick parody.
Greg on Batman Begins: "I think it was the best Batman movie ever made. I didn't like it." I liked it, but then again I hadn't been expecting much coming in, and had to agree with some of his points. The topic changed to a character in The Batman who people were calling "Elisa's clone." Greg insisted that it was totally accidental - the character designers for that show had never been associated with Gargoyles.
The only other quote I got from this panel was Greg's comment on what Disney was like when Gargoyles was coming out. He compared it to a lunatic asylum, saying he got somewhere because "I was the lunatic most trusted." (makes note to make a LUNATIC MOST TRUSTED button and give it to Greg next year).
Left the MAG early - Allaine had already left to check out the Round Robin, and I wandered down to the actual convention area a few minutes later. The Round Robin panel had already dispersed, so I checked out the dealers' room. Kathy was in need of change, so I told her I'd go down to the cashier's cage to get it. I severely underestimated the line at the cashier's cage, and asked someone with a con badge to go tell Kathy I hadn't run off with the cash or anything. When I finally got back to the dealer's room with the change, I ran into Shaun and Spacebabie, drooled over the leatherworking and the medieval garb, and talked to Winterwolf about getting moved into new places. While it's not in my notes, I'm positive this is when I managed to pounce on Jen (Crzy) and finally say hi.
Snuck into the back of the writing panel, hosted by Emambu and Ellen, where they were mostly going into grammar rules that everyone misses (I brandished proudly the Vegas postcard that proclaimed "Your in Vegas, baby!") and Erik managed to get more people to pick up the handouts by pointing out he'd made two grammar mistakes and would give a free cookie to whoever found them both. I found one, but was so distracted by everything else I didn't follow up on it. I also inhaled lunch sometime around this period. Can't remember. Must have been Burger King.
It was around 2 when I went back upstairs for Thom's Mug-A-Guest, and he was talking about Max Steel when I walked in and the part that was written for him. He and Ben Vereen were fired after the pilot and replaced, and when he came back to do a guest shot he had to sit there and listen to his replacement mess up the lines for "his" character.
On having free time between auditions, Thom said he had enough to play tennis three hours a day. Conversely, however, he might spend hundreds of dollars of gas to drive around to auditions and not get anything. He talked about voiceover auditions versus on-camera auditions: the people holding voiceover auditions usually treated the actors much better then the on-camera auditions - but you could make a lot of money a day doing on-camera auditions. My notes for his discussion of the Round Table Pizza ads he did for years with another guy are largely incoherent, but they were profitable and he only got fired because of his acting partner's attitude. He still has the life-size cutout of himself in a chicken suit for the pizza ad: "My dog attacked it!"
He didn't mind The Goliath Chronicles, strictly because he was working - he wasn't too bothered by how his character was written. The Avalon Tour annoyed him because he wasn't called in. Keith David had a few issues with Goliath's dialogue in TGC, but actors can't do much about bad writing.
We also found out that Thom actually passed on a big audition because he already was committed to coming to G2005. Said it then, and I'll say it again here: We love you, Thom!
Next was Greg's "Writing for Animation" panel, and wow, are my notes ever long-winded on that one. He said he preferred the TV method of "just do it" to the constant rethinking and rewriting process in movies. W.I.T.C.H. got a lot of discussion, since Greg has a lot of freedom to do something different with the show, having written a song for the first time for a "sort of musical" episode. He pointed out that the amount of leeway he gets is on a case-by-case basis. Max Steel didn't give him much - he had constant, conflicting notes from Mattel, WB, and Sony on what to change. This was the reason the "spring break" episode ended up being so bland - Mattel insisted it was "too young" and WB complained it was "too old," so they had to remove all the fun stuff and the dark stuff from the episode. W.I.T.C.H., however, is a very free working environment, and Greg said it was even better than Gargoyles, because his freedom on that show stemmed from the fact that the higher-ups ignored him, and they don't ignore his work on W.I.T.C.H. but let him get away with a lot. Since I will be TV-less for a while, and was now curious, I asked him how popular it would have to be to get on DVD. Greg wasn't sure. Darn it.
I also asked him what he did about trying to achieve conciseness in writing - if this con report is any indication, I am horrible at trying to compress my own writing and wondered if Greg had any strategies. Greg said that he was infamous for writing too long, and that he would use a stopwatch and go over scenes to make sure they could play out in the amount of time given. Someone else asked what he did when he was writing for a show that wasn't his "baby" or that he didn't have much leeway for, and Greg said he tries to find something about the episode that interests him and run with it. He got through the SRMTH circus episode by focusing on carny-speak, a lot of which got cut out but still kept him going on it, saying he had to fight to make it as good as he possibly could. "Everyone's well-intentioned, but not everyone's as good as I am." Modest as usual, Greg. :)
His strategy for handling exposition was to use the characters - but to use characters who WOULD explain certain things. (For example, Hudson would be able and willing to explain an old clan tradition, but he wouldn't be able to explain the technical defenses of Cyberbiotics.)
The "previously on" clips on Gargoyles were initially just an editing trick: 23 minutes of the 22 minute episode were usually animated, so editors had narrow leeway to fix bad animation. So the "previously on" clips were fill-ins for missing bad frames; Greg tried to write episodes so that all the information you needed was in the episode itself.
He also had a couple of Steven Spielberg horror stories to share. I won't repeat them here, this is way, way, way too long already. Basically, Spielberg ruined two of Greg's pitches.
Opening Ceremonies rolled around and I piled in with everyone else for the stories a lot of us have heard before and still come to hear again. Since there were a lot of con virgins this year, there were some people who hadn't heard the "it's better than Barney!" story. Dreamie used sugar to bribe people into voting in the Art Show: "You only get a cookie if you vote!"
There were 2 open seats for the charity poker tournament, since Dennis Woodyard couldn't make it - he was in the hospital with an ulcer. There was a huge get well card for people to sign in the art room. There was a lot of laughter when it was announced that the pants Thom was wearing on Friday would be auctioned off in the charity auction. (Chris: "Your choice: washed or unwashed!") Thom got up to model the pants, but he didn't drop them this time. Lynati showed off the dragon sculpture they were raffling off, and Marty Lund (Kaioto) got the Fan Guest of Honor award due to the comic books. (I heard the whole story a while ago, and have forgotten the pertinent details, but the book deal apparently had a lot to do with his persistence.)
The G2006 staff came up to talk about next year in Los Angeles. Seth summed up why he was on staff again: "I love pain." We were told that anyone wearing a G2006 staff shirt could answer questions about next year ("Except for Greg [Weisman]. He just wanted a free T-shirt.") The convention veteran round-up was done, and Chris had this to say about the people who'd been to all 9 conventions: "These are the people with nothing better to do."
Greg brought new stuff as well as the old stories. He confirmed the news about Season 2, Volume 1 coming out on DVD. The first 26 episodes of that season will be on the DVD in the correct order (not the airing order) - from "Leader of the Pack" through "Kingdom." (This includes the Avalon and City of Stone multi-parters.) Sales on the Season 1 DVD were good, but not great, so we STILL have to spread the word to get the rest of season 2 out.
He also brought some audio greetings from the cast and crew who couldn't make it - Kath Soucie and Keith David, the latter of whom had us on our feet and cheering with his "I have been denied everything - even my convention!" roar at the end of it. I so need a sound clip of that. The rest of the cast and crew they got to do video greetings - Frank Paur ("Wait, it's Vegas, you don't need me there! Go see a show!"), Michael Reaves, Jeff Bennett ("Brooklyn, unfortunately, is not swinging this year."), Bill Fagerbakke, Thom ("Well, I'm probably seeing you right now."), Brigitte Bako, and finally Ed Asner ("Hopefully you won't run into gargoyles behind the tables.").
The original pitch wasn't shown this year since it's on the Season 1 DVD. Instead, Greg brought an older version of the pitch that Jim Cummings narrated - I got a few stills since there were some new shots and better close-ups of the original character designs.
Greg sat down and Chris went over the rest of the con events, starting with explaining the Blue Mug-A-Guest and that there was no limit to what we could ask Greg and Thom, and reiterated that it was not for guests under 18.
Thom: "And we'll be fully nude!"
Greg: "Well, he might be by the end of it."
Chris mentioned the radio play had some parts for kids and that Erin and Benny would be auditioning; Greg's family was coming Sunday, and they were apparently bringing the raw 18 hours of footage the DVD crew recorded in Montreal last year. I promptly raised my hand and asked, "So how much do we have to pay you to burn certain tapes?"
Despite the laughter, I wasn't totally kidding. :)
Along with the usual stuff, there was also audio for the Team Atlantis episode "The Last" (aka the episode with Demona), shown with a leica reel Vashkoda created from the storyboards and some of her art to fill in, saying that maybe Dave Schwartz "will be insulted enough by my attempts that he'll fill in the missing scenes himself." Personally, I was impressed. I can't imagine how much time it took to construct the leica reel, even if it was just the first act.
Ended up going out to dinner with Kathy, Greg, Thom, Seth, Gore, Chris, and a few others at the Pasta Palace in the hotel, and probably drove the waitstaff crazy trying to seat us. Showed Thom a photo of the Great White Elephant (aka my new house), and kept my notebook out while we waited for food to get quotes. Which are even better out of context.
(I think this was addressed to Gore.)
Seth: "Do you sing 'When I Think About You I Touch Myself' to your computer?"
(on what antipasto was supposed to be)
Thom: Antipasta, Antichrist..."
(when we finally got food)
Me: "Crisis averted. Thom has bread."
Seth: "Thom does not have to destroy the world now."
After dinner, I ran up to the room again for something and confirmed that Jen was going to be out at the Grand Canyon trip all day. I think I also stopped in the Con Suite for something, because I showed up to the Blue Mug-A-Guest with Greg and Thom twenty minutes late. For those who don't know, the Blue MAG is basically an opportunity to ask the guys anything - no matter how X-rated or weird.
Questions about W.I.T.C.H were brought up, and Greg mentioned that while he couldn't act on it, he was privately convinced one of the characters was a lesbian. "Is it Irma?" someone asked before the topic was changed again.
We got around to the "blue" part of the session when Revel asked "Are the [gargoyle] females pink inside?"
Everyone looked at Thom.
Aaron: "Hey, why are you asking Lex?"
Thom pointed at Greg.
Greg's prompt reply: "I'm colorblind."
Hudson: And the answer-dodging award goes to..."
(Greg really is colorblind - red-green color deficient - but it was still funny.)
The questions turned to animation mistakes in episodes and how the rating of the comic books would differ from the episodes. Some of the S&P rules for TGC were a little weird - in syndication, blows to the head could not be shown. The best they could do was a fist going towards screen, then cutting away from the impact. But ABC wouldn't even let them imply there was a head blow. (Someone: "That blows.") That got the discussion to Deadly Force and why Toon Disney wouldn't even air it - they never replied to any of Greg's queries and it was like talking to a brick wall.
Then Greg jumped right back to the W.I.T.C.H. question with "How did you know it was Irma?" and we all died laughing.
Tigris asked what their most favorite and least favorite episodes were (not counting TGC).
Thom on his favorite episode: "The Pack episode." Which Pack episode? "Whichever one I had the most lines in." He reiterated that he only paid attention to episodes he had lines in (which is why the Avalon Tour drove him nuts), and read scripts like this: "My line, my line, my line, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit..."
Greg loved the multi-parters because it gave him space to tell the story, but if he had to narrow it down to a single episode, it would be "The Mirror."
Thom looked blank.
Greg: "It's the one where you turned human."
Thom: "Oh, I loved that one!"
Someone asked if Coyote was Peter Maza's father. Greg said that was NOT the case, and tried to fish for an explanation, saying that when Peter did the kachina dance, from Coyote's POV, Peter was part of him. That got dickered about for a bit, and Greg commented, "Well, I have my theories and I like my theories better." Someone suggested that Peter had been Coyote's avatar, which seemed to satisfy everyone.
We slid back into "blue" territory when Revel asked if Lex still had a 10-inch tongue. Thom: "It's grown two inches."
It was brought up that having Oberon and Titania be the rulers of the Third Race was a little Anglo-centric. Greg said that it was partly because he needed a reason for all his supernatural entities, and that it was more Shakespeare-centric than anything else, saying "I'm a fucking Shakespeare freak." Part of the reason that Titania and Oberon were blue was because they wanted to make sure the rulers of the Third Race weren't technically "white."
Gargoyle eye color was brought up - Greg said the irises were too dark to see the colors well. The New Olympians were brought up, and Greg's stance was that the Greek gods were the actual Children of Oberon, while the Roman gods were their children who comprised the New Olympians. There was a lot of discussion on whether gargoyle/human hybrids were possible, but Greg was adamant that it wouldn't be possible without magic (probably Third Race-strength magic).
Aaron on same-sex pairings: "Fox, Hyena, long nights in a cell?" Greg: "Fox wasn't interested."
I can't remember who asked "What if it turned out Xanatos was a transsexual?" Greg: "I think Petros would have mentioned it."
I got worn out around midnight and headed for the room while the panel was still going.
Geez. Think this was bad? I haven't even gotten to Saturday. :)
Friday, July 29
Well, in retrospect, I did hear about the missing cellphone on Thursday night. My system hadn't adjusted to the time zone yet, I was so tired by the time we got back I wasn't thinking clearly.
Jen and I got up at 8, intending to catch the 9 am shuttle to the Strip, but missed it and took our time with breakfast at the hotel buffet instead. It wasn't that impressive, really. Kathy was already long gone by the time we got up, having staff meetings to attend to. Con events didn't start til noon, so Jen and I figured we could take the shuttle to the Fashion Show Mall, check out the Forum Shops and the times for the Sirens show at TI. We also stopped in the Mirage again just at the right time to see one of the white tigers come out for a drink, a swim, a little bit of sun and to ham it up for all the people with cameras watching him from the other side of the glass. I bought a pen in the gift shop as well as a late birthday present for Innocence, who appreciates all things feline and fuzzy.
We outlined our Saturday plan while we were there, figuring the Thunder From Down Under show was best to catch since it was near a shuttle stop and late enough for Jen to catch it after the Grand Canyon tour bus got back (the brochure said the return time was 8:30, we estimated that traffic would make it closer to 10). The half price ticket place wasn't open and displaying shows yet, but Jen suggested I go there on Saturday to see if they'd post tickets. Near 11:15, we were entering the Forum Shops when I realized that I really did have to go catch the shuttle to be back by noon. We parted ways, and I took off running for the shuttle stop - but even though my watch said 11:25 when I got there, the 11:35 shuttle was already gone. I sulked for all of two minutes and decided to get a cab, and immediately realized I was going to need more cash.
I decided to stop at the ATM, but the one ATM card I had with me - the Bank of America account which didn't hold my life savings - was no use. Turned out that since I forgot to put money in the account to make up for the cash I'd sent via PayPal for the Tournament of Kings, the balance was under $23 so I couldn't withdraw cash and pay the $3 ATM fee as well. Oops.
The first panel I went to was Greg's Mug-A-Guest - which I chose largely out of pure laziness. Why? The Event Room the MAG was taking place in was right next door to my room. Greg tried to dodge the comic book questions, not wanting to scoop the panel later on: "Yeah, like word doesn't spread." But he did reiterate that they are definitely a go, although nothing's written yet. He talked about episodes of shows he'd written for, like Kim Possible - the super-speed shoes episode, which originally didn't have the Smash Mouth subplot when he wrote it. He also mentioned he'd written for Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! I've never watched the show, but Death and Plague (friends from college) do, so I was curious as to which episodes he wrote. So if you two are reading this and you care, he wrote the "evil circus" episode and the Moby Dick parody.
Greg on Batman Begins: "I think it was the best Batman movie ever made. I didn't like it." I liked it, but then again I hadn't been expecting much coming in, and had to agree with some of his points. The topic changed to a character in The Batman who people were calling "Elisa's clone." Greg insisted that it was totally accidental - the character designers for that show had never been associated with Gargoyles.
The only other quote I got from this panel was Greg's comment on what Disney was like when Gargoyles was coming out. He compared it to a lunatic asylum, saying he got somewhere because "I was the lunatic most trusted." (makes note to make a LUNATIC MOST TRUSTED button and give it to Greg next year).
Left the MAG early - Allaine had already left to check out the Round Robin, and I wandered down to the actual convention area a few minutes later. The Round Robin panel had already dispersed, so I checked out the dealers' room. Kathy was in need of change, so I told her I'd go down to the cashier's cage to get it. I severely underestimated the line at the cashier's cage, and asked someone with a con badge to go tell Kathy I hadn't run off with the cash or anything. When I finally got back to the dealer's room with the change, I ran into Shaun and Spacebabie, drooled over the leatherworking and the medieval garb, and talked to Winterwolf about getting moved into new places. While it's not in my notes, I'm positive this is when I managed to pounce on Jen (Crzy) and finally say hi.
Snuck into the back of the writing panel, hosted by Emambu and Ellen, where they were mostly going into grammar rules that everyone misses (I brandished proudly the Vegas postcard that proclaimed "Your in Vegas, baby!") and Erik managed to get more people to pick up the handouts by pointing out he'd made two grammar mistakes and would give a free cookie to whoever found them both. I found one, but was so distracted by everything else I didn't follow up on it. I also inhaled lunch sometime around this period. Can't remember. Must have been Burger King.
It was around 2 when I went back upstairs for Thom's Mug-A-Guest, and he was talking about Max Steel when I walked in and the part that was written for him. He and Ben Vereen were fired after the pilot and replaced, and when he came back to do a guest shot he had to sit there and listen to his replacement mess up the lines for "his" character.
On having free time between auditions, Thom said he had enough to play tennis three hours a day. Conversely, however, he might spend hundreds of dollars of gas to drive around to auditions and not get anything. He talked about voiceover auditions versus on-camera auditions: the people holding voiceover auditions usually treated the actors much better then the on-camera auditions - but you could make a lot of money a day doing on-camera auditions. My notes for his discussion of the Round Table Pizza ads he did for years with another guy are largely incoherent, but they were profitable and he only got fired because of his acting partner's attitude. He still has the life-size cutout of himself in a chicken suit for the pizza ad: "My dog attacked it!"
He didn't mind The Goliath Chronicles, strictly because he was working - he wasn't too bothered by how his character was written. The Avalon Tour annoyed him because he wasn't called in. Keith David had a few issues with Goliath's dialogue in TGC, but actors can't do much about bad writing.
We also found out that Thom actually passed on a big audition because he already was committed to coming to G2005. Said it then, and I'll say it again here: We love you, Thom!
Next was Greg's "Writing for Animation" panel, and wow, are my notes ever long-winded on that one. He said he preferred the TV method of "just do it" to the constant rethinking and rewriting process in movies. W.I.T.C.H. got a lot of discussion, since Greg has a lot of freedom to do something different with the show, having written a song for the first time for a "sort of musical" episode. He pointed out that the amount of leeway he gets is on a case-by-case basis. Max Steel didn't give him much - he had constant, conflicting notes from Mattel, WB, and Sony on what to change. This was the reason the "spring break" episode ended up being so bland - Mattel insisted it was "too young" and WB complained it was "too old," so they had to remove all the fun stuff and the dark stuff from the episode. W.I.T.C.H., however, is a very free working environment, and Greg said it was even better than Gargoyles, because his freedom on that show stemmed from the fact that the higher-ups ignored him, and they don't ignore his work on W.I.T.C.H. but let him get away with a lot. Since I will be TV-less for a while, and was now curious, I asked him how popular it would have to be to get on DVD. Greg wasn't sure. Darn it.
I also asked him what he did about trying to achieve conciseness in writing - if this con report is any indication, I am horrible at trying to compress my own writing and wondered if Greg had any strategies. Greg said that he was infamous for writing too long, and that he would use a stopwatch and go over scenes to make sure they could play out in the amount of time given. Someone else asked what he did when he was writing for a show that wasn't his "baby" or that he didn't have much leeway for, and Greg said he tries to find something about the episode that interests him and run with it. He got through the SRMTH circus episode by focusing on carny-speak, a lot of which got cut out but still kept him going on it, saying he had to fight to make it as good as he possibly could. "Everyone's well-intentioned, but not everyone's as good as I am." Modest as usual, Greg. :)
His strategy for handling exposition was to use the characters - but to use characters who WOULD explain certain things. (For example, Hudson would be able and willing to explain an old clan tradition, but he wouldn't be able to explain the technical defenses of Cyberbiotics.)
The "previously on" clips on Gargoyles were initially just an editing trick: 23 minutes of the 22 minute episode were usually animated, so editors had narrow leeway to fix bad animation. So the "previously on" clips were fill-ins for missing bad frames; Greg tried to write episodes so that all the information you needed was in the episode itself.
He also had a couple of Steven Spielberg horror stories to share. I won't repeat them here, this is way, way, way too long already. Basically, Spielberg ruined two of Greg's pitches.
Opening Ceremonies rolled around and I piled in with everyone else for the stories a lot of us have heard before and still come to hear again. Since there were a lot of con virgins this year, there were some people who hadn't heard the "it's better than Barney!" story. Dreamie used sugar to bribe people into voting in the Art Show: "You only get a cookie if you vote!"
There were 2 open seats for the charity poker tournament, since Dennis Woodyard couldn't make it - he was in the hospital with an ulcer. There was a huge get well card for people to sign in the art room. There was a lot of laughter when it was announced that the pants Thom was wearing on Friday would be auctioned off in the charity auction. (Chris: "Your choice: washed or unwashed!") Thom got up to model the pants, but he didn't drop them this time. Lynati showed off the dragon sculpture they were raffling off, and Marty Lund (Kaioto) got the Fan Guest of Honor award due to the comic books. (I heard the whole story a while ago, and have forgotten the pertinent details, but the book deal apparently had a lot to do with his persistence.)
The G2006 staff came up to talk about next year in Los Angeles. Seth summed up why he was on staff again: "I love pain." We were told that anyone wearing a G2006 staff shirt could answer questions about next year ("Except for Greg [Weisman]. He just wanted a free T-shirt.") The convention veteran round-up was done, and Chris had this to say about the people who'd been to all 9 conventions: "These are the people with nothing better to do."
Greg brought new stuff as well as the old stories. He confirmed the news about Season 2, Volume 1 coming out on DVD. The first 26 episodes of that season will be on the DVD in the correct order (not the airing order) - from "Leader of the Pack" through "Kingdom." (This includes the Avalon and City of Stone multi-parters.) Sales on the Season 1 DVD were good, but not great, so we STILL have to spread the word to get the rest of season 2 out.
He also brought some audio greetings from the cast and crew who couldn't make it - Kath Soucie and Keith David, the latter of whom had us on our feet and cheering with his "I have been denied everything - even my convention!" roar at the end of it. I so need a sound clip of that. The rest of the cast and crew they got to do video greetings - Frank Paur ("Wait, it's Vegas, you don't need me there! Go see a show!"), Michael Reaves, Jeff Bennett ("Brooklyn, unfortunately, is not swinging this year."), Bill Fagerbakke, Thom ("Well, I'm probably seeing you right now."), Brigitte Bako, and finally Ed Asner ("Hopefully you won't run into gargoyles behind the tables.").
The original pitch wasn't shown this year since it's on the Season 1 DVD. Instead, Greg brought an older version of the pitch that Jim Cummings narrated - I got a few stills since there were some new shots and better close-ups of the original character designs.
Greg sat down and Chris went over the rest of the con events, starting with explaining the Blue Mug-A-Guest and that there was no limit to what we could ask Greg and Thom, and reiterated that it was not for guests under 18.
Thom: "And we'll be fully nude!"
Greg: "Well, he might be by the end of it."
Chris mentioned the radio play had some parts for kids and that Erin and Benny would be auditioning; Greg's family was coming Sunday, and they were apparently bringing the raw 18 hours of footage the DVD crew recorded in Montreal last year. I promptly raised my hand and asked, "So how much do we have to pay you to burn certain tapes?"
Despite the laughter, I wasn't totally kidding. :)
Along with the usual stuff, there was also audio for the Team Atlantis episode "The Last" (aka the episode with Demona), shown with a leica reel Vashkoda created from the storyboards and some of her art to fill in, saying that maybe Dave Schwartz "will be insulted enough by my attempts that he'll fill in the missing scenes himself." Personally, I was impressed. I can't imagine how much time it took to construct the leica reel, even if it was just the first act.
Ended up going out to dinner with Kathy, Greg, Thom, Seth, Gore, Chris, and a few others at the Pasta Palace in the hotel, and probably drove the waitstaff crazy trying to seat us. Showed Thom a photo of the Great White Elephant (aka my new house), and kept my notebook out while we waited for food to get quotes. Which are even better out of context.
(I think this was addressed to Gore.)
Seth: "Do you sing 'When I Think About You I Touch Myself' to your computer?"
(on what antipasto was supposed to be)
Thom: Antipasta, Antichrist..."
(when we finally got food)
Me: "Crisis averted. Thom has bread."
Seth: "Thom does not have to destroy the world now."
After dinner, I ran up to the room again for something and confirmed that Jen was going to be out at the Grand Canyon trip all day. I think I also stopped in the Con Suite for something, because I showed up to the Blue Mug-A-Guest with Greg and Thom twenty minutes late. For those who don't know, the Blue MAG is basically an opportunity to ask the guys anything - no matter how X-rated or weird.
Questions about W.I.T.C.H were brought up, and Greg mentioned that while he couldn't act on it, he was privately convinced one of the characters was a lesbian. "Is it Irma?" someone asked before the topic was changed again.
We got around to the "blue" part of the session when Revel asked "Are the [gargoyle] females pink inside?"
Everyone looked at Thom.
Aaron: "Hey, why are you asking Lex?"
Thom pointed at Greg.
Greg's prompt reply: "I'm colorblind."
Hudson: And the answer-dodging award goes to..."
(Greg really is colorblind - red-green color deficient - but it was still funny.)
The questions turned to animation mistakes in episodes and how the rating of the comic books would differ from the episodes. Some of the S&P rules for TGC were a little weird - in syndication, blows to the head could not be shown. The best they could do was a fist going towards screen, then cutting away from the impact. But ABC wouldn't even let them imply there was a head blow. (Someone: "That blows.") That got the discussion to Deadly Force and why Toon Disney wouldn't even air it - they never replied to any of Greg's queries and it was like talking to a brick wall.
Then Greg jumped right back to the W.I.T.C.H. question with "How did you know it was Irma?" and we all died laughing.
Tigris asked what their most favorite and least favorite episodes were (not counting TGC).
Thom on his favorite episode: "The Pack episode." Which Pack episode? "Whichever one I had the most lines in." He reiterated that he only paid attention to episodes he had lines in (which is why the Avalon Tour drove him nuts), and read scripts like this: "My line, my line, my line, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit..."
Greg loved the multi-parters because it gave him space to tell the story, but if he had to narrow it down to a single episode, it would be "The Mirror."
Thom looked blank.
Greg: "It's the one where you turned human."
Thom: "Oh, I loved that one!"
Someone asked if Coyote was Peter Maza's father. Greg said that was NOT the case, and tried to fish for an explanation, saying that when Peter did the kachina dance, from Coyote's POV, Peter was part of him. That got dickered about for a bit, and Greg commented, "Well, I have my theories and I like my theories better." Someone suggested that Peter had been Coyote's avatar, which seemed to satisfy everyone.
We slid back into "blue" territory when Revel asked if Lex still had a 10-inch tongue. Thom: "It's grown two inches."
It was brought up that having Oberon and Titania be the rulers of the Third Race was a little Anglo-centric. Greg said that it was partly because he needed a reason for all his supernatural entities, and that it was more Shakespeare-centric than anything else, saying "I'm a fucking Shakespeare freak." Part of the reason that Titania and Oberon were blue was because they wanted to make sure the rulers of the Third Race weren't technically "white."
Gargoyle eye color was brought up - Greg said the irises were too dark to see the colors well. The New Olympians were brought up, and Greg's stance was that the Greek gods were the actual Children of Oberon, while the Roman gods were their children who comprised the New Olympians. There was a lot of discussion on whether gargoyle/human hybrids were possible, but Greg was adamant that it wouldn't be possible without magic (probably Third Race-strength magic).
Aaron on same-sex pairings: "Fox, Hyena, long nights in a cell?" Greg: "Fox wasn't interested."
I can't remember who asked "What if it turned out Xanatos was a transsexual?" Greg: "I think Petros would have mentioned it."
I got worn out around midnight and headed for the room while the panel was still going.
Geez. Think this was bad? I haven't even gotten to Saturday. :)
