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FANCY DRESS COMPETITION
After months, weeks, and days of preparation we were all once again treated to the amazing talent of the Fancy Dress on Saturday night. With the standards of Starfury attendee entries being high we all sat waiting for who would enter first. We were not disappointed with the fantastic efforts and with "Stars in Their Eyes" style the entrants came through the doors. With Illyria & Knox, X-Wing rebel fighter pilots, Smile Time Angel puppet, Doyle, Merl, even Jhiera & the fugitives from Oden Tal to name a few. And with even a Wolfram & Hart appearance (of robe-clad lawyers of a Wolf, Ram, and Hart) it was going to be a hard one for the VIP Guests to judge as they comprised the judging panel. The crowd cheered all the entrants as they were introduced and many comments of, "Wow, that is great," and "How clever," could be heard from attendee's and guests alike. After all had paraded their hard work in front of the judges, they went out to make the tough decisions and after a short break they returned with the results. It was no shock from the reaction of the crowd that Smile Time Angel took First Prize: tickets to both next years' Starfury's Quor'Toth Angel convention and Serenity the first Firefly convention. Second Prize went to Illyria & Knox who also received entry to Quor'Toth, although not literally we hope.
Jheira & the Oden Tal
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Illyria & Knox
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Wolf, Ram & Hart
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Illyria Entrant: Laura from London told CoA that she, "loved the character of Illyria simply because it was so different, it was just such a good opportunity to do the costume as well, it's so outrageous. You don't get to wear that stuff everyday," Laura admitted, "so that's why I sort of wanted to go for it." Amy Acker saw Laura in her creation and commented, "'Oh my gosh,' it seems to be the reaction from everybody. Andy Hallett actually screamed at me which was a bit bizarre," she laughed, "but he was nice and he taught me how to do the head tilt, apparently you have go, dush! but there ya go." Dayne Johnson had also seen her, "He was amazed that I did it so cheaply as well, the whole outfit cost me 10-pounds ($17.00 dollars) but 60-hours work." Laura's right up there with the professionals in regards to the amount of time to complete an outstanding makeup application. "It's painstaking," she admitted, "but worth the results. I did it all myself, so I had to use a sight in the mirror; you just build it up in layers and then put a sealant on it." Laura tries to attend all the Starfury Conventions, "Especially the Angel ones, because that's my favorite show." In regards to an Illyria spin-off idea, Laura enthused, "I hope so; I think she has so many possibilities. She's such a great character because she's so old, and she's seen so much. It's kind of like the vampire characters as well; you have so much back history. I think it was an absolute crime that they finished at Season 5, it's too early."
Coming in a respectable joint third were Doyle and Merl, who will also receive Quor'Toth tickets. There was a special final fourth place for Wolfram & Hart, was it fear that made the judges add them? No, just great creative talent. When asked what he thought of the Fancy Dress entries, Dayne Johnson exclaimed that he has, "Great admiration for everyone who walks through that door," and that, "There's a lot of time and effort put in." He also commented on entries involving makeup where he joked that Andy was, "Hoping that they were in agony like he thinks he is!" As the competition came to a close the entrants were swamped by fellow con goer's and guests for pictures and praise. And well deserved it was too. And it seems some plans are already in the making for Starfury's The White Room convention in October! CoA spoke with First Place winner Jon Bayliss about how long it took his to create the Angel puppet and he confessed that, "I made the costume the Saturday of the contest. I had sculpted a foam head but that all kind of went wrong (as it often does) but I managed to resurface the foam with a sheet of very, very thin foam. I bought some trousers and shoes then I basically painted it, stuck the eyes in and added hair." Jon also confessed a trade secret, "The body of the puppet was foam that I lashed together with gaffa tape, the greatest invention ever. I had the nose stuck on with magnets so you didn't get a nasty line down the middle of the face and I stuck rods in the back of the shoes to work them. Claire [who was Dayne's makeup-demo model for Illyria on Sunday morning] sewed the sack out of scraps of cloth I had and that's pretty much it. You have to understand the costume wasn't properly finished and probably wouldn't have been without Claire and her trusty sewing machine."
AMY ACKER (Fred/Illyria)
If it is at all possible Amy Acker has won over an even bigger army of fans during her impressive performances throughout Season five. From the touching final moments of Fred to the intimidating presence of Illyria, Amy has graced the small screen with assurance and quite rightly has been commended for her dual role. During her only Q&A session of the weekend, Amy took to the stage with long time friend Andy Hallett and the subject of the demon goddess was a topic everybody wanted to talk about. The look of Illyria is very different from that of physicist Winifred Birkle, as Amy explained about the transformation. "I didn't mind it as much as Andy," she explains purposely ignoring the outrageous 'liar, liar pants on fire' look that Andy is giving her, "sometimes I'd complain just to make Andy feel a little bit better. The contacts were the worst part because they're just so hard to see out of. I don't really like getting up early in the morning and so if I had to be there at 5 o'clock in the morning it was really hard but other than that it was fun." The blue coloring was a bit of a problem initially though, "At first they had my hair and they were spray-painting it and I would go home but then I wasn't allowed to sit on any furniture because even after I washed it like seven times everything was still blue all over our house. Then all of a sudden I couldn't sit on set anywhere because they were like, 'You keep dying the whole set blue.' I was about to really dye my hair blue and then they cancelled the show the day before I had that appointment so I was kind of glad that I found that out before I actually did that! Then they ended up making a wig."
Not only is Illyria's image very different from Fred's but also the whole tone of her voice seems to drop an octave lower than usual. In order to do this, a little vocal training came in handy. "Not really, just from theatre school," Amy begins but just as she is trying to answer the question, under his breath Andy starts to chant, 'Do it, do it,' in an attempt to encourage Amy to give a demonstration of her ancient demon alter ego. Feeling a little embarrassed Amy is reluctant stating, "It doesn't exactly have the same effect if I don't have the makeup on." Thankfully for Amy, Andy then gets sidetracked, as Andy often does, and begins to talk about the day Amy (as Illyria) had a scene with a massive speech with Angel and how it was so long and boring that he ended up giving the big zzz's. "Yeah that always makes me feel really good when you have a two page monologue," Amy admits, "I was walking in a circle around David doing this really long monologue and I kept hearing a noise that was like [demonstrates a snort] and I was looking around saying, 'What, is there air leaking?' or 'Is the air conditioning on?' Finally, on my third time around the circle, I just started laughing and I knew since I stepped over Andy that it was him snoring!" At the recollection of his faux pas Andy apologized explaining to all that on that particular day he had had an early call-in at about 2am in the morning. With the combination of the early start, the extended dialogue and being told to lie on the floor and play dead, Andy fought a losing battle to stay awake. As rueful as he was, Amy took it in good spirits although Andy felt truly awful.
In order to answer the original question about her voice, Amy took a step back and explained how she was told about the role of Illyria. "Joss told me in October," she began, "he called me and said, 'Can I come over?' or 'Where are and will you meet me for coffee?' And I was like, 'Sure,' and so I ended up meeting him for coffee some place. We're standing in line about a quarter in and he says, 'Well I've decided to kill Fred' and I was, 'Oh I see,' and he didn't say anything for a minute just to play a mean joke. Then he was like, 'You're still going to be on the show but I want you to be a blue demon goddess' and I was like, 'Okay.' Joss continued, 'I want you to be Queen Elizabeth meets The Terminator,' so we had a couple of months and we were actually doing something together that weekend and I said would you write a scene so that I could know sort of what in the world you're talking about and something to think about before we start doing it. He wrote the scene where Fred dies with Wesley and then actually the last scene of [episode] 16 when she goes into Fred's office. He gave me those two things in October. He had Alexis and I over to his house one Saturday night, made dinner and we were there for three hours and we just tried to figure out the character, the voice and the movement and everything." While Andy is listening to Amy you can almost hear his mind whirring and when she finishes he goes back to encouraging Amy to demonstrate Illyria. After searching for a line of dialogue Amy stands and speaks with that, now famous, voice, 'You are not unpleasant to my eyes', which completely freaks Andy out.
As a character, Illyria has a superiority complex as big as Wolfram & Hart's connections in the world of evil. She has neither the time nor the inclination to bother herself with the emotions of mortals and yet during the finale, we witness Illyria by Wesley's side through to the end. It was a touching scene yet it is no surprise that Illyria has succumbed to the most vulnerable of feelings - love. "Actually Joss came to set that day, that was Alexis' last day on the show and it was the last time we saw Joss on the set and it was a very emotional day anyway. After the scene, he came up and said, 'I just now realized that this whole time I thought the scene was about Wesley being in love with Illyria but it's really about Illyria being in love with Wesley,' so he wanted to take that further. He did it a couple more times and that's what he was going for I think." The ending of the finale itself is a matter of interpretation as the outcome of the final battle in the alley can be left to each viewer's imagination. Amy doesn't believe they all fall victim in the end and giving hope to fans for more adventures to come, "I don't feel that way. I'm not exactly sure if this will ever happen or not but they (the writers) have talked about maybe doing some movie of the week on each person on their own, like fighting and what's happened since then so they didn't have the feeling that we all died."
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"I just started laughing and I knew since I stepped over Andy that it was him snoring!"
~ Amy on mysterious sounds on set
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The final season of Angel brought new faces and new opportunities to the set. The addition of James Marsters to the cast met with some trepidation from fans initially but the dynamic between Spike and Angel has been one of the highlights of the year. Amy found working alongside long standing fan favorite Spike a joy, "I really enjoyed working with him because at the beginning Fred and him sort of hit it off and I got to have some one-on-one scenes with him. I got to know him pretty quickly once he was on the show. I think I was the only person in the cast that hadn't met him before. And then doing all the stuff with him as Illyria, when he would fight he was just so funny because he loves getting beat up and he would say, 'Spike's gonna have a crush on Illyria because she's beating him up, Spike loves girls who can kick his ass,' he was like, 'When do you think we'll get together?'" For four years Amy has been used to acting opposite lead man David Boreanaz but she was surprised by his brief jaunt behind the camera during his directorial debut in the episode Soul Purpose "I thought that was great. Obviously we were all scared to death as we thought it was going to be a real weird experience but it ended up being great. He's never directed and we didn't know what was going to happen but he got there and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He just trusted everyone, the crew and the cast and just really made it fun and easy. Then when we were having directors that weren't so good," Amy jokes, "we were always like, 'David just take over.'" Amy's time at Hyperion was sadly all too brief. She had been scheduled for the full weekend, as well as making a jaunt up to Scotland the following weekend for Starfury's Prometheus convention, but her time was cut short because happily Amy had won a role in a new film. Before she left Amy was asked to tell all a little bit more about the project, "It all happened very quickly so I don't know that much about it either," she admits, "it's an Independent film called The Novice. It's basically a love story about this guy who's training to be a Jesuit priest and he goes to work at this mission and meets this girl. He ends up fighting whether he wants to continue being a priest or get married and how he decides." As Amy and Andy departed the stage a huge round of applause came forth for this lovely, young talent from Texas, certainly a now and forever fan and convention favorite.
ANDY HALLETT (Lorne)
After hearing of Andy Hallett's recent ill health fans were amazed at the dedication he showed by appearing at Hyperion. Andy seemed very tired and found the strange London heat wave at times a little unbearable but just like his character the show must go on. Andy's first guest talk was with fellow star and friend Amy Acker. Before a question could even be asked, Andy shared a story of a little humorous drama he had experienced earlier that day, "James Carpinello, who is my dear friend and Amy's husband, saved my life this morning," he declared after spotting Amy's partner and his own mother sat on the floor in front of the stage, "I was swimming in the pool and I'm not supposed to be doing any exercise because I have this thing [pointing to his heart] but I was in about two and half feet water and I guess I was dramatically saying hello and he thought I was drowning so he threw me a lifeline. So thank you James." He then plugged James' new film, The Punisher before moving on to his first question which was about the possibility of an Andy Hallett music CD, something that fans have probably been longing to see since his debut in Season 2, "I was told that there is talk of an Angel soundtrack and I just remembered that..." he laughs trying to avoid an answer, "Next question!" Although no one can doubt the talent of Andy's singing voice, the same cannot be said about his on-screen boss David Boreanaz so just how painful was the 'Mandy' experience, "It's horrifying! It was bad; it was really, really bad." Andy admitts painfully before Amy interrupts saying David is always insisting that Angel has a bad voice but he himself actually has a good voice. "He sang it once and they said, 'Well we didn't mean you had to sing it that bad!'" Andy continues, "then he sang it again and he actually sang it too well and so they said, 'No go back and find a happy medium,' so he found a happy medium but he did lots of different takes; he rapped it a few time and threw a few of his twists on to it but it was fun and he really did a good job."
As Amy and Andy sit on stage together it's wonderful to see that even after the show has ended the bonds built have not faded away. As the questions come the Lindsay McDonald storyline invariably comes up and Andy was asked his opinion as to Lorne's involvement in the Mob-esque hit on the Senior Partners and his involvement in the death of Lindsey. Now despite the fact a relatively serious question had been raised, Andy brings the audience's attention to a little giggle that Amy and how every time he hears it he is powerless to do anything before finally sharing his thoughts on the new physical Lorne, "The finale was certainly quite different for me," he confesses, "it was definitely quite different for my character but I enjoyed it. But I wished I'd got to play Illyria." Amy jokingly counters with, "0h you want to be blue now, you're tired of being green." Andy admits the first time he saw Amy in her full on makeup he was completely freaked out and if that wasn't enough he also explained the eerie way she would tilt her head at him in scenes just wigged him out much to Amy's delight. "Do you remember the first time you did a piece of dialogue, the head went too and I was like, 'Argh!'" Amy laughs as she recalls, "Yeah, we made up a whole back story that was never caught on film that Lorne was terrified of Illyria and so I'd look at him in the back of scenes and he'd be like, 'Egh!'" Andy and Amy hinted that the only evidence fans might find of this teasing come is in the episode The Girl In Question where Lorne mentions his favorite Sea Breeze tipple in front of Fred's parents so that is something to keep an eye out for. Now that the shoe is on the other foot and Amy must experience the daily ritual that is hours in the makeup chair and early morning calls to the set Andy laughed as he indignantly dismissed Amy's claims that she didn't mind the time it took to transform into Illyria. "The first day she was in the chair for the makeup test for Illyria," he says providing evidence for his argument, "she called my house and went, 'Lorne, I know you have alcohol in your trailer!'"
The transformation of Fred to Illyria and Amy's performance during the character change is something Andy is clearly impressed with and loves watching. "I was going through old tapes and I was making a general reel," he explains (incidentally interrupting a question that wasn't aimed at him), "and I was watching the Fred that we first met in Pylea, kind of a nutty genius writing on cave walls and then bringing her to L.A. and adapting in to that environment, still writing on the walls, then taking over the lab at Wolfram & Hart and just really kicking ass and then to Ilyria. I forgot about my reel entirely then and I ended up doing a reel for Amy. It's so exciting to watch her go through all her stages so I just wanted to comment and I think she deserves applause for that." So now that everything is all over did Andy manage to take anything other than lifelong friendships from his Angel experience, "I didn't get squat and I hear everything's going on Ebay including my clothes," Andy exclaims. He then asks Amy if she managed to keep the chair with her name on it to which she admitted hers had been stolen as well as another one belonging to producer David Burns. The thief obviously mistook it for David Boreanaz' chair yet the one with the words 'demon clown' emblazoned upon it still remained. "On the back of Andy's chair back at the end of the season it said 'demon clown'" Amy explains. "Which I didn't find amusing at all," as Andy counters, "but everyone else did," causing Amy to laugh. Well, yeah!
When asked about the scene where Fred sings, You Are My Sunshine and Lorne realizes her fate, Andy admitted he would have shot it slightly different. He would have preferred looking up the stairs at Lorne's reaction instead of from above as one of his own friends misinterpreted the scene as Lorne being evil or bad initially. He feels a different camera angle would possibly have given a more understanding view. He also told how his stunt double, Jeremy continued the 'catching of Fred' part of the scene with Amy Acker's stunt double Sonia, admitting that Sonia wasn't caught the first or second time that scene was filmed. During his next talk with Dayne Johnson, Sparky and Brody Hutzler, Andy worked out that during his time on Angel he was put into makeup 843 times and at 3-hours per makeup session that would equal 35 days straight in the makeup chair, much to a look of horror on Dayne's face. Andy laughed as close friend Dayne told about how much Andy loves to sleep and is awful to wake up. On one occasion, Dayne went to Andy's apartment and was constantly ringing the bell trying to get 'madam' out of bed only to hear what sounded like two sudden bangs against the door. Seemingly Andy had thrown something at the door to dissuade the ringing of the bell but as it continued, his friend heard another sudden loud bang like a shot gun to have the door open and Andy say, "Guess you won't be ringing that again," as Andy had taken a hammer to it. It is well known how difficult Andy is to wake up as the audience discovers that friend Mark Lutz doesn't bother with the mercilessly incessant door bell torture he just climbs the wall and balcony to let himself in.
This hilarious banter was typical of 'the Dayne & Andy show' throughout their entire talk, amidst laughter and applause by the audience, we just had to share verbatim:
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Dayne: "Well, I can tell them all about your sleeping problem right, your nodding problem? I'm holding the fan like this, and... [Dayne imitates Andy dozing off as his head slumps forward into the fan] he nods his nose into it or his chin, a wig would go flying somewhere."
Andy: "I do have a little problem staying awake, at times. And Dayne would get loud in the makeup trailer. But we have really early calls times."
Dayne: "Not only does he sleep, did he ever tell you how late he usually shows up at the set? To my chair? For those of you who saw the airbrush makeup today, we paint really small lines, and really detailed. Okay, this is how it works, you're doing the airbrush makeup and he's like... [nods off again] Yeah, that makes it easy. 'Okay Andy open your eyes, no, really open them.'"
Andy: "It was hard!" he whined.
Dayne: "Or his lips, it's like, 'Okay, hold really still.'" [nods]
Andy: "Oh, he would get pissed!"
Dayne: "A nice red line going this way." (indicating up the side of Andy's face)
Andy: "He would get the most pissed if it was my lips, if I were to nod off, because the lips are the very, very last thing. And so I'd be sitting up and he'd say, 'This is the very end, just stay with me,' 'Okay, okay,' and then I'd go... [nods]. He'd put lip-liner around my lips first, first? Last?"
Dayne: "271 ones times later and she [yes, 'she'] can't remember which applies first."
Andy: "843-hours I spent in the makeup chair!"
Andy also touched on the fun he and his co-stars had whilst filming in Las-Vegas during the Season 4 episode, The House Always Wins as it is one of Andy's favorite episodes, although his companions say it was due to the unrestricted bar times. Andy recalled how the sign shown as the Lorne billboard was actually a sign for a chicken that played Tic-Tac-Toe. This causes Sparky to laughs about how Andy's rival in Vegas was a chicken, which of course Andy threatened to hide in fellow actor David Boreanaz's trailer due to his fear of fowl. There are many in-jokes and stories among the group as well as Sparky's confession that he was always responsible for making Lorne's Sea Breezes, which should be just water and red food dye, but as Sparky mentions to the laughing-fit induced Mr. Hallett, "They were always 'Absolutely' perfect." Absolute [Vodka] being the main ingredient. Sparky also worked out that Angel, the Series costs $139 per second much to Andy's horror and worry that he played too much on set. The group continues to laugh about Andy's fear of Illyria. "Amy is usually cranky on set and very difficult," says Andy knowing Amy had left that day due to her filming schedule and wouldn't hear his joking comments. With his current ill health many fans wanted to wish him well, give cards and presents which clearly made him very emotional at the show of affections that fans have for this lovable larger than life man.
