London Film and Comic Con 2009: A Report
by Martyn Conterio
“Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Train/Arrival
I’m wearing a t-shirt that says: “Zombies Only Want You For Your Brain.” I never wear t-shirts. I’m trying to fit in at the London Film and Comic Con. The t-shirt was given to me as Christmas gift. I do like zombies films. Very much so.The convention centre is twenty-two minutes away on the London Underground from where I live. I take the District Line from Gunnersbury to Earl’s Court. I love to read on the tube. Earl’s Court tube station is right outside the convention centre. I like the convenience. It is twenty-six degrees and a clear blue sky prevails over London.
“Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps a rebel is too strong a word. Far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see one especially so. And armies are ridiculous, and old buffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people. In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree.”
An Encounter
I am in a very long orderly queue: the kind that only English people can manage. A short man in an expensive looking Star Wars stormtrooper costume is upset with me. In a moment of what I thought would be a bit of light-hearted mutual film appreciation, I asked:“Aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”
I don’t think he heard correctly. He walked off and came back moments later with a taller colleague dressed in stormtrooper garb too, and said:
“That man just called me a rude word.”
I looked away, refusing eye contact. Then I realise that’s stupid because I can’t see their faces anyway.“Sir, do you want us to take you down to cell block 1138?”
He repeats it again:
“He said a rude word.”
The two stormtroopers wave their pretend guns at me and walk away.
Inside
Passing me in the foyer is a giant fox, a Nazi, a wicked witch, Doctor Who, some Colonial Marines and an accompanying Xenomorph and a man in a gingham dress and Dr. Martens boots.I see R2-D2 driving around in circles. I ask a security guard if Kenny Baker is inside. He’s not. I am disappointed. I want to kick R2-D2. I know this will get me thrown out. I choose to let it go.
The numerous stalls are loaded with a plethora of all the usual movie-merchandise one can find at these events. It ranges from the interesting to the downright shit. Prices are marked on coloured stars. And lots of signs warning “Please do not handle the merchandise” and “Please do not lean on the merchandise.” Later I see signs warning “Please do not ask the actors to pose for photographs.” It is a restrictive atmosphere. They want your money, but don’t ask for too much.
The stalls are set in rows upon rows. It looks chaotic and miserable. One stall is selling signed cheques made out by James Stewart. It comes in a frame with a photograph of the Hollywood idol standing with Harvey the rabbit. There’s another cheque for ninety dollars signed by Edward G. Robinson; and another signed by Judy Garland…to a pharmacist.
Michael Ironside has got two arms
It is true; and disconcerting. In Total Recall Ironside has both arms crushed and ripped off. In Starship Troopers he has one arm missing from the elbow. In Scanners, didn’t he have his head blown up? I remember it being so. Maybe it was somebody else. Michael Ironside seems to not mind being maimed and mutilated: in the cinema. As I see him signing photos and DVD covers, I think to myself, “How many times has this man died?”“And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford’s father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also spending more money on his country than he’d got.”
A Moment Of Controversy
The “Talk” stage is guarded by high, grey partitions and men with walkie-talkies: a mysterious set-up. It reminds me of the Berlin Wall and I name it so. A couple of actors of minor importance from Twilight and New Moon are on stage, apparently. I am told this by an irate-looking group of geeks loitering outside a section of the wall. The source of their anger, it turns out, is the event organisers offered fans an exclusive talk…with a twenty pounds charge…that’s about thirty-five dollars. They are outraged and refused to pay…and rightly so. I would understand the nerve of the organizers to do this if the main actors were appearing…but those on the stage were way down in the credits. Perhaps the geeks are planning an insurrection, or at least a protest. There is an air of excitement about their anger. We can tear down the wall and reclaim the stage! And get David Hasslehoff to sing to us whilst we do it! They are not so brave. I hear them yelling “shut the fuck up!” and “wankers.” Actors are rarely interesting people. I hate actors. I recall Luis Buñuel’s response to Hitchcock’s assertion that actors are cattle. “No,” he said, “they are cockroaches!”The Stress of Getting A Drink
Conventions overcharge. They do this because they can. Like men of great power who like to destroy others…they do it because they can. The café, one of many aligning the exhibition centre, is packed full of people wanting hotdogs. The stench of hotdogs smothers me. I want to vomit. I notice the café is selling really bad sandwiches for almost triple supermarket or deli price. I find this outrageous. I go to the counter after queuing up in a thoroughly civil line that only we Brits can manage and I ask the young chap serving, for a coffee…he says okay, and then pauses. I notice him staring into blank space. It is one of those moments in which one look behind in a moment of vague paranoid or to check his attention wasn’t distracted by something…like a person slipping on a discarded hotdog. For a few seconds I do not know what is going on at all. I completely understand and take into consideration that he might be rushed off his feet serving drinks and food all day and his brain just froze, however, I was being smothered by the stench of a thousand hotdogs steaming en masse. Suddenly he springs into action and gets the coffee and gives me a muffin. I didn’t ask for one. I took it anyway.Danny Trejo
Danny Trejo talks. And Danny Trejo talks for free. He bounds on stage mumbling incoherently about something…then answers his mobile phone. People think he’s joking…I do not. I enjoy his pithy disrespect. Danny Trejo was a boxer in San Quentin. After he finishes texting somebody and his attention focuses on the crowd, people ask him questions. All manner of English dialects fly at him. He is lost. The amount of times he asks people to repeat their questions is numerous. Again, I enjoy this.Guy in a baseball cap: Have you ever told Quentin Tarantino he cannot act?
DT: What? No, man. I’m like “Quentin, wow…you remind me of my acting coach Juan Strasberg, you’re so great.”
A woman: Are you a Mexican or a Mexican’t?
DT: ha-ha.
A Woman identifying herself as from Venezuela: Do you think you just play stereotypes of Latinos and doesn’t this denigrate communities?
DT: (doesn’t answer)
“When Miss Chatterley - Emma - came down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism.”
Ewok
I’d circled the exhibition centre many times. Each time I kept finding new things. Like the Star Wars stall with a severed Ewok head on the counter. I think it’s the Ewok named Wicket. I have a flash back to be five years old and traumatised when the little Ewok got killed in the forest battle. I am sentimental. I want to touch it. I am not allowed. A man is staring at me, reading my thoughts. He knows I want to touch the fur. Caress the fur. Rub my hands over its ears. And kiss it as if I am kissing a holy relic.A Moment of Penury
The signing section is one long row that runs the entire south end of the exhibition hall. It is a heaving mass of bodies and flashing photography. I glimpse Edward Furlong, although my view becomes obscured by a fat man’s sweaty back; his t-shirt is soaked. I watch as he jostles his gelatinous-blubber through a sea of crashing bodies towards the queue to meet Tron-man Bruce Boxleitner. The fat man is the convention’s stereotype and greatest cash cow. I imagine the organisers have code names for types of convention attendees. I imagine there is a chart in an office somewhere. Most of people in this area have stopped apologising to each other. One person shoulder-barged me quite hard and did not even look back. It becomes human bumper-cars as each person gawps at the stars signing their names on publicity stills or DVD covers. There is something very factory-like about the whole process: it produces money and ego boosts: powered by the temporary destruction of the barrier between the public and their idols. It is a moment of grand realisation. They believe in the illusion of the grand lie.
The Actor From Star Wars Who Broke My Heart
Every day is a fresh hell for him. He is an actor whose name is thirty-third on the crawl. An actor whose life is two minutes of screen-time dressed up as some fantastic being representing some abstract race conjured by a designer and an artist specialising in latex rubber. And like a condom he is an application for getting fucked. Making the ghoulish appear even more ghoulish. All for a fistful of screen credits. He revels in his hundred frames of fame.He performs, flapping and gesturing whilst some British voice-over artist delivers the character’s lines in a post-production suite, thousands of miles away, and months later. He is a thespian treading around the blue screen. Eye always on the tennis ball on a stick: playing to an audience of computer programmers. The cold insouciance of passing autograph collectors hurts him. It hurts me. I feel so sorry for him yet cannot approach him.
This brave and honourable actor: who was thick-skinned beneath the layers of latex foam, sits at a desk toying with a bottle of water. He watches the comings and goings like a cow in a farmer’s field watches the traffic zoom by on a motorway. He is pretending to not be bored. He is pretending his heart is not breaking. He wants money. He wants the recognition.
High above, a large placard swings like the sword of Damocles with his character name and the title of the film people might know his character from: he is C*** S***** from The P****** M*****. And he wants your money. And a chat if you have time; I hope you have time.
Je vous en prie!
London Film and Comic Con is over for another year. I’d seen some famous faces from science fiction television shows and film and I learned what money grubbing whores actors and convention organisers are. I left before the end of proceedings, feeling jaded and annoyed. I think part of my great discomfort derives from how badly organized the whole shebang was; and how poorly attendees were treated by the stars, and security crew. I wanted to go to the pub and get drunk. Which I did, I assure you. I ended up interviewing Stanley Kubrick via a Ouija board.*“Herbert, the elder brother and heir laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true.”
*[Editor’s Note: Look for the interview in issue 2 of The Wig, coming in January.]
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