… And Cut!

May 30, 2009 by David Smith
Filed under Podcast, Rants and Raves

Xanadu, The Story

May 27, 2009 by David Smith
Filed under Articles, Productions, Rants and Raves

Those of you following along this blog might have heard that we have been submitting Fan Film The Movie to various film festivals around the country. So far, we’ve submitted to Xanadu Las Vegas, San Diego Comic Con and Dragon Con Atlanta. Two months ago, Matt’s wife Khrysti (who is handling all the PR for us) got an email from the organizer of the Xanadu film festival that our movie was accepted.

Needless to say, we were ecstatic. Not only would something we created get viewed by a wide(r) audience, but we would be able to get our names listed on IMDB. And then the money would just come pouring in, of course.

Since Matt had been to Vegas roughly six hundred and seventy two times in the past year for work, he could not bring himself to face another trip. I, on the other hand, had not been for almost a year and a half, so I was eager to go. I convinced my friend Ken to meet me there and booked tickets. Ken owns a lingerie store and was coming to Vegas for a lingerie trade show anyway, so it wasn’t that hard to get him to show up a few days early. Only wish I could’ve stayed for the show.

As the date of the con approached, however, Fan Film still did not appear on the Xanadu website, and we could not get the organizer, Scott Anderson, to return our emails. We began to get worried. Finally, late at night, two nights before the con, Scott Anderson finally replied to Khrysti, saying that – contrary to his previous email – Fan Film was not on the schedule.

Matt was … upset. As were we all. He sent a very angry email, and Khrysti sent a decidedly more professional, yet still angry (let’s say “disappointed”) email to Mr. Scott Anderson, and she asked if he could at least show one episode, which he agreed to.

Personally, of course I was upset, but I was also just looking forward to a weekend in Vegas with Ken, so I was prepared either way.

So that’s our first impression of Xanadu. It didn’t get any better.

On to Vegas. (As shown by two red lines, one starting in Philly, one in San Jose, converging on Las Vegas, replete with ‚”Viva Las Vegas” playing in the background.)

Friday 9:00 pm

The convention was at the Plaza (do not click that link unless you like websites that automatically play loud lounge music) hotel in historic (ha!) downtown Las Vegas. I’d been to downtown before, but I’d never stayed there – obviously The Strip is Where It’s At these days. Downtown is older, smaller, closer together, and of course cheaper.

The Plaza is a pit, though, with all on-line guides warning against the accommodations. Ken did some research and, even though the Miss USA pageant and the Bowling Championships were in town that weekend, found us some decent rooms at the Four Queens, just a few blocks down Fremont Street from the Plaza.

For those of you who haven’t been there, Fremont Street is home to the aptly-named Fremont Street Experience (another hideous webpage with obnoxious sounds): a three or four block section of Fremont Street that is completely covered by a canopy made up of millions of lights, turning it into a gigantic TV screen, upon which they regularly play videos and music and all kinds of Entertainment.

Ken and I arrived at the Four Queens around 9:30 Friday night. We were both hungry from traveling, and in need of alcohol (I had only had two glasses of wine on the plane. And two martinis in Philly. So I was in danger of sobering up any time), but I wanted to get the DVD to Scott Anderson (notice I keep repeating his name. I hope this site becomes the #1 hit on Google for Scott Anderson and Xanadu).

We managed to find Scott Anderson and I asked if he could find time to fit it in the schedule. Scott Anderson hemmed and hawed, saying that Big Al was the guy who controlled the schedule and he didn’t know where Al was. First Scott Anderson offered to put it on right then, but I thought it might be better to, I don’t know, pick a time and announce it so people would know it was playing (in hindsight, given the number of people who were in the movie room at that point it might have been the right choice). Since Scott Anderson was very busy trying to get the A/V equipment working (another bad sign – every time we went to the movie room, they were late showing a movie because they couldn’t figure out the A/V set up. Did they not think to try it out ahead of time? Say, 10 minutes before movie time?) and couldn’t find Big Al, I offered to bring it back the next day, which Scott Anderson said would be a good idea.

While all this was going on, Ken and I were watching the Alien Warrior Comedian, who, as it turns out, is a pretty funny guy. He dresses up like something from Star Trek or Galaxy Quest and tells jokes about how stupid humans are, compared to his race. It’s an interesting schtick, and he had some good chops, not only with prepared material, but with crowd interactions as well. I’d definitely go see him again, as long as it wasn’t too expensive, and there was booze.

Right when we were about to leave, they got the A/V working and started showing The Revenant, which is an undead comedy/action picture. It started slow, and Ken and I were really hungry, so we left to get food/drunk. But now that I’ve seen the clips on-line from it, I wish we’d have seen it. It looks really funny in the Shaun of the Dead vein.

Interlude 1

Let’s pause the Xanadu coverage momentarily and describe what Ken and I did after leaving the Plaza. It’s much more fun anyway, but has nothing to do with the con or Fan Film. If you’re not interested in drunken revelry, please move down to the end of the Interlude.

We left Xanadu, and all of the inept shenanigans, behind and magically, drinks appeared in our hands (I love Vegas). Somehow, we found ourselves in the Golden Nugget (first casino website so far with no sound – bravo, Nugget!) casino, at the Red Sushi restaurant. Some of you may wonder about the wisdom of eating raw fish in the middle of a landlocked desert, but I am assured that fish is flown in fresh daily to Las Vegas from the Pacific coast. And besides, any bacteria or other nasty microbes would have to do battle with the army of alcohol currently forming ranks in our digestive systems. My money is on the booze. As it usually is.

We had some decent sushi, although I think it was overpriced for downtown. But since we were getting cheap drinks, we didn’t complain too much. At this point we started upon a tradition that we continued the entire weekend: The Passing of the Bucks.

Whenever you’re out at a restaurant or bar with friends, the matter of paying the bill can be somewhat awkward: Does one party offer to pay, in expectation of reciprocity? Do you split evenly? Or do you resort to the anal-retentive method of itemizing? The preceding list seems to be in order of closeness of friendship: the closer you are, the more likely you are to offer to pay, since over the course of your friendship it will tend to even out.

Ken and I are pretty good friends, but living on opposite coasts, we don’t get to see each other more than once a year, so we kind of went for the middle choice – splitting the tab. But since we were going to do that quite a lot over the course of the weekend, what usually happened was that one of us would pay with a card, and the other would give him some cash to cover half.

One we established this pattern, we alternated who paid with card, and who paid with cash. And then we noticed that we were pretty much passing the same $40 back and forth each time. We probably could have just taken turns picking up the tab, but we weren’t paying close enough attention to know if we were going to even out at the end of the weekend, so we went with the path of least resistance.

Having paid the bill in this fashion, we headed off to find a nice place to spend the evening.

We didn’t want to just go to some casino bar, so I pulled out my trusty iPhone and entered “bars Fremont st, Las Vegas” into the Google Maps app. I should tell you a bit about Ken at this point. Ken likes Irish pubs. I don’t know if he has any Irish in him, but after all the Guinness he’s had, I think he’s more Irish than Bono. For his honeymoon, he and his wife flew into Ireland, rented a car and drove through the countryside, no plans. At every small town pub, they just asked the locals where to go next. Knowing this, it should be no surprise that we chose Hennessey’s Tavern (sorry for the sound), a most Irish of Irish pubs, even though it is a chain.

We planted ourselves at the bar, got a round of drinks in, and within a few minutes the band started playing. They were basically a decent, but forgettable, cover band, except that they had a fiddle player who rocked out the Irish drinking songs like nobody’s business. And not just Irish songs, but anything requiring a fiddle, including the Charlie Daniels Band classic, “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”.

I like hanging out with Ken because, unlike myself, Ken will start up conversations with the bartender. Which means we at least get favorable treatment, if not any actual free drinks (although I’m sure the lack of free drinks was mainly because bartenders in Vegas are watched almost as closely as the dealers). So, by 1 or 2 in the morning, we were doing shots with the bartender. I can’t remember what they were (we said it was her choice) but it was a shot of something in a glass of Red Bull. Nothing like a good jolt of Red Bull to keep the motor running another couple hours.

At some point during the evening, a marketing chick from American Honey came up to us offering free shots of said beverage. American Honey is a liquor made from fermenting and distilling honey and then adding Bourbon to it. it was … interesting. After we did the shots, she asked us to get our pictures taken with her. I assume we are now game to be used in an ad on their website. At least I hope that’s the case. You never know where your Vegas picture is going to end up.

As the night rolled on, the band moved from covering Irish bands to covering, I dunno, Dave Matthews or whatever else passes for music these days. By the time they started covering Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer (McHammer? He’s Irish, right?), we decided it was time to move on.

Fremont Street had quieted down quite a bit, but there were still a fair number of people out and about. Earlier in the evening, Ken had broken down and bought a pack of cigarettes (for $8!) and had been making good progress through them. At this point, I felt like a cigar would taste good, so we embarked on a quest. The tobacconist stand where Ken got his American Spirits had closed down, so we wandered into the Golden Nugget again, and asked if their gift shop a) sold cigars and b) was still open. After getting lost a few times, we finally found it, and they did have some cigars.

I did what I usually do when I’m buying cigars without the advice of Matt or Quint, and found something that looked like it would last just the right amount of time, and wasn’t too expensive.

Smokes acquired, we once again went off in search of booze. In this case, it didn’t take too long. For within the Golden Nugget we chanced upon the Rush Lounge, which is a nice little circular bar tucked out of the way from the casino floor. The inside is a nice soft mustard color, with a plentitude of comfy chairs and couches, and the lights are low. Even the band’s drum set is covered by red shag. Every bit an ultra lounge like they have on the Strip.

We got our drinks (beer and an enormous glass of house chardonnay) for about $10, and I started in on my cigar, but were soon notified that it was last call. It must have been 3 or 4 am by that point, so we took our last call drinks and found an all-night restaurant right there in the Nugget, got some food, and went to bed.

End of Interlude 1

Saturday 10:00 am

Woke up in time to go watch the first movie at Xanadu, Chimera Tribe: The Rakai (strangely, it’s entitled Chimera Tribe: Record of Abraxas on their website) (Short Synopsis: good sorcerer seeks to resurrect his friend/girlfriend, finds her long-lost twin, who helps him. Special effects and swordfights ensue.) which ended around 10:45. We finally found Big Al and asked if he could play one episode from Fan Film The Movie. He asked how long it was. Fortunately, it was 15 minutes long, exactly the amount of time before the next movie. How convenient! Let’s play it right now! Great!!1!ELEVEN!

As you can see, since Fan Film was not on the schedule, everyone vacated the movie room right after The Rakai to go fawn over Brom for fifteen minutes until Star Trek: Of Gods and Men started. But, this is what we got. So I sat down to watch the Big Screen Premiere of (Episode 2 of) Fan Film The Movie.

After a few minutes, some people did start filtering in for Star Trek, so we did finally get some eyeballs on it. It’s a nail-biting experience watching your own movie with others who haven’t seen it, and have no idea what it’s about. I always crack up watching it, but other people don’t get all the references or in-jokes, and our sense of humor (shall I say “Matt’s sense of humor” since he wrote it) is perhaps not shared by everyone.

But we actually got some laughs, especially the “shocker” scene. I don’t know whether they knew what the shocker was or not, but the shot of Gregg explaining to Matt what the shocker means (graphically, with both hands) did garner some chuckles. As did some other scenes, which I don’t recall off the top of my head.

After Fan Film, it was time for Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. I remind you that Ken and I had been up until 5am, got 4 hours sleep and had not had breakfast yet.

ST:OGAM is a weird mix of fan film and professional shoot. The cast reads like the “also starring” lists of the original series, DS9 and Voyager: Nechelle Nichols, Walter Koenig (in a hideous wig), Garrett Wang, William Wellman Jr., Tim Russ, Chase Masterson; and was directed by Tim ”Tuvok” Russ. It was self-financed, but they hoped to sell it to Paramount or CBS to be official canon. I won’t review it here, but let me just say that if they thought they could sell this to Paramount or CBS, they must have had one too many Romulan Ales (heh, see what I did there, with the Star Trek reference? Sweet).

After the showing, before we could escape and find food, Scott Anderson bade us all stay and welcome three of the, ahem, “stars” of ST:OGAM: Chase Masterson, William Wellman Jr, and Lawrence Montaigne.

If you recognize any of those names, you’ve watched much more DS9 than is recommended by the FDA. Not only were they bit players in those series, they weren’t even the main characters in this film. They couldn’t even get Nechelle Nichols or Walter Koenig for this crappy con.

Now, they’re fine actors – they did a respectable job with the material they had in this movie, and I’m all for actors who like to go out and interact with the fans. But I felt kind of sorry for them when they got up on stage and Chase asked if anyone had any questions – you could hear a tribble fart. Eventually people asked some questions about the production and working with, you know, *real* Star Trek actors. Chase seems like a pleasant person, and she was good at telling production stories. Wellman seemed a bit peeved (more on this later), and Lawrence was kind of like the old great-uncle you see at family gatherings who gets propped up in the corner with a whiskey and doesn’t say anything the entire night. I wanted to ask Wellman to reach over and check his pulse.

Eventually, about fifteen minutes after my butt went numb, they wrapped up the Q&A session and Ken and I were free to find some lunch. We ate some uninspired, tasteless mexican at Mickie Finnz. But they had margaritas, which, well, hair of the Chihuahua and all that, brought us back to life.

Saturday 3:00 pm

Having discharged my NeoZAZ responsibilities (i.e. getting the movie shown), Ken and I were free to do anything. We decided to take one sweep of the Xanadu exhibition floor, to at least see what else the con had to offer.

There were two rooms outside the movie auditorium. One of them was filled with E-list actors and other movie personnel and indie filmmakers pimping their movies, the other was the vendor room (and Brom’s lair).

We took a walk around the actors’ room first. You can see on Xanadu’s website who was there. It was really one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen: a room full of people who were once famous, or would never be famous, grasping onto their last shred of stardom, hawking autographed pictures for ten bucks a pop.

Also, Stormtroopers. The 501st Legion, Las Vegas chapter, had a table. There were a couple stormtroopers and a biker scout who were very happy to have their picture taken. Coincidentally, a very waif-ish Princess Leia was there, in Episode 4 dress (Xanadu is not a good enough con to even draw one Slave Leia). We talked to the Biker Scout for a bit, finding out what the 501st Legion does.

Apparently, if you need stormtroopers to appear at your mall opening, or for some quick Wookiee genocide (are you telling me the Stormtroopers can decimate and enslave the entire Wookiee population, but can’t take care a some fucking neanderthal Care Bears?! Sorry, that’s a different rant for a different post.) and you call up Lucasfilm, they will give you the number of the local 501st Legion. Heck, if I owned a mall or something, I’d make all the security guards wear those uniforms. At least they’d have to be in shape to fit in them.

Sitting right across from the 501st Legion was James Dodd. Mr. Dodd was one of two actors inside the Johann Krauss suit in Hellboy II (which is a highly underrated movie, I might add. I think it’s every bit as good as The Dark Knight, and hardly anyone saw it). Of course, he didn’t do the voice – that was Seth MecFarlane, who was not, repeat not, at Xanadu. We chatted with him for a bit, because I’m such a big fan of the movie, but I didn’t really know what to say, past, “I really like that movie” and “You, uh, did a good job in the suit, unless that was the other guy, who’s sitting right behind you.” So we moved on.

Right next to James was Jamie Donnelly (they must have been set up in alphabetical order). If you don’t recognize the name, she was one of the Pink Ladies in Grease. And apparently she was in the original Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She played a character named Trixie, who did not make it to the movie. She was very sweet, and told us about how she started getting the audience involved in the Rocky Horror songs. So I guess we have her to thank for the whole “audience participation” thing.

The folks who made The Revenant had a table set up where they were showing clips from the movie and giving away free t-shirts – so now I have a T-shirt with a grisly looking undead guy’s face on it. Perfect for cocktail parties and bar mitzvahs.

Sitting at the last table in the loop was William Wellman Jr., from Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. He shared with us his complete disappointment in the turnout of the convention. It was clear that he was hoping for bigger and better things for the movie, as well as a bigger crowd to sell autographs to. I can’t imagine that he even recouped however much it cost him to attend. But then again, let’s be realistic. He was a bit character on DS9, and he didn’t even have that big of a part in Gods and Men. However long and varied his career has been, he’s just not that much of a Trekkie magnet.

The other room outside the movie auditorium was the vendor showcase – lots of people selling chainmail, or paintings of women in chainmail bikinis, or Magic The Gathering cards. And of course there was Brom.

I had never heard of Brom before, but the way he’s built up on the Xanadu website, you’d think he was Boris Vallejo or somebody. His art looks pretty good, and some of it kind of looks familiar, so he’s probably done some popular pieces. But, “Brom”? What kind of a name is that? He had a corner booth and seemed like he was holding court with at least four adoring fans, so I didn’t want to approach him for a picture. Maybe next time.

And this pretty much ends the Xanadu coverage, as Ken and I were wiped out from the previous night, and had not seen anything at the con to make us want to stay there. But our weekend was just beginning …

Saturday 4:00 pm

Back to the rooms for a much-needed nap.

Saturday 7:30 pm

Ken’s wife Shannon had recommended a little Italian place called Chicago Joe’s, so we caught a cab there (as it turns out, it’s not that far of a walk from Fremont street, so we ended up walking back afterward) around 8:00. We made a reservation, since it’s a small place, but we probably didn’t need to, as it wasn’t full. But there’s probably only ten or so tables in all, so you probably should call ahead.

We had a nice bottle of Chianti with our lasagna (note: if you eat the bread, and some garlic bread as well, you probably won’t be able to finish an entire lasagna, so you could probably share one between two people). We happened to be sitting next to a table with two guys who were obviously sales-types, as they forcibly engaged the poor waiter in much more conversation than he obviously wanted, and talked loud enough for the entire place to hear what they had been/were/would be doing on their Vegas trip.

After gorging ourselves on pasta we walked back to Fremont St., the twenty minute walk being enough to work off about half of the bread we ate at dinner.

Given that we had been up late Friday night, had gotten up relatively early, and were still sort of recovering from the hangover, we thought that Saturday night might be an early night. Well, you’ll see how that turned out.

Once we were back on The Experience, we decided to get a drink at the Rush Lounge, where we had stopped in briefly before they closed the previous night. This time, there was a good crowd, but we still got the same seats at the bar, and the bartender remembered us from the night before.

We got our standard order (chardonnay for me, beer for Ken) and figured that would be our last round of the evening.

And then the band started. Yes, the band with the fur-covered drum set. Turns out, they rocked pretty good. I expected them to be some queasy lounge act, a la Sunny from “It’s A Living” (Look it up, kiddies). But they were a pretty cool cover band.

They started out doing good classic rock and oldies covers, and then the lead singer/guitarist started pulling people out of the audience to sing.

Now, he wasn’t just pulling random idiots from the crowd. No, he recognized these people because they were fellow Vegas cover acts. The first guy to come up was a Kenny Rogers impersonator, and of course, he sang “The Gambler”, after a bit of a false start where the band was playing too slow or in the wrong key or something.

He was pretty good, but the next two were fantastic.

One was a woman who did a dead-on impression of Janis Joplin. This is not easy. She sang “Me and Bobby McGee” and just brought the house down. Ken even told her she was better than Janis herself.

The other guy was wearing a bowling shirt, blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and a fedora, but he really should have been wearing a Zoot Suit. He just rocked out on some of the cool old-school swing/rockabilly/whatever-style songs. He was an utmost entertainer.

But all this was a lead-up to their featured singer, a bona-fide Elvis impersonator. Now, he wasn’t some cheesy, sequined, jumpsuited, sunglass-wearing retard. He had on a simple western-style shirt and blue-jeans, and the most subtle Elvis hairdo and sideburns. You wouldn’t really call him out as an Elvis impersonator (especially in Vegas) until he started singing.

Once he got up there, though, it was all-Elvis all the time. I could tell he had to keep refraining from saying “thank you very much” whenever the audience applauded after a number. He had the voice, the moves and the swagger, and just made Elvis cool all over again.

By this time Ken and I were on our 4th (maybe 5th or 11th) round and had pretty much decided to stay for the whole set. The environment was fun, the band was great, the bartender was cool and we were having a great time. Hangover forgotten.

Around 3am or so, the Rush Lounge closed down, and we were kicked out for the second night in a row. But we had some boozementum and were not ready to slow down just yet. But we were also not really able to go too far. So we ended up at the sports bar in the Golden Nugget.

At this time of night, there was no one else at the bar, so we had the bartender all to ourselves. Which is good, because we were pretty drunk and we monopolized her time pretty well. Apparently, I told Ken to start a conversation with her (which I don’t exactly remember saying), which he did, because he’s that kind of guy, and it ended up with him trying to convince her to move out to Santa Cruz and work for him at the lingerie store. Which we all know will not happen, but it was fun to watch.

By this time it was around 6am and I was hungry. We stumbled over to the all-night restaurant (can’t remember if it was in the Nugget or the Four Queens) but Ken was too far gone to eat, so he went to bed. I almost fell asleep in my chef’s salad.

Wrap Up

And that’s about it. There isn’t much to say about Sunday except that we went over to the Rio to meet up with Ken’s wife Shannon and her assistant Erica. We spent most of the evening in the iBar, which is the Rio’s lounge. It is notable only because it is the only place I’ve ever seen to have a Microsoft Surface.

Actually, they had four or five of them, and they were using them in a fairly clever way. There were cameras mounted in the ceiling aimed at all of the Surface tables, as well as some other non-interactive, stone-age “dumb” tables. Each Surface had a “Flirt” application, which allows you to view the feed from all of the ceiling cameras, and see where they are sitting on the map of the lounge. You can even zoom in for a closer look, or use the application to send a drink over to that cute guy or girl.

The main drawback is that the video quality from these cameras was so bad, combined with the low light, that you could hardly tell what species the vague lumps were, much less gender or attractiveness. My guess is that people try it out once and then give up on it and go back to doing it the old-fashioned way (and if you know what that is, please tell me because I was never any good at it).

The other thing the Surface would let you do, theoretically, was order a drink from the bar. They had a bunch of standard drinks listed as well as the ability to construct your own. I tried ordering a simple Tregea, but it never showed up. I also ordered one from our waitress, which also didn’t show up. I had to go up to the bar to get my drink. So, nothing against the Surface, but the follow through on the iBar left something to be desired.

[Quick techie review on the Surface: Pretty cool. Certainly kind of like a gigantic iPhone in that you drag stuff around with your fingers and it vaguely follows your movements. Definitely a lot of potential there. But the iPhone software just seems much more polished, even just in the apples-to-apples comparison of pinching/zooming photos. Cool idea, pretty good execution, but I wonder how much innovation will be done with it since it costs five figures. How many developers will be hacking on it?]

Lessons learned:
•    Get confirmation that a film is in before buying tickets
•    Do not ever go to Xanadu
•    Fremont Street is worth a visit if you’ve only ever seen the Strip
•    Female bartenders in Vegas follow the stripper code of giving out fake names

… And Cut!