Meeting Alan Tudyk
Jul. 9th, 2006 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenite0I went to Sci Fi Expo in Plano today. Alan Tudyk was signing autographs to raise money for encouraging organ donations. I got there early enough to be in line before his noon Q&A session.
He's signing an uncut sheet of cards for my game "Keep Flying." He liked the idea of the game, so I gave him a copy. You can see the envelope in the bottom right corner. I hope he likes it. Odds are any feedback I get is most likely to be "How come there's nine cards each of Nathan and Adam and only three of me?" Um . . . it's a prototype, I can fix that. (And I'm getting ideas for cards such as Torture, Disobedience, and Hiring, so it's very fixable) It's still a thrill for me that he wanted a copy.
Here's the charity Alan's plugging, Donate Life.
The Q&A session was great. Alan does not need a script to be entertaining. He's done a bunch of improv work going back to when he lived in Plano. One of his colleagues from those days was in the crowd, actually. The opening was him taking pictures of the crowd to send to Nathan Fillion. They hang out a lot, going back to when Alan got to borrow Nathan's house while he did his new-to-LA househunting. Nathan was out of town on a movie shoot, so he welcomed Alan with a videotape. Nathan had gone through the house with a camcorder showing sticky doors, where the towels were, and everything else needed to be comfortable there.
The first question was "Why did Wash die?" This is probably to Alan what "Why do you write strong female characters?" is to Joss. He gave two answers, the first was a hysterical riff on how Wash was Joss's Marty Stu projection onto the show, and once the character became cooler and more popular than the real Joss he killed him off in a jealous rage. The second was the serious explanation of how it increased the dramatic tension by making it clear that putting their lives on the line wasn't an empty boast but a real danger. He came back to that a couple of times. When the version of the script with that came out Joss told Alan to call him after reading it. Obvious bad sign. Alan said he was really worried that he'd have a "special moment" with Jayne. He also said Joss had promised him and Ron that they would appear in the next movie, so he's thinking it'd be a prequel or have a Zoe dream sequence.
Other bits: Alan demonstrating how much he wants the lead in Wonder Woman by doing the spin. Telling how he and Nathan had swiped one of the future cars from the set of the Shindig street scene (filmed on the Universal lot) and gone for a drive through Universal Tours. Nathan waving his gun as they went through the Wild West section. Alan's last film was directed by Frank Oz, who'd done the voices of Yoda and the other Muppets he'd brought to life (Bert, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, etc) for his cast. He felt he'd lucked into his part in Spamalot, and now is getting more offers for singing parts than his voice can handle. The stage version of Xanadu forced him to give up smoking so he could hit the high notes.
He even got asked out in the Q&A. A young lady pointed out that they knew he hadn't been able to go to his prom (a story he may have some regrets about letting out), so she invited him to come to hers as her date. He very sweetly turned her down without ever saying "jailbait" or "less than half my age".
The rest of SFX was fun but couldn't compare to that. I saw lots of friends from ORAC, including Robyn and Ed who can take a lot of the credit for it being such a smoothly running event IMHO. There were lots of Firefly fans by the t-shirts, but only a couple I knew from the Browncoats boards, sigh. I picked up an Independent uniform patch and some collectible cards from the dealers' room before I took off. Hopefully we can try for a Browncoat Shindig at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fencon.
He's signing an uncut sheet of cards for my game "Keep Flying." He liked the idea of the game, so I gave him a copy. You can see the envelope in the bottom right corner. I hope he likes it. Odds are any feedback I get is most likely to be "How come there's nine cards each of Nathan and Adam and only three of me?" Um . . . it's a prototype, I can fix that. (And I'm getting ideas for cards such as Torture, Disobedience, and Hiring, so it's very fixable) It's still a thrill for me that he wanted a copy.
Here's the charity Alan's plugging, Donate Life.
The Q&A session was great. Alan does not need a script to be entertaining. He's done a bunch of improv work going back to when he lived in Plano. One of his colleagues from those days was in the crowd, actually. The opening was him taking pictures of the crowd to send to Nathan Fillion. They hang out a lot, going back to when Alan got to borrow Nathan's house while he did his new-to-LA househunting. Nathan was out of town on a movie shoot, so he welcomed Alan with a videotape. Nathan had gone through the house with a camcorder showing sticky doors, where the towels were, and everything else needed to be comfortable there.
The first question was "Why did Wash die?" This is probably to Alan what "Why do you write strong female characters?" is to Joss. He gave two answers, the first was a hysterical riff on how Wash was Joss's Marty Stu projection onto the show, and once the character became cooler and more popular than the real Joss he killed him off in a jealous rage. The second was the serious explanation of how it increased the dramatic tension by making it clear that putting their lives on the line wasn't an empty boast but a real danger. He came back to that a couple of times. When the version of the script with that came out Joss told Alan to call him after reading it. Obvious bad sign. Alan said he was really worried that he'd have a "special moment" with Jayne. He also said Joss had promised him and Ron that they would appear in the next movie, so he's thinking it'd be a prequel or have a Zoe dream sequence.
Other bits: Alan demonstrating how much he wants the lead in Wonder Woman by doing the spin. Telling how he and Nathan had swiped one of the future cars from the set of the Shindig street scene (filmed on the Universal lot) and gone for a drive through Universal Tours. Nathan waving his gun as they went through the Wild West section. Alan's last film was directed by Frank Oz, who'd done the voices of Yoda and the other Muppets he'd brought to life (Bert, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, etc) for his cast. He felt he'd lucked into his part in Spamalot, and now is getting more offers for singing parts than his voice can handle. The stage version of Xanadu forced him to give up smoking so he could hit the high notes.
He even got asked out in the Q&A. A young lady pointed out that they knew he hadn't been able to go to his prom (a story he may have some regrets about letting out), so she invited him to come to hers as her date. He very sweetly turned her down without ever saying "jailbait" or "less than half my age".
The rest of SFX was fun but couldn't compare to that. I saw lots of friends from ORAC, including Robyn and Ed who can take a lot of the credit for it being such a smoothly running event IMHO. There were lots of Firefly fans by the t-shirts, but only a couple I knew from the Browncoats boards, sigh. I picked up an Independent uniform patch and some collectible cards from the dealers' room before I took off. Hopefully we can try for a Browncoat Shindig at
fencon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-09 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-09 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-09 04:44 pm (UTC)So cool.
Date: 2006-07-10 08:48 am (UTC)As a result, however, I ended up reading the blog post in which it was embedded.
Did you? What do you think? I can't speak to the whole vid-game phenom., but I do RPGs (as did my husband) and my experience would say, "wrong on all counts".
Sex roles for serious RPG players vary as the story demands. My favorite character ever played is stil Quai y'rhtal Q'rin, a runty martial artist maddly in love with the beautiful highway-woman Black Hannah. I've done men, women, and erm, stuff in between. As has the husband.
Re: So cool.
Date: 2006-07-10 03:50 pm (UTC)http://jossisahottie.com/josswhedon/entranscript.html
The blog post didn't do much for me, it was just the first one I found with the video link. As a gamemaster I wind up roleplaying everyone so female characters are routine for me. I'll note that characters I make as a player have always been male, but I don't spend much time on that side of the table, and when I do the character concept is usually me-as-I-wish-I-was to some degree. I've had a male player create a female PC, but the motivation seemed to be "how can I make this one different from my last PC?" and he never did anything really gender-driven with the character. My con games have pre-generated characters and the players have never blinked at playing one of a different gender. I haven't noticed any "exploring of the femine side" when they do that, but the problems I toss at them tend to not have gendered solutions.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:00 am (UTC)--Hope (Yahoo DFW browncoats group)
More pics of Alan
Date: 2006-07-12 03:10 am (UTC)http://www.banksofthesusquehanna.com/gallery2/v/WashLives/
Brian "Wash Lives!" Clough
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 06:12 pm (UTC)(btw, great icon!)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 06:15 pm (UTC)