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Posted: |
Jul 14, 2015 - 11:20 AM
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By: |
Mike_J
(Member)
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I did a fair number of UK Trek cons in my youth, and along with fellow FSM-erJohn Johnson, we actually acted as video crew for a number of them in the late 80s.
Some of my favourite memories;
Having a few beers with John DeLancie in Brighton - saw him standing by the bar on the Thursday before the con so John and I offered him a beer, which turns into quite a few rounds and some wonderful conversation. He also gave us a name check direct to camera the next day, which was pretty cool.
DeLancie seems like a great guy all around, besides being a really good actor. I imagine a beer and some conversation with him would be pretty interesting. He was Trek's ace in the hole quite a few times.
He was one of the most down to Earth people I've ever met, not at all "thespian". Even stood his own round. Terrifically top bloke and certainly the nicest guy I ever met at a Trek con.
As to the worst, well Mark Leonard was pretty indifferent to anyone apart from when he was on stage. James Doohan just came across as a grumpy old geezer with chips on both shoulders about Shatner. But the worst by a long shot was a guy called Richard Arnold, who started as a fan, got job as Gene Roddenberry's bag carrier and then final got a job full time for Paramount as their Trek archivist and fan liaison. Man alive, talk about being up himself. Met him twice and couldn't stand him because he just clearly considered himself better than us mere mortals.
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My first convention was 1980 in Denver - Star Con 4, presented by Starland of Colorado (who actually developed a national businesses selling Star Trek merchandise through mail order in the eighties and nineties, sadly defunct by the time the internet became viable).
I saw Mark Lenard do his Klingon lines (great session), Walter Koenig talk about whatever he talked about, and a great parody by locals done just six months after the release of STTMP called "Star Trek: Where Nomad Has Gone Before". Lenard was in the audience and laughed all through it, which was sweet. They used Goldsmith's music for the Klingon attack sequence, and when they got to the Epsilon 9 part, they showed this on the viewscreen:
My prized get from that con was a photocopied "shooting script" of Empire Strikes Back, which had been released just a couple months before - no idea if it's authentic, but sure as hell looks like a shooting script.
My second con was twenty years later, and haven't been to one since, so clearly not my thing.
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Posted: |
Jan 19, 2017 - 7:06 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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I went to the convention at the Statler Hilton (Pennsylvania six five oh oh oh) in '75. Some guy had created a phaser gun out of a strobe light. Too expensive at $75 er somethin' then. Told "Jerry G" about it in Y2K--
HOWARD: Twenty, twenty-five years ago I went to the first, maybe second Star Trek convention at the Statler Hilton in New York. Thought it was great, couldn’t believe they were doing this. A whole convention full of serious Star Trek fans like me, people who didn’t just watch the show but read about it and studied it and appreciated that there was some pretty serious science in the fiction.
JERRY: I've come to realize that.
HOWARD (after murmuring in agreement): Well, there were some pretty serious fans there, but there were others, too. People with big mouths interrupting and yelling at DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig…and some of them wearing Spock ears. So what you have is a ballroom full of pretty decent, interested and respectful folks and a few loud-mouthed freaks.
JERRY: Your point being?
HOWARD: That night I turn on the news and who do you think gets their 15 minutes of fame?
JERRY: The freaks.
HOWARD: Uh huh. And that’s the image that all those folks who might know a little about the show have of those who know a lot more about the show. They see freaks.
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