Panels

March 15, 2005

After coming back from the Veronica Mars Paleyfest panel last night, I’ve come to realize I hate actors, people who attend panels, and people who ask questions at panels.

OK, hate is maybe a strong word for the actors. I respect the work, and without them I’d be reading a book, so clearly I like actors somewhat. But in a panel situation, they are almost invariably the least interesting people around. The writers and directors always have uncommon insight to the project, but the actors are lucky to drop an interesting anecdote and crack wise. They are never as cool or suave or smart as their characters, so it’s uniformly disappointing. Solution: Each actor must have a writer sitting behind them and feeding them lines, possibly with a hand up the actor’s ass to manipulate their motions. Responses could be given in character, if necessary.

As for the Q+A, I think I hate every person that has ever asked a question EVER at every single panel I’ve ever been to. Seriously. These are the offenses at the VM panel alone:

A) A question should be ONE SENTENCE LONG. If your question has a foreward, a preface, annotations, endnotes and footnotes, it is no longer a question, so don’t ask it.

B) I know you rehearsed your spiel for hours in front a mirror, but if your question was addressed earlier in panel, go to your fallback question! Always have plan B.

C) If you’re a writer, we don’t need to know. Joel Silver is not going to say “man, that was a damn good question. You want to write Lethal Weapon 5?”

I will commend the audience for not committing the two mortal sins of Q+A. Nobody said “I don’t have a question, I have a statement,” which was good. That one makes me want to beat people with a shoe. Also, nobody asked a multi-part question, which makes me want to run over and suplex them. In San Diego, one dude, swear to god, said “I have a 2 part question, but the first part is actually a statement,” and I had an embolism right there in the room. It was horrible.

Oh, and hey audience, you don’t have to clap for everyone and everything. You know the part where you clapped when they were talking about date rape? THAT WAS CREEPY AND WEIRD. FUCKING STOP IT.

Other than that, I enjoyed the evening. Rob Thomas gave away just enough hints to keep me satisfied and they showed a new episode called “Betty and Veronica” that rocked a whole heck of a lot.

Posted in Idiot Box