Comic-Con Report #5 – Sweet Serenity

The whole impetus for this madcap excursion, you may recall, was the appearance of Joss Whedon and the whole (big nine) cast of Firefly/Serenity. That panel was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

Doyce got there early, to stake out seats. I joined him a while before the panel (and thus caught part of the Shaun of the Dead panel, which movie looks pretty amusing), and Michelle eventually hooked up with us, too.

The place was packed, in the thousands. So when Joss came out on stage, it was all pretty deafening.

“I have never — seen so many people,” he said, to further wild cheers and applause. Then — “So … you wanna see something?”

The crowd went wilder, as a trailer for Serenity came up. It wasn’t a real trailer — rather, the Universal publicity folks had put together a trailer-like piece for the Con, with particular bits that would never play for the general public, but which had the fanfolk frothing. Robberies, shooting, violence, action, quips, and … “Reavers!”

It was almost impossible to hear all the dialog, but the noise got even greater as, when it finished, Joss said, “I have something else to show you. Nine somethings.” Then the cast came in.

Clearly some of them were flabbergasted by the crowd reaction. I don’t know how many of them have done the Con circuit, on either this or other shows, but this was a first-of-its-kind get-together with all of them and San Diego, and it isn’t likely to get much bigger than this (except maybe on Oscar night).

The rest of this is little blurbs of info from the presentation, as I scribbled them:

1. There are ongoing discussions with Dark Horse about a comic. Joss wants to get Firefly/Serenity stuff into whatever media he can. He does say that, having seen them on the big screen, he can’t imagine them back on the small one. Other movies are intended, and as to spin-offs … gesturing at the actors, he said, “I’ve got nine franchises here, just waiting to be be used up — er, employed — by me.” His focus right now, though, is on the movie.
2. One of the few annoying things about the panel was that most of the questions from the audience were specifically directed toward Joss, and the majority of them were about other projects — Buffy and Angel, in particular. Come on, folks, you’ve got the entire cast of Firefly here, and nobody has questions for them? Give me a break! (Adam Baldwin did get a few questions, and Alan Tudyk, too, but none of the rest, really. A crying shame.)

   To that end, Joss at one point directed a question of his own to the cast: “What do you like best about your character?”

   Gina Torres (Zoe): “I like my gun. It’s a sexy gun. And my pants. They have Spandex.”

   Alan Tudyk (Wash): Likes best that, in a very violent future, Wash (like Book) is usually the one who says, “Can we put down the guns a second?” when trying to solve a problem. (Gina, who plays his wife, retorted, “That’s because you have me to protect you.”)

   Adam Baldwin (Jayne): Likes best that Jayne is a practical guy. “He speaks the truth, and gets it done.” Everyone looked at him askance, given Jayne’s less-than-reputable character.

   Nathan Fillion (Mal): Likes that “as a member of the crew, you can always look to him, as captain, and know … he has the legs of a dancer.”

   Jewel Staite (Kaylee): Likes Kaylee’s “warmth. She doesn’t have a beef with anyone.” She also likes that “Mal really trusts her. She’s the only one who can really give him shit.”

   Morena Baccarin (Inara): Likes best that, “Is there anything that Inara can’t do?” Morena took a lot of good-natured ribbing from the others about being the “stupid” one. There was a lot of nice byplay and interaction between the actors, who all clearly enjoy each others’ company

   Summer Glau (River) said that what she likes best is that River “gets to be barefoot a lot.”

   Sean Maher (Simon) said that what he liked least was his pants, which were in the movie evidently even tighter than Mal’s. What he liked most was “his love for his sister.”

   Ron Glass (Book) benefitted from being last in line, and thus had a more smooth and polished answer: “his humor, his conviction, his unpredictability.”

3. One of the folks in the audience asked Joss and Adam whether it was difficult to write for/play a stupid person. As Adam pretended not to understand the question, Joss noted that he didn’t think Jayne was stupid, which ended up turning into folks looking at Morena, who pretended to get up and start to leave the stage until Joss gave her a hug, then went over and glared at Adam.

   Joss then made the comment that, while he’d never made the observation before, Jayne was the Cordelia (Buffy) of this show, which makes a lot of sense: the self-centered, vain, untrusted, sort of disliked character that has a core of value inside of them, but who also serves as both comic relief and conflict within the group. Nice.

   (Adam then feigned ignorance of who Cordelia was. Nathan leaned over and whispered an explanation, made an hourglass with his hands, made a cuckoo-twirl with his finger by his forehead, then pantomimed opening up a centerfold. Joss had hysterics.)

4. “Blah-blah-blah Joss, will Angel ever be back, blah-blah-blah, Joss, will you spin off any of the Angel characters into their own shows, blah-blah-blah, Joss, you rock, blah-blah-blah …” Hey, how about asking the actors who are sitting right here about their show?!

5. Nice comment Joss made (or confirmed, since it was based on an observation someone quoted from a book about his other shows) that the underlying story is about people doing the right thing because the cost of not doing it is too high (to others or to oneself, material or personal) to be tolerated.

6. The session (all too short) wrapped up with Joss asking, conspiratorially, after a pause, “So, you wanna see it again?” Nathan suggested folks be quiet this time out, so that we could hear some key lines, esp. River at the very end (“Reavers!”), and so we did and did. Big rounds of applause to everyone.

So we were on the wrong side of the hall for the autograph lines, but Doyce and I dashed out at the best speed we could make without knocking folks over. I got in the long, curving tail of the massive line for the autograph table, and I spotted Doyce getting into a different line that was forming up closer to the ballroom. I called him on the cell phone (and, let me say, cell phones have revolutionize convention-going) and, after someone in our line came back to confirm that I was in the right spot, he came over to me.

Turned out that Doyce’s old line was actually sort of merging into the one we were in, maybe just a few people ahead, but (according to Doyce, and fortunately for my skin) not enough to make a difference, since they cut off the line about a dozen or two people ahead of us.

Which was sort of an anticlimactic ending, but one that melded in with the conflict both of us had felt (and he articulated) more. We’re not screaming fanboys/girls (“OH, JOSS!!! I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY!!!”), and as much as having a signed souvenir of the event would be nice (I’d brought my Firefly DVD covers), the fact is what we both would have really wanted was the chance to sit down over a coffee or beer or glass of wine with any or all of them and just chat. A stammered “I really enjoy your work, thank you so much” is inadequate (though it’s a line I used several times with writers and artists down in the Con), but that, and the signature, is really all you get from an event like this.

So it was disappointing, but not crushing, and having heard that some folks had camped out in the line for hours, missing the panel altogether, I would much rather have had the chance to see the trailer and the actors and Joss than to just have their scribbles on my DVDs.

Though having both would have been nice …

UPDATE: Doyce recounts this tale much better (along with his overall CC experience) here and here.

UPDATE 2: Doyce has his (superior) pics of the panel here.