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3/23/08
I actually can’t remember the last time I went to a Paley Festival event. I know I went a couple of times in the very early years of this annual Museum of TV & Radio event, back when they did a Star Trek: The Next Generation panel with the cast and when they did a “Tribute to Gene Roddenberry” panel. And I’m sure I’ve been since then. I just can’t remember when.
 When we went inside, the premium section (the first four rows) was still not full as people were still arriving, so we managed to get good seats on the aisle in the second row of the center section. I wasn’t sure what the camera etiquette on these events were, so I hadn’t brought one with me, but when I saw other people had them, I decided I was definitely going to bring a camera with me to the Buffy event. Around 7 p.m. or so, the lights went down and they showed a clip package about the Museum of TV & Radio, now apparently known as the Paley Center for Media. After that we had some brief remarks from a Center rep, and then we were shown a short clip of Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace in creator Bryan Fuller’s former series, Wonderfalls. The clip got a roar of approval from the crowd. Then we were introduced to the panel’s moderator for the evening: E! Entertainment’s Kristin. Now, knowing what a big ol’ fangirl she is from her online columns, I thought this was an excellent choice and indeed, she turned out to be a fantastic moderator for the panel! She was enthusiastic, prepared with questions (both her own and those that had been submitted earlier via the Paley website), and kept the panel flowing and allowed everyone on the panel a chance to talk. I hoped that she would be the moderator for the Buffy panel as well, given the great job she did. One of the best bits in her introduction about the show before the panelists came to the stage was to conspiratorially warn us that “Ned and Chuck are backstage... and they’re touching!” And not dead either! One note on this report: I did not take notes during either of the Paley panels, so my comments are basically going to be more about my impressions of the panelists rather than “he said, she said”, but I’ll throw in whatever I do remember from the Q&A. So here goes: My major surprise of the Pushing Daisies panel was how much all of the actors were like their characters! This is actually less common than you might think. Often shy characters are played by outgoing people or vice versa, bad boys are played by nice guys, people who are funny onscreen are quiet or grumpy in person, etc. But boy, this cast was just amazingly like their characters in person! Lee Pace seemed quiet, internalized and rather shy, Anna Friel was more outgoing but with a very regal quality about her (though her British accent definitely differentiated her from her character), Kristin Chenoweth was a bright, fun firecracker of a gal, Ellen Greene was ethereal and sweet, and Chi McBride... ah, Chi... well, he IS his character – full of dry wit that kept the audience laughing during the entire panel. As his character of Emerson is my favorite part of the show, I was particularly thrilled to find out he is just that cool in person! The running joke that he kept going for the night was after Lee explained that he hadn’t been looking to do television when he got the script for Pushing Daisies, but it had been such a good role that he decided to go after it. Chi cracked us up when he kept teasing Lee about not needing the work. Chi discussed some of his former roles, including a project called “Killer Instinct”, or as he said he called it “Kill It – It Stinks”. And he revealed that he was going to have turned out to be the guilty party in the cancelled series The Nine. When it was noted that after his role in Boston Public, he was considered to be a serious dramatic actor and that it was a surprise for him to turn up in a comedic role, Chi laughed at the Hollywood stereotyping. He pointed out that he had started on a sitcom, The John Larroquette Show, and that after that, he had to struggle to get considered for a dramatic role. And then after Boston Public, he decided he wanted to try comedy again and went out for a role in a comedy film and the producer wouldn’t even consider him, thinking Chi was not funny. Chi talked about how although he wanted to do comedy again, he did not want to take on a stereotypical role in a sitcom and that he really liked the more elevated level of comedy in Pushing Daisies and he also really enjoyed how much he was allowed to convey with just reaction shots in the show. He also joked about taking the job so his child could go to an Ivy League college, not the DeVry Institute. Chi absolutely had me in hysterics every time he’d talk – it was a thrill to see this very bright, very charming guy in person! Anna was asked about her role as Holly in the upcoming remake of the Kroffts’ Land of the Lost, and she indicated that she enjoyed working with Will Ferrell. Ellen joked that when she went out for her role in Pushing Daisies, she just was happy to prove she ‘wasn’t dead’ and was flattered when the role, originally written as a dowdy, unattractive character was glammed up for her once they cast her in it. She also joked that she was the only cast member who had to actually audition for her role, while the others just had it offered to them. Kristin told a hysterical story about accidentally setting her hair extensions on fire one time, and also discussed the choice she had faced when taking the role of Olive in Pushing Daisies. At the same time as she got the show’s pilot script, she had been offered a major Broadway role in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”. She had to choose between the two opportunities and fortunately for us, she chose Pushing Daisies. In a brief clip package with scenes from the show, some of the loudest applause came when Kristin or Ellen sang. Kristin said that she enjoyed that when she sang “Hopelessly Devoted To You” in one episode, it was woven naturally into the scene and wasn’t just a musical moment shoved into the scene. Ellen recalled clamoring for a chance to sing in an episode with Kristin and also discussed how in the process of a musical, when a character could no longer express themselves in words, they would sing, and when they could no longer express it in song, they would dance. Fellow musical vet Kristin nodded in agreement with this. At one point, Chi encouraged Kristin to do a brief operatic aria which the crowd adored! Kristin also talked about how in the episode centered on Olive’s past as a jockey, she had actually just fallen and broken a bone, so she performed the role while on heavy pain medication. The cast teased and commended her for work in that episode while under such duress. Clearly there was an amazing camaraderie amongst this cast – Lee and Anna were often leaning against each other or holding hands, Chi and Kristin kept making each other laugh and everyone seemed fond of Ellen. There was an explanation at the beginning of the panel as to why fellow cast member Swoosie Kurtz wasn’t there – she was taking care of an ill relative. A few plot point and mythology questions were asked, such as whether Ned and Chuck could conceive a child together, perhaps in vitro. Bryan disappointed the crowd by answering that he believed the egg would die as soon as the sperm touched it. Anna seemed particularly saddened by this notion. It was also asked whether a plot point about Chuck’s mother, the reveal heightened by the writers’ strike-enforced early ending of season one, would be followed up in season two. Bryan confirmed that it would. He also acknowledged that the strike had allowed the writers to stop and look at what was and wasn’t working in the first season of the show and come back with new ideas on how to build on the show’s strengths in the second season. Bryan was asked, given the amazing guest stars they’d already had, if he had a wish list of guest stars he’d like to have on the show. He admitted it was a very long list. But when Chi suggested that it would be fantastic to have Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on the show, Bryan concurred and said it would also be great to get Carol Burnett. As I rather expected, after the panel ended, there was a mad rush for the stage as the actors and creator Bryan Fuller stayed to sign autographs. They also brought out some Pushing Daisies t-shirts which they tossed out to the crowd and I was luck enough to snag one! I braved the crush of the crowd and managed to get up front to say hi to Bryan and to one of the other staff writers, Pete Ocko, who I knew from his work on Dead Like Me. Then I was off to get the cast members to sign the program book (which they had passed out to everyone as you entered the theater). I don’t think I got to say anything to Anna. And I was too tongue-tied to say anything to Lee as he signed my program, but I did tell Kristin C. how much I loved her on the show and she was sweet and appreciative and said how much she loved the role and the show. I told Ellen that I was a big fan of hers from Little Shop of Horrors and she made sure to sign the name ‘Audrey’ under her own when she heard that. I was thrilled to be able to tell Chi that he was my favorite on the show and that I thought he stole every scene he was in and that I loved how erudite and funny his character was. He seemed appreciative of his character and that he got such a great response from the audience. Just a super-cool guy. Also seated in the crowd in a VIP section were some of the show’s writers, costumer Bob Blackman, as well as the young actor and actress who play the child versions of Ned and Chuck. They came up on stage after the panel to sign autographs as well, but during the panel Young Ned managed to be called on to ask Bryan a question. He then proceeded to pitch Bryan an idea for an entire episode featuring the young versions of all of the characters crossing paths at that age. This got cheers from the audience! It was also nice that the panelists monitored their language a few times, knowing that there were kids in the audience. And in all – a great event! I was very glad I could be there to celebrate and support Pushing Daisies! And if you haven’t checked out the show yet, word from Bryan at the event was that they were expecting the first season to be released on dvd in the fall, just before the start of the second season! In the meantime, you can also go to ABC.com where the episodes are streamed for free! ***** Having been through the new Paley premium package experience once, my friend and I decided that the crowd for Buffy was going to be even more diehard and that we’d better plan to arrive by 5 p.m. when they were opening the box office to have even a chance to get decent seats for the 7 p.m. panel. Even though the premium section was the first four rows, we didn’t want to be way off on the side. So we hit the road early and pulled into the parking lot at the Arclight at 5 p.m. on the dot. As we exited the parking structure, we saw a huge line of people and thought “uh-oh, hope we don’t have to be in the back of that line”! After some scouting about though, we found the much shorter premium line (with maybe 25 people already in line ahead of us) and we were relieved as we felt confident that we should at least be able to get comparable seats to the previous event. (We did – sitting just two seats over from where we were at the first event once we got inside.) And once again, we got the cool show-specific passes to wear.  The evening began with the same Paley clip package and intro by a Paley employee. Then we got a great clip of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Susan Lucci from their work together on All My Children - too bad they couldn’t find one of Sarah and Michelle Trachtenberg together from the show, or one of Sarah with Rudolf Martin who would later memorably play Dracula on an episode of Buffy. Buffy writer Marti Noxon was then introduced, who said show creator Joss Whedon was on his way, but in the meantime they would show us an episode of Buffy. I’ll admit to initially being disappointed by this as I would have rather had more time with the panelists than watch an episode I already owned on dvd. But they were running the musical episode, “Once More With Feeling” and I just can’t feel grumpy when watching it. As someone who has been involved with some Buffy singalongs, I know how much more fun it is to watch this episode with a crowd. Although I was surprised that people seemed to be watching the episode and laughing at the clever dialogue more than singing and quoting along. I mean, shouldn’t everyone there know this episode by heart already? Doesn’t everyone own two copies of the soundtrack (one for the car, one for home)? Okay, maybe it is just me... Once the singalong ended, my friend and I were both very pleased when it was announced that the evening’s moderator would be TV Guide’s Matt Roush, another notoriously fanboy journalist. He gave a loving and well-written introduction to the show, but sad to say, as a moderator, he didn’t compare to Kristin. So unfortunately, several of the panelists just sat quietly as they weren’t asked any questions or kept in the conversation by the moderator, who also didn’t seem to have a prepared set of questions to keep everyone talking. It made me feel really bad for Emma Caulfield, Michelle Trachtenberg, Amber Benson, David Greenwalt and especially Charisma Carpenter who didn’t seem to get to say two sentences the entire evening! On the plus side, Joss talked a fair amount, as did Sarah. James Marsters (my favorite) spoke a bit. But it was Seth Green, the convention pro and all around funny guy, who kept jumping in to keep the audience laughing and Nick Brendon did his best to follow with the quips. A major disappointment was that listed guests Alyson Hannigan and Eliza Dushku did not show up and there was no reference to them or explanation for their absence. Neither did Joss talk about his new series with Eliza for next season, called Dollhouse. However, for me, while my two priorities were seeing Joss and James (both fabulous as always), it really was a joy to finally see Sarah at a Buffy event, as she’d seemed to have spent so many years studiously avoiding such things. Her avoidance of Buffy fan events had given the unfortunate impression that she neither cared for the show nor its fans, but that impression was absolutely destroyed by this evening. She could not have been more passionate about her character and respectful of the fans’ opinions and concerns if she’d tried. She spoke about her struggle in season six to relate to the darker, more lost Buffy and both she and Joss related how they had talked to season six showrunner Marti on the exact same day as they had all come to the conclusion that Buffy had reached bottom and now needed to reach up and find herself again. I think part of the impression Sarah gives off of coolness and distance is just her way of dealing with the public and keeping her own sort of personal space – she is very poised and professional, but I thought she was a real class act the whole evening in answering questions from the moderator and the fans as well as interacting with the rest of the cast on the panel. She seemed to have a nice camaraderie with James which I was pleased to see. And she seemed to get a real kick out of the news that it was her love scene with James which ‘brought down the house’ literally in one episode that was just named by TV Guide as the sexiest TV love scene ever. She teased Joss that she had only just found out that he’d written Buffy a new lesbian love interest in the current comic book series that continued the show’s storyline from where the TV show left off. She wanted to know if she had hooked up with Willow in the comics! Joss told her no, it was someone else. She was gracious when the fans told her how much the show and her character had influenced them. She acknowledged that Buffy was her own role model and that she’d wished there had been someone like Buffy around for her to look up to when she was growing up. She talked about how hard it was for her and Michelle to film the episode “The Body” where Buffy’s mom died as she noted both she and Michelle were very close to their own moms as well as to Kristine Sutherland who played their mom on the show. But I think it was a brief moment from Nick that was the most heartfelt – at one point when everyone on the panel was joking around, he nostalgically noted how much he missed working on this show. Sarah agreed that she missed not only the cast, but the behind the scenes crew who they’d worked with for so many years. One question Charisma did get to answer was what it was like when she learned that they wanted to move her character of Cordelia from Buffy to the spinoff series Angel. She had clearly not been thrilled with the idea of moving from a successful show to an unknown quantity, but once Joss took her aside and reassured her that if Angel was not a hit, she “would always have a home on Buffy”, she agreed to take the plunge and seemed to think in the long run it was the right move for her. One awkward moment came when Amber was asked why she hadn’t returned to the show in its last season when it was known they had wanted her back for an episode or two. She passed it off as a scheduling conflict, but it was clearly still a sore spot with some behind the scenes politics. Other odd moments were when the moderator kept cutting off some of the panelists before they could answer questions (Charisma, Amber, and David Greenwalt had to deal with this) and there was a bit of a question as to whether David was kidding or not when he said he’d left the industry after three nervous breakdowns (he had unexpectedly left a showrunner job this season on Moonlight due to what was only cited as “personal reasons”). But he seemed earnest when he said he’d come back any time Joss called. I’ve been very fortunate to see Joss at several events, so there was relatively little I took away from this panel from him (or maybe he just wasn’t asked enough good questions). But one thing he mentioned that I thought was interesting was when he talked about how in later episodes that he directed, he felt he was leaning on his own as well as the show’s strengths too much and getting lazy as a director and storyteller at that point. And that when he forced himself to do without such crutches, such as foregoing dialogue in the episode “Hush” or foregoing music in “The Body”, the results were some of the best episodes of the show. Also, when asked if there would ever be a Buffy musical for the stage, Joss admitted he'd tossed around some ideas and would rather like to do one, but not, he insisted, "Once More With Feeling". That, he said, was a TV episode. And a Buffy musical he felt should be its own entity. When asked if any of the cast would want to participate in a legit Buffy musical, everyone except Sarah raised their hands. Sarah laughed and blushed at being the holdout. But she had indicated just how much hard work the one musical episode had been, so it was understandable that she wouldn't want to do that nightly on stage. As a huge fan of James Marsters, I was pleased that his appearances in the musical episode seemed to bring the loudest applause from the crowd and his appearance on the panel got some of the loudest screaming as well. (Although rightfully so, it was Joss who got the standing ovation when he joined the panel.) However, I have this condition that my brain tends to turn to mush when I see James, so that I can tell you really very little of what he said on the panel. He said that the musical episode was definitely the hardest one to do. And when asked what he was working on, he noted that he’d just finished up the movie “Dragonball-Z”. But the crowd filled in the rest, with several of us shouting “Torchwood!” and he grinned and added that he’d also done the popular BBC series. He also mentioned having recently been in the studio working on another album and that now that he was finally working with some very talented professional musicians it made him realize what an amateur he was in the field of music and that his choice to focus on acting had left him behind in music experience and skill. But I will still note that it was his song in the musical that got the loudest reaction from the crowd. Well, that and the kiss between his character and Buffy! I did take a few pictures during the panel but my camera battery was dying plus they were discouraging us from taking pictures with flash. So here are the few pictures from during the panel that came out less blurry!     The panel lasted well over an hour (I think close to an hour and a half), but I think everyone wished it would have been longer. And I wish there had been more questions asked about their memories of making the show. Still, as the panel ended, I and much of the crowd of 850 in that room made a mad dash for the stage. This time I was prepared with camera in one hand while holding out a pen and program book for autographs in the other! The crowd to get to the Buffy cast was about twice the size of the crowd at the Pushing Daisies event, but I pushed and shoved and squeezed my way towards the front as best as I could. I reached Seth first and grinned when he signed my program. He’s just such a cool guy. Sarah only signed for a few minutes and then left, so I never got to her, Michelle, Emma or Amber. But I made my way over to Charisma next and told her that I was one of those wacky people who loved ‘Buffy Cordelia’ more than ‘Angel Cordelia’. She seemed appreciative and it was nice to finally meet her. Then it was time to fight my way over to my favorite. Of course there was a huge crowd around James, but I was determined.   I’ve actually had the great pleasure of meeting and talking to him a few times at other events, but pretty much every time I get near him, my brain turns to mush and I babble like an idiot and my ears shut down at whatever he is saying because my senses are on overload being near him. That said, he’s a super-nice guy who’s consistently terrific when talking to his fans (and they are legion). So when I told him how much I loved his recent appearance on Torchwood and mentioned the show’s star John Barrowman, he immediately launched into an enthusiastic talk about how great the show was, how cool the fight scenes were, and how great a character John played and what a great leader he was and how he’d follow him gladly, I’m afraid I was reduced to nodding and smiling because all I could really focus on was how gorgeous James’ eyes were and how overwhelming it was that he was talking to me. I’m a fangirl. So forgive me my incoherence!  Once James had signed my program and I’d encouraged him to return to Torchwood as often as possible, I tried to make my way over to Joss. But this was no easy task as Joss kept moving about to work the crowd and sign for people.    But I managed to catch up with him just as he was leaving the stage and I think I was the last or second to last person he signed for, so I barely managed to get out a “Thank you!” and “Looking forward to Dollhouse!” before he was gone.  As in the previous Paley panel, there were some familiar faces in the VIP section of the crowd including several of the Buffy staff writers, many of whom have gone on to other hit shows. Jane Espenson and David Fury amongst them stayed after to sign autographs for the fans. By the end, the panelists had left, the lights came up and the fans filed out. I was exhausted, in part from dealing with the crush of the crowd, and in part from the emotion of the evening. I felt incredibly fortunate to have been at this event, after having experienced something similar during the show’s run. It had been more than ten years since that cast and crew had first assembled to make a show that Joss had envisioned as the antithesis of the movie cliché ‘a blond girl runs into an alley and gets killed’. In its time it was inspiring, empowering and risk-taking. It changed the face of television through its storytelling arcs and its emotional vulnerability. But at the end of the day, it was a show about a girl named Buffy. And she saved the world. A lot. And I am very grateful we got to go along for the ride. |