his years' Starfury Buffy/Angel-fest was held once again at the Thistle Hotel just outside Heathrow. As is customary with these things,
Starfury presents the Bad & Wild
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Friday afternoon was spent by us attendees drifting to the hotel by any means of transportation going, lugging suitcases of all shapes and sizes and, somewhat true to convention form, standing in the first of many inevitable queues (lines) to check in. However we had come prepared for queues. More on that later! This particular con was going to be a riot no matter what.
As readers of the CoA posting forum: Insane Asylum are well aware, most of the latter part of April consisted of very excited UK residents arranging who was going to meet whom where and what they were going to get up to over the three days that the con was running.
So, first thing to do while queuing is to send everyone and anyone hastily texted messages via mobile phone in the hope of getting people who have never met assembled in the same area. "Am in Q. Where R U?" "Am in Angel t-shirt and jns." Which is of booger all useless as that could describe any of the 800 people in attendance. Bit like a penguin on a beach saying: "I'm the one in the tux." Somehow we all find each other. Along with the normal CoA crew of Linda, Raven and Swoop (via the US) with Citizens Nic, Cat and A2B in tow, this time we also meet up with fellow CoA staffer Bookall, and Citizens Hobs, WiccanBex, SueAngel, and Faith-Louise. Surprisingly, they don't all run away screaming in terror. Which is nice!
FRIDAY ~ Enter the Good, the Bad and the Evil
First up is the convention Opening Ceremony - this starts the convention off in a formal manner and consists of all the VIP guests being called onto the stage one by one and telling everyone how pleased they are to be spending the weekend with us. For those of you who don't know, the guests in question are: Julie Benz (Darla), Amy Acker (Fred), J. August Richards (the ever gorgeous Gunn), Stephanie Romanov (Lilah Morgan), Jeremy Renner (Penn), Clare Kramer (Glory) and Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy). Oh, and Hugh Grant look-alike Neil Roberts from Charmed - a strange guest to have at a Buffy and Angel con, but an absolute gem!
Gathered on stage, the guests are as excited as the fans to be here
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The evening proper kicks off with a video screening of some more recent Buffy and Angel episodes. Also, this is the time to buy a place and a photo for the photo session. Between 8pm and 9:30pm we all trundle off to join - you guessed it - a queue. This time it's for autographs which have been split into two groups - one set of actors signing for one group of attendees (based on registration number) and another set of guests for the other group of attendees. Confused? You should have been there. Tonight we have J, Julie, Amy and Elizabeth. We are wearing our brand spanking new CoA Staff badges which several confused attendees think means we know what's occurring at the con - we have no idea! We're also each sporting a little yellow Post-it note with our names on so the guests know who to sign for and to prevent any mix ups in spellings - like 'Nicola' - Nic tells us Nicola is a name our US cousins find totally weird: "Nick-Cola? What kind of name is that?" Bizarre!
Amy is first in line to meet the queue. She's beaming a smile wide enough to be in danger of splitting her head in two. As this is her first con, she is quite touched by how pleased everyone is to see her. J is on fine form, vigorously bantering with everyone while signing away (Nic meanwhile, is getting Amy to draw a moustache and glasses on J's pic in the convention program. This is in keeping with her getting Joss Whedon to draw specs and a tash on Sarah Michelle Gellar at last year's Forbidden Planet signing - she plans on getting the set (i.e. each and every cast member from Buffy and Angel) to deface their cast mates! J defaces Amy, Julie goes for David Boreanaz, Elizabeth scribbles on Julie and later on does a masterpiece on her own face by drawing on a nose, whiskers, tail, etc in memory of being a rat all that time. Linda has got as far as Julie Benz - in a split second Julie remembers her from the interview at November's Bad Girl's con, her face lights up, so the two of them have a brief chit-chat before Linda goes on to see Elizabeth who was such a star at the last convention - and it's good to see her back this time! Meanwhile, Raven has asked J to sign a photo for MIA Citizen, Rogue Slayer and (her being a Will Young fan) asks him to write RAAR. This is totally embarrassing as she then has to explain to J what RAAR means!
Next up is food and then time to hit the dance floor! J and Clare are already strutting their stuff, which is great considering at the November con we were all left to ourselves, guestless. This time it is different with Stephanie and Jeremy also joining their fans on the floor before being whisked away to more Londoner places which we discovered later. The floor is packed with bouncing, boogieing con go-ers. We bail out at 1am because Mistress Swoop is getting us up and out bright and early to do some of that work stuff'. Gaaah!
SATURDAY ~ Cannibals, Aliens and Tsars
The sun has once again risen and while Raven goes off for her photo shoot with J and Amy; Swoop, Bookall and Linda hit the queues for a bit of fun. We start off by handing out promo trading cards courtesy of Inkworks Trading Cards. These are eagerly snapped up and a whole 'sleeve' disappears in minutes. Raven has now reappeared and so we move on to our raffle. Basically the idea goes as follows: grab a section of the queue, hand each fan a raffle ticket, put the stub in Linda's handy Angel tin (which she is vigorously shaking to mix 'em all up), pick a number, and the lucky punter (participant) gets a prize.
Buffy/Angel fans queue up to meet the stars
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We have a fine bunch of goodies to give away: packs of Inkworks' trading cards, Buffy bumper stickers, Score's game packs, shooting scripts from the show, Dark Horse comics, LACD's courtesy of David Greenwalt and a whole host more. Our raffle has nothing to do with Starfury's raffle, so we make up the rules as we go along making sure it's easy for everyone to win. Of course, as we are on official CoA business, Swoop and ourselves are in our CoA Staff T-shirts and damn fine we look too!
The highlight of the Give-away is the Buffy/ Angel trivia questions that culminated in knowing the lyrics from the Buffy musical episode Once More With Feeling. We found three young girls, two sisters and their best friend who put the Buffy cast to shame! With wonderful voices (even harmonizing) and singing every single lyric they undoubtedly clean us out, but it is well worth it. By 10am-ish, all our goodies have gone and we take refuge in the main hall for the second part of Neil Roberts talk. Within 5 minutes we are squealing with both laughter and toe curling distaste (and disbelief) at the - how shall we say - very in-depth and detailed tales of certain aspects of his acting life. As we have younger viewers looking in, we shall spare any details. He is hysterically funny and a total charmer. (Charmer... Charmed geddit?)
The funny thing about Jeremy, not withstanding the fact that he just is funny in a rolling-about-the-aisles sort of way, is he probably has more trouble with the British accent than Clare - and his misinterpretations are at times priceless. A prime example being his response to the question, 'What leading lady would you like to play across?' "What? Huh? Who would I like to lay across?" He would make a fine stand-up comic! You would never know that it is his first time at a Convention, not only is he cute (his vamp face does him no justice!) but as we go through our hour with him he regales us with grim tales of boogers (UK fans read: 'bogeys') in the nose at an audition for a part in Rock Star (which he didn't get). Then there was the time when he was really ill during an audition, was on really strong meds and suddenly realised his pants were down! Did we mention; he is funny?
Ever the charmer, Jeremy sports his classic smile
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On who and what makes him tick, he tells us, "My family inspires me, my brothers and sisters, they inspire me, my friends and my peers. There's such a huge list really. I don't think there's any one person I think about I'd like to work with personally. I just think anybody that challenges me, that makes me think, that pushes me. That's the person I want to work with. Nobody in particular. He asks the questioner, "Who do you think I should work with?" She thinks Robert De Niro would be a good choice. Jeremy laughs and exclaims, "I would freak out." As for his role as Penn, he loved working with David [Boreanaz], "I think that I enjoyed David the best because I got to do all the fun stunts. I was really blessed because a lot of times they don't allow us to do all those crazy stunts because if we get hurt then they're kind of screwed, all of sudden I have a neck brace and a cast on. To me that was the most fun, that and the make up, between those two aspects of it it's still probably one of my most favourite things to do to date." In fact, he actually did most of his own stunts, his enthusiasm apparent as he gushes, "I wanted to do them all! I did all but two. There's one point where I jump into a second story window where I chew on this guy's neck, the cops come and there's a stunt where we're on this hydraulic lift that shoots you up into the second story window. Anytime I break through a wall or something it's not me, they wouldn't let me but otherwise I did everything else. All the fight sequences and all that, otherwise just two or three stunts I didn't get to do. I still wanted to they just wouldn't let me"
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"I kind of really wanted to freak people out just walking around, go grocery shopping." ~ Jeremy
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As to the vampire make-up, he confesses, "The contacts, I don't wear contacts, that was the weirdest part for me. They have like a lens technician, a guy that walks around with an eyedropper and big fat yellow lenses that are really thick. If you've never worn it in your eye it's just really weird especially for me especially seeing some guys finger poking in there. But then your peripheral vision is horrendous because all you see is yellow, you can see straight ahead pretty good, a little blurry but I couldn't see my hand doing this at all. Then doing stunts with that kind of thing is really dangerous but they look real cool." He jokes that he wanted to steal them, "I wanted to take the lenses. They're really cool - there are swords, stuff like that, English and Scottish swords and I saw they some on the set but I'm not going to steal them". His reason, "I kind of really wanted to freak people out just walking around, go grocery shopping." He laughs and the audience are in hysterics at his proposed antics! Jeremy must have one of those faces, as a member of the audience jokes, "Are you really Elijah Wood?" He wryly admits that he is always getting mistaken for other actors, examples being Brendon Fraser and Elijah Wood. "I was just at this audition the other day for a movie and this guy had this Spiderman magazine and he asked me to sign his thing, 'I wasn't in that movie, what are you talking about', he follows me into the bathroom. So I got Toby McGuire as another one."
Jeremy is very musical and is in the process of making a CD, "I'm recording a CD right now that I'm actually really proud of. I've been writing music since I was like 20 and been playing out a lot. It's hard to balance music and acting because every time I'd get a group together - it takes a lot of energy and time and work to put into a band - all of a sudden I gotta go do a job somewhere so it was really frustrating for me and the guys I was working with so I decided to do a solo career and go into the studio and record and get a nice body of work recorded first." His main influence is classic rock, "bands like Aerosmith and Zeplinand of course The Beatles, anything with a strong melody base. More modern stuff like Lenny Kravitz, I don't want to pigeon hole by any means because there's acoustic guitar in some of the tracks, it's very melodic and it's got a good groove rock base vide to it. I hate pop-rock but it's kind of stuff you'd definitely hear on the radio and that's where my life is kind of heading towards, something that's a little more easy on the ear verses something you could have a glass of wine with and fall asleep. But I'm really enjoying the process." An audience member asks him to sing, he smiles, "I was gonna bring my guitar and sing some songs but the guitar I have is really old and expensive and I just didn't want risking bringing over seas and something happening to it, it means a lot to me." He then proceeds to sing a little sample for the crowd - Billy Joel's New York State of Mind,which totally blows us away, what an amazing voice, so powerful. Let's hope that he will release his CD soon!
It's all a matter of technique
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One of his most challenging roles must have been in the film A Mind is a Place of Its Own about Jeffrey Dahmer, and Jeremy did extensive research on him, but to ultimately get inside the serial murderer's head he employed some rather bizarre techniques. As he divulges his technique to intimately prepare for the role of Dahmer using only a book on lobotomies for companionship, there is a mixture of shock, laughter and more than a few blushes in the audience, but one has to admire him for his dedication to his craft. Someone jokes, "Have you seen the Body Works exhibition in London?" Jeremy laughs and takes it all in his stride, as he innocently asks, "Where is it?" A Mind is a Place of Its Own should have a theatrical and/or video release in the US on June 21st and fans in the UK will be able to catch him later this year in Fish In a Barrel, an independent film that started as a short and turned into a major movie that he did with some friends. In response to what is his favourite film Jeremy says," I hate favourites; I think it's very limiting. But I can name you three films I would like if I were stuck on an island and had to watch over and over again. I love Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Jungle Book and those are the three I'd probably pick." If he had a choice of role to act himself he would have liked to do Leonardo Di Caprio's role in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. To finish he tells us that the best thing about being famous is, "Coming here and getting to hang out with all of you all." Well we certainly have had a blast and can't believe an hour has gone already!
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