Updates from Dragon*Con - Spoilers

[frulad]

Julie has mostly retired from acting. She's concentrating on managing other actors (she's the convention manager for all the folks from StarGate and Babylon 5, as well as folks from Buffy, Trek, etc), doing motivational speaking (women empowerment), writing (women empowerment books, she has one that either just came out or was just about to come out), and it's been awhile since she did conventions.

Having witnessed her energetic bounding around at the Chiller Theatre show a few years back, motivational speaking definitely sounds like a good fit for her.

[Shabaz]

Shabaz, new posters are on hand moderation for their first twenty messages. I moderate at least three times a day, and I'm not the only moderator, so the only time you'll get a really long delay is if you happen to post just after I've gone to bed for the night.

Thank you for the explanation. And I can see that happening, since I'm Dutch, and in the CET timezone. I have to admit, I'm a bit unfamiliar with newsgroups, so I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but now I know.

[AmyG]

Shabaz, new posters are on hand moderation for their first twenty messages. I moderate at least three times a day, and I'm not the only moderator, so the only time you'll get a really long delay is if you happen to post just after I've gone to bed for the night.

As for the Mongoose situation with JCB, that's very interesting. Part of me wonders whether Julie is hoping for some action in the Lost Tales, and got wind of the ill feelings between Mongoose and JMS, and therefore disassociated herself from them as quickly as possible.

Ah, Dragon*Con...I really wish I had been there this year!

[Shabaz]

Feel free to repost. (I post there so infrequently that I don't even remember my login to do it! lol)

Done.

Although it seems to take a while before my messages get through, sometimes hours. Guess they are hand moderating the messages. Although I see others posting pretty quickly in response to eachother, so maybe it's just because I'm a new poster at the newsgroup.

[OmahaStar]

Just wondering, did you cross post this to the rast.b5.mod newsgroup? I have a feeling that some there might be interested in the news from Peter Jurasik you wrote down in your first section.

Or I could post it there, if you are ok with that?

Feel free to repost. (I post there so infrequently that I don't even remember my login to do it! lol)

[Darth_librarian]

Hell yeah!!! Spoilers in a B5 post. great stuff...

As for Mongoose, they seem to be great at publishing RPG stuff, but when it comes to dealing with Authors (i.e. JMS) they loose the plot. Bad news there.

[Shabaz]

Just wondering, did you cross post this to the rast.b5.mod newsgroup? I have a feeling that some there might be interested in the news from Peter Jurasik you wrote down in your first section.

Or I could post it there, if you are ok with that?

[SmileOfTheShadow]

Awesome. I wish I could be out across the country at Dragon Con, though Worldcon was fun enough. I'm glad to see that The Lost Tales is underway and seems to actually be making progress, though I hope we get a nifty little announcement from JMS again soon

Mongoose has managed to upset a lot of people in what they're doing. Babylon 5 books and games just never quite get out of the chute, do they?

[Shabaz]

Awesome, some actual info.

And what the hell is going on with Mongoose publishing? I mean, I never got the impression they are particularly ill willed towards the B5 franchise and its people, and yet they seem to have managed to lose support of JMS, and now Ms Caitlin.

As for records, Summer of the Babylon Podcast apparently was there too, and she said she would try to record the Q&A session, if she managed to get permission. So, might be worth to keep an eye on their site too.

[OmahaStar]

Oh, gods, how I love to be able to use that word "Spoilers" in connection with new B5.

Peter Jurasik (Londo) confirmed during a panel at Dragon*Con that he has talked with JMS, and will be in the Lost Tales. The other 3 actors (Julie Caitlin Brown, Stephen Furst, and Mira Furlan) either didn't know, or couldn't say anything about it.

Peter confirmed that the first set of three stories will be about the Humans, and he will not be involved in those. The second set of three stories will be about aliens, and Londo will be in at least one of those stories.

***

In the Babylon Podcast, Julie had talked about an upcoming book she was writing all about what happened to Na'Toth. I asked her about this while she was out on the floor, and she said it's dead. What she wanted, and what the publisher wanted, were two entirely different things, and on the advise of her agent, she walked away from the project.

I didn't press her for details, as she gave the impression that she wasn't happy about the situation.

***

Stephen Furst has a new movie coming out on the scifi channel next month. It stars one of his sons, and another son is doing the music. Stephen is producing and directing, and has a cameo. They showed a clip of it, and it looks pretty good.

It's kind of The Mummy-like ... In modern times, a group of archeologists (or something) uncover some kind of ancient creature thought dead millenia ago. Nope. It's alive. And it's hungry. To quote from Zathura, "It eats meat. We're meat!"

***

Peter has retired from acting for the most part. He'll take bit parts here and there, if they're close by, but for the most part, he stays close to home and teaches acting at university.

Stephen has also mostly retired from acting, instead concentrating on directing and producing.

Mira, as we all know, appears in Lost.

Julie has mostly retired from acting. She's concentrating on managing other actors (she's the convention manager for all the folks from StarGate and Babylon 5, as well as folks from Buffy, Trek, etc), doing motivational speaking (women empowerment), writing (women empowerment books, she has one that either just came out or was just about to come out), and it's been awhile since she did conventions.

***

On another note ... just kind of an FYI kinda thing ... If you go to one of these panels, don't ask "what's your favorite episode" or "what's the funniest prank you can remember" or anything like that. The actors were struggling to come up with answers for those, and either Julie or Peter made the comment that with pranks, it's really funny in the moment, but when you're talking about something from over a decade ago, what little they can remember about it just gets lost in the translation.

Some of the best answers were from questions about themselves (i.e. what are they up to, what do they do outside of acting), or about their take on the acting process (a great question was asked ... What is the process they follow from the time they get the script to the time the director yells "cut"?)

Any time anyone mentioned Andreas (and this was frequent), every one of them up there got just a little more down, and Peter started choking up while talking about his friend. The wounds are still fresh.

Another great story was from Julie, talking about when she came back for the season 5 episode. She was afraid she had lost touch with the character and with Na'Toth's connection with G'Kar. She sat down and talked with Andreas, asking for help. He said "Don't think. Do."

She doesn't just memorize and then spout out the lines, she gets under the character's skin. During the hours-long makeup process, she talks, a lot. She starts off as an interviewer asking the character questions, deeper and deeper until she becomes whatever character she's playing.

Now, there's a scene where she's in the cell, rocking back and forth. That wasn't Na'Toth, that really was Julie, who had gotten into such a state that that's all she could do, she was so bonkers at that point. Moments later, when she collapses into G'Kar's arms, that was also Julie collapsing.

***

Mira was really super quiet up there, and barely spoke, except when someone had a direct question for her. One of the points she made was that she doesn't know anything about weapons, and when she had to fire weapons for Lost, she asked for training, someone to show her how to hold the gun properly, how to fire it, etc., as her character is supposed to have been doing this for 16 or whatever years.

They told her "no". She insisted, and finally came to the island two days early, and did a kind of "boot camp" at a firing range.

***

Now, I'm pretty darn sure that since Mira was there, Moyra was there too. And she usually videotapes these panels. I'm hoping she'll be able to put together a transcript, cuz as much as I remember, there's undoubtedly some I've forgotten too.