Conversations...
Apr. 7th, 2018 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Distances
D: I've a friend who got sick that I need to visit.
Me: Is it far?
D: Really Far Away.
Me: Where?
D: The Upper West Side. (D lives in Brooklyn, the Upper West Side is about a 50 minute subway ride if that.)
A: New York City Far Away
J: Could be worse and be in New Jersey.
C: Or Staten Island
2. Acting or rather being an actor and having to answer really odd questions at fan conventions that later get posted on youtube for folks like myself to laugh at late at night.
Fan to a panel of actors: As fans, we all have a scene of yours that you've done that is our favorite that we watch over and over. So I want to ask everyone on the panel to tell us what your one favorite scene is, that you've acted in out of your entire career. The you felt you did best.
(Panel of actors looks like a bunch of deer caught in the headlights. And look at each as if they are all thinking, how in the hell does anyone answer this question. What do these fans do? Lie awake at night and dream up impossible questions to stump favorite actors at cons?)
Nick: So does this have to be a scene in a movie that anyone else has seen?
James: Nick has done a lot of home movies with himself...
Nick: Well, I have a great one about a penis..that scene...
Julie: Favorite scene? In my whole effing career? Really?
Eliza: I like the one in which Pam is torturing Wesley, just kicking him with the blow torch. That's the best scene. Come on. Give me more. He says. Really brave. (People look at Eliza and are wondering what she is on and if they can have some.)
James: So, let me ask you what is your favorite thing about yourself that you've done?
Nick: See, this isn't something you ask actors. You'll get a whole lot of pontificating.
Julie: Favorite scene in my whole effing career - was that the question? It was? Fine okay. Acting with Jack Nicolson. I was really young. I had no clue what I was doing. It wasn't even a big scene. But it was with Jack Nicolson, and it just doesn't get better than that.
James: Okay, I can tell you one in which I was really terrified. It's when I was working on this film and discovered that due to the makeup I had to wear and the budget that my stunt man, Danny, was never going to be used. And I'd have to do all my own stunts. So I show up at the set, watch him do the stunt -- he is hanging by wires and thrown into a cliff wall, and he sort of overdoes the stunt and cheese grates into the wall. Afterwards they lower his limp body to the ground and then they turn to me and say, okay, now you do it.
_______
Fan: First, before I ask this question to Nick and James. "I'm a friend of Xander's" - (he does it with a fake American Accent. Confuses the hell out of both actors.)
Nick: WTF?
James: Beats me, I say just roll with it.
Nick: Like a friend of Dorothy's?
[This in 2011, the show ended in 2003, none of the actors have seen or looked at it since. And have done about a million other roles in between with lots of lines to memorize and different characters.)
Fan: You were on the show a long time, did you pick up any of the mannerisms or characteristics of your characters?
Nick and James look at each other for five minutes and try to figure this out. (This show was a long time ago, they don't really remember.)
Nick: Well, I didn't know you before you played the character, but you sort of picked up his walk. I'd see you in the hallway just as yourself doing it all the time.
James: Hey, I was practicing it. I swiped it from Malcolm McDowell from Cat People.
Nick: Well you did it well. Want to do it again?
James: No thank you. I didn't really. I'd go to casting directors and they'd say, no you're nothing like your character.
Nick: That's because you can act.
Nick: I was my character. He was me. What you see is what you get. I went in to the casting agent to audition and they told me not to play it as myself. So I changed it. Anyhow, I go to meet the producers and audition in front of the showrunner. And when I come in, I'm basically hiya, ba da ba bing, all me, doing my thing, then I audition as the casting director suggested. The showrunner stops me and asks if I can play it the way I was when I entered the room. They want that guy.
_______
Fan: So what was in the blood cups? What were you drinking? [James played a Vampire on a television series.]
James: Strawberry Quick Syrup. It was nasty stuff. They had to have a paramedic on site, because someone drank too much of it and nose-dived into the concrete. See, we had to sip it over 14 takes. And I drank it hungerily to be in character -- so by lunch time, I'm like, I'm fine no lunch for me.
Nick: Just think it could have been real animal blood mixed in with the milk.
James: Yeah man! Grrrah.
Nick: Yeah!
James: No, EWWWW.
__________-
Fan: You are all amazing in your roles, if you were to play a different character on Buffy and Angel who would it be?
Julie: Joss. (The showrunner)
Nick: That was a lot of responsibility....and work
Julie: Don't care.
Nick: He stressed a lot.
Julie: Don't care I could handle it.
James: I don't want to be anyone else.
Eliza: I'd have done Spike. I just always wanted to do you (people burst out laughing), I would have had fun playing Spike for one day. Or Buffy, but they gave me Buffy for one day and well that was enough.
________
______
Not funny - but interesting and insightful. Also goes to how toxic rape is to everyone.
Fan: This question is for James and I want to know what was the hardest scene you have ever filmed in your entire career?
James: But it ain't funny though it's true. The Bathroom scene in Buffy, man. (Attempted rape scene -- in which he attempts to rape one of the lead characters). I can't watch that stuff. I turn the channel. Can't handle it. Mystic River has some of my favorite actors in it -- but I can't watch it. So, I read the script and went up to the guy who wrote it and said -- you write this stuff, but sometimes you just don't understand what you are doing to us. We have to perform it, we have to feel it. This isn't funny at all. That scene sent me right into therapy. (laughs nervously - the other panelists are looking at him with deep concern, particularly Brendan). After that scene, I remember, (laughs nervously again) god, this isn't funny at all. I was kneeling on the concrete floor, thinking if I could just drive my head into the concrete floor hard enough I could fly away. (laughs nervously again.)
Someone off stage: Uh, next question?
Nick: Like sprout wings and fly?
James: Yep. (Demonstrates with hands and sound effect.)
Nick (Shocked): Thank god you didn't.
James: Yeah that would have been a mess.
Nick: We would have missed you.
James: Thank you.
Nervous laughter.
Claire smiling so hard it hurts: (Looks down at fan). Hey I was wondering if you got a seat? Did you get a front row seat? That's wonderful.
----
Fan: So I did a paper on how Anya is like one of the characters from Shakespearean play. And I was wondering what character from what Shakespearean play do you think your character was based on or what literary character comes to mind?
(Once again the actors look like they've been caught in headlights, with plastic smiles.
Seriously, folks, most television actors haven't studied Shakespeare, and very few think about that sort of thing when they are doing a play. They aren't academics. They are actors. Different thought process. And I'm laughing my head off watching them struggle with the question. Only one can really answer it. Three give it a shot, one says nothing, and a third says we need to think about it. They also all look a bit shocked that the show is being studied by academia at all.)
Nick: I don't know Shakespeare at all. So no clue. Maybe the fool?
Claire: Medusa from the Greek Plays.
Mercedes: I don't know a fool?
James: Well the heroine was clearly based on Hamlet. But my character was based on a Warner Brother's Cartoon called Spike the Dog. Lysander is the best I can come up with.
Eliza: Good question, we'll have to think about it, I've never really thought about it or gone there...but hey, now we know someone has, and that's really cool, and we'll have to get back to you.
Nick: Yes we'll tweet it or twatt it..did they twatt is that a thing?
Julie just stares at them with a cheshire cat grin and doesn't say a word.
_______
Fan: I was wondering if you knew that courses are taught on Buffy the Vampire Slayer on college campuses and what you thought about that?
The actors look confused.
Nick: Really? So this is an elective? I'd think you'd have to be fond of it or like the show to take it right? Because otherwise why do it? In which case you'd obviously get a good grade...
Reminds me of my father's response why I told him I was taking Cinema: The Western in college.
_______
I find the panel discussions hilarious. Well except for the one about the hardest scene they ever did -- that's not funny, just painful. And I think once again exposes how a rape culture and a culture stepped in sexual violence, sexual harrassment, and that sort of thing is toxic to all genders.
3. Mother
Mother: So your father is concerned about the number of things I'm lifting.
(We were talking about me doing laundry and how my back was bothering me after wards, to give a little context.)
Me: Well laundry isn't that big -
Mother: Pots actually. They aren't that heavy. There's a big one at the bottom of our driveway. Your father said that I am not to lift it.
Me: He's right, I agree with him.
Mother: It's not that heavy, it has dirt in it and geraniums and I want it moved to the garden or the back.
Me: Can someone else move it for you?
Mother: Yes, but I asked your father if he would help me. We could move it together. But he said, no, neither of us is moving that pot. And we aren't doing it together.
ME: Go Dad! You're going to make me start worrying about you, mother. Don't do that. Wait.
Mother: Well, I suppose I could.
[Sigh, mother has bad back, bad knees, and bad hips. And is looking into getting back or knee surgery this year, but procastinating. She keeps getting pain shots instead.)
D: I've a friend who got sick that I need to visit.
Me: Is it far?
D: Really Far Away.
Me: Where?
D: The Upper West Side. (D lives in Brooklyn, the Upper West Side is about a 50 minute subway ride if that.)
A: New York City Far Away
J: Could be worse and be in New Jersey.
C: Or Staten Island
2. Acting or rather being an actor and having to answer really odd questions at fan conventions that later get posted on youtube for folks like myself to laugh at late at night.
Fan to a panel of actors: As fans, we all have a scene of yours that you've done that is our favorite that we watch over and over. So I want to ask everyone on the panel to tell us what your one favorite scene is, that you've acted in out of your entire career. The you felt you did best.
(Panel of actors looks like a bunch of deer caught in the headlights. And look at each as if they are all thinking, how in the hell does anyone answer this question. What do these fans do? Lie awake at night and dream up impossible questions to stump favorite actors at cons?)
Nick: So does this have to be a scene in a movie that anyone else has seen?
James: Nick has done a lot of home movies with himself...
Nick: Well, I have a great one about a penis..that scene...
Julie: Favorite scene? In my whole effing career? Really?
Eliza: I like the one in which Pam is torturing Wesley, just kicking him with the blow torch. That's the best scene. Come on. Give me more. He says. Really brave. (People look at Eliza and are wondering what she is on and if they can have some.)
James: So, let me ask you what is your favorite thing about yourself that you've done?
Nick: See, this isn't something you ask actors. You'll get a whole lot of pontificating.
Julie: Favorite scene in my whole effing career - was that the question? It was? Fine okay. Acting with Jack Nicolson. I was really young. I had no clue what I was doing. It wasn't even a big scene. But it was with Jack Nicolson, and it just doesn't get better than that.
James: Okay, I can tell you one in which I was really terrified. It's when I was working on this film and discovered that due to the makeup I had to wear and the budget that my stunt man, Danny, was never going to be used. And I'd have to do all my own stunts. So I show up at the set, watch him do the stunt -- he is hanging by wires and thrown into a cliff wall, and he sort of overdoes the stunt and cheese grates into the wall. Afterwards they lower his limp body to the ground and then they turn to me and say, okay, now you do it.
_______
Fan: First, before I ask this question to Nick and James. "I'm a friend of Xander's" - (he does it with a fake American Accent. Confuses the hell out of both actors.)
Nick: WTF?
James: Beats me, I say just roll with it.
Nick: Like a friend of Dorothy's?
[This in 2011, the show ended in 2003, none of the actors have seen or looked at it since. And have done about a million other roles in between with lots of lines to memorize and different characters.)
Fan: You were on the show a long time, did you pick up any of the mannerisms or characteristics of your characters?
Nick and James look at each other for five minutes and try to figure this out. (This show was a long time ago, they don't really remember.)
Nick: Well, I didn't know you before you played the character, but you sort of picked up his walk. I'd see you in the hallway just as yourself doing it all the time.
James: Hey, I was practicing it. I swiped it from Malcolm McDowell from Cat People.
Nick: Well you did it well. Want to do it again?
James: No thank you. I didn't really. I'd go to casting directors and they'd say, no you're nothing like your character.
Nick: That's because you can act.
Nick: I was my character. He was me. What you see is what you get. I went in to the casting agent to audition and they told me not to play it as myself. So I changed it. Anyhow, I go to meet the producers and audition in front of the showrunner. And when I come in, I'm basically hiya, ba da ba bing, all me, doing my thing, then I audition as the casting director suggested. The showrunner stops me and asks if I can play it the way I was when I entered the room. They want that guy.
_______
Fan: So what was in the blood cups? What were you drinking? [James played a Vampire on a television series.]
James: Strawberry Quick Syrup. It was nasty stuff. They had to have a paramedic on site, because someone drank too much of it and nose-dived into the concrete. See, we had to sip it over 14 takes. And I drank it hungerily to be in character -- so by lunch time, I'm like, I'm fine no lunch for me.
Nick: Just think it could have been real animal blood mixed in with the milk.
James: Yeah man! Grrrah.
Nick: Yeah!
James: No, EWWWW.
__________-
Fan: You are all amazing in your roles, if you were to play a different character on Buffy and Angel who would it be?
Julie: Joss. (The showrunner)
Nick: That was a lot of responsibility....and work
Julie: Don't care.
Nick: He stressed a lot.
Julie: Don't care I could handle it.
James: I don't want to be anyone else.
Eliza: I'd have done Spike. I just always wanted to do you (people burst out laughing), I would have had fun playing Spike for one day. Or Buffy, but they gave me Buffy for one day and well that was enough.
________
______
Not funny - but interesting and insightful. Also goes to how toxic rape is to everyone.
Fan: This question is for James and I want to know what was the hardest scene you have ever filmed in your entire career?
James: But it ain't funny though it's true. The Bathroom scene in Buffy, man. (Attempted rape scene -- in which he attempts to rape one of the lead characters). I can't watch that stuff. I turn the channel. Can't handle it. Mystic River has some of my favorite actors in it -- but I can't watch it. So, I read the script and went up to the guy who wrote it and said -- you write this stuff, but sometimes you just don't understand what you are doing to us. We have to perform it, we have to feel it. This isn't funny at all. That scene sent me right into therapy. (laughs nervously - the other panelists are looking at him with deep concern, particularly Brendan). After that scene, I remember, (laughs nervously again) god, this isn't funny at all. I was kneeling on the concrete floor, thinking if I could just drive my head into the concrete floor hard enough I could fly away. (laughs nervously again.)
Someone off stage: Uh, next question?
Nick: Like sprout wings and fly?
James: Yep. (Demonstrates with hands and sound effect.)
Nick (Shocked): Thank god you didn't.
James: Yeah that would have been a mess.
Nick: We would have missed you.
James: Thank you.
Nervous laughter.
Claire smiling so hard it hurts: (Looks down at fan). Hey I was wondering if you got a seat? Did you get a front row seat? That's wonderful.
----
Fan: So I did a paper on how Anya is like one of the characters from Shakespearean play. And I was wondering what character from what Shakespearean play do you think your character was based on or what literary character comes to mind?
(Once again the actors look like they've been caught in headlights, with plastic smiles.
Seriously, folks, most television actors haven't studied Shakespeare, and very few think about that sort of thing when they are doing a play. They aren't academics. They are actors. Different thought process. And I'm laughing my head off watching them struggle with the question. Only one can really answer it. Three give it a shot, one says nothing, and a third says we need to think about it. They also all look a bit shocked that the show is being studied by academia at all.)
Nick: I don't know Shakespeare at all. So no clue. Maybe the fool?
Claire: Medusa from the Greek Plays.
Mercedes: I don't know a fool?
James: Well the heroine was clearly based on Hamlet. But my character was based on a Warner Brother's Cartoon called Spike the Dog. Lysander is the best I can come up with.
Eliza: Good question, we'll have to think about it, I've never really thought about it or gone there...but hey, now we know someone has, and that's really cool, and we'll have to get back to you.
Nick: Yes we'll tweet it or twatt it..did they twatt is that a thing?
Julie just stares at them with a cheshire cat grin and doesn't say a word.
_______
Fan: I was wondering if you knew that courses are taught on Buffy the Vampire Slayer on college campuses and what you thought about that?
The actors look confused.
Nick: Really? So this is an elective? I'd think you'd have to be fond of it or like the show to take it right? Because otherwise why do it? In which case you'd obviously get a good grade...
Reminds me of my father's response why I told him I was taking Cinema: The Western in college.
_______
I find the panel discussions hilarious. Well except for the one about the hardest scene they ever did -- that's not funny, just painful. And I think once again exposes how a rape culture and a culture stepped in sexual violence, sexual harrassment, and that sort of thing is toxic to all genders.
3. Mother
Mother: So your father is concerned about the number of things I'm lifting.
(We were talking about me doing laundry and how my back was bothering me after wards, to give a little context.)
Me: Well laundry isn't that big -
Mother: Pots actually. They aren't that heavy. There's a big one at the bottom of our driveway. Your father said that I am not to lift it.
Me: He's right, I agree with him.
Mother: It's not that heavy, it has dirt in it and geraniums and I want it moved to the garden or the back.
Me: Can someone else move it for you?
Mother: Yes, but I asked your father if he would help me. We could move it together. But he said, no, neither of us is moving that pot. And we aren't doing it together.
ME: Go Dad! You're going to make me start worrying about you, mother. Don't do that. Wait.
Mother: Well, I suppose I could.
[Sigh, mother has bad back, bad knees, and bad hips. And is looking into getting back or knee surgery this year, but procastinating. She keeps getting pain shots instead.)