FoTR took out one of the Hugo Awards at this year’s Worldcon in San Jose (also known as ConJose), with Sam Astin and Sala Baker there to accept the award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Ringer Spy Samwise Gamgee was there to get the scoop.
Samwise’s Update:
My information was true, as far as, what me and my friends did. Seems that we gave up too early…
However, Sean DID NOT LEAVE THE BUILDING like we thought he did. He stayed, and signed autographs, and talked to fans. Then, he went back over to the Fairmont, and talked some more, and was friendly and approachable. He was not afraid of the fans at all. This is all very good news! I’m so glad for the people that did stay, and the ones that got the REAL photos will undoubtedly be sending them along to you.
Oh yes, also, the person with him was Sauron (ie: Sala Baker), not Lurtz (Lawrence Makoare) … Yikes! All that makeup … can’t tell the bad guy actors apart. My mistake.
GOT THE SCOOP:
Sean Astin at the Hugo Awards, September 1, 2002
WorldCon, the international Fantasy/Science Fiction Fandom convention, took place in San Jose, CA this year (also referred to as ConJose). The Hugo Awards, presented at each WorldCon, is the yearly awards for the Science Fiction community which includes book, film, TV, fanzine, magazine, art, etc.
Sean Astin was a last-minute special guest, to appear at the Hugos to accept the award for Best Dramatic Presentation: Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring. I was lucky enough to find out about this fact a day early, being a featured artist at the con who struck up a nice conversation with ConJose’s director. So, naturally, I immediately planned to attend the Hugo Award Ceremony to catch a glimpse of Sean with two of my LOTR fan buddies.
The Awards started at 8:00 pm tonight (Sunday.) We filed in and got as close as possible to the stage. Many importantly dressed crowds arrived, including famous authors and artists from the F/SF industry, which garnered applause from the crowds. I was looking for Sean of course, my camera in hand. Of course he was nowhere to be seen.
On stage, the MC called for people’s attention to wish someone well in fandom who had become gravely ill. While this occurred, the Sean Astin group moved into the front row from the side entrance, taking advantage of the distraction. He was well-guarded by Lawrence Makoare on one side, and in general, ducked and turned his head so he would not be noticed. It was flawlessly done, and I barely noticed him enter before he was seated about 8 rows ahead of me.
The Hugos began and went on, honoring fans and professionals alike. Clips were displayed on large screens for the Nominees of Best Dramatic Presentation. We were treated again to our favorite scene, The Boat Scene with Sam and Frodo at the end of FOTR. The applause was enthusiastic, and there was no doubt Sean Astin would indeed be accepting the award at that point. I had some serious anticipation jitters!
Finally: The big announcement that FOTR did indeed win for Best Dramatic Presenation. He got up to accept the award, amid flashing cameras and cheers. Mr. Astin was smiling and friendly, making jokes about the last-minute nature of the venue, a couple of heartfelt quotes (One J.R.R. Tolkien) and comments about Fantasy and Science Fiction in general, and then speaking warmly of New Zealand before handing the Hugo over to Mr. Makoare to give his thanks. Sean pointed out that he had never been out of New Zealand before coming to California. (Another interesting detail that stuck in my mind is that Sean did mention Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a book he enjoyed, in passing, which is absolutely one of my favorite books as well! Cripes, and he’s an Angel fan too? What great taste!) We made
valiant attempts to get photos, however the lighting and distance prevented us. My good friend Talisha did remember a tape recorder to get his acceptance speech, and it looked like it worked, but she has yet to play it back and type it. We’ll have to see about that when she’s done with it. (fingers tightly crossed)
After Lawrence had concluded, Sean hugged him warmly, smiled like a million bucks, and exited stage left grabbing the rocket-shaped Hugo award and “flying” it in his hands offstage as the two left. Applause was loud and appreciative. The general impression he gave was casual, happy, funny and slightly goofy. Yes! Bliss achieved! 😉
We left immediately to catch a further glimpse of our favorite celebrity, dashing down the front steps and around the back of the building. I am in awe of Mr. Astin’s people: they are evidently ex-government. His entrance and exit were so slick and expertly timed that there was absolutely no way to meet him on his way in or out. Evidently, his car had pulled up and taken him, roadside, before he could even be identified by passers by. We were mildly disappointed, as we had brought things to sign (I had brought original Hobbity artwork of mine) but we were still incredibly happy to have seen him in person all the same. Definitely worth it.
Thanks go out to the awesome ConJose staff and management! These are all volunteers who by some magic managed to capture a major LOTR film star in San Jose for a brief time.
Hooray for ConJose!
Signing off now~
Samwise Gamgee
Posted in:
Share:
FoTR took out one of the Hugo Awards at this year’s Worldcon in San Jose (also known as ConJose), with Sam Astin and Sale Baker there to accept the award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Ringer Spy Samwise Gamgee was there to get the scoop. [More]
Update: Apparently Samwise was mistaken, and it was Sala Baker – not Lawrence Makaore – who was with Sean Astin.
Posted in:
Share:
No, not the film! However, Ovation Theatre Company is producting a stage version of The Two Towers just weeks before the international movie screens for the first time. This live stage production opens October 25th in Cincinnati and runs for 8 public performances to November 2nd. [More]
Posted in:
Share:
Fans, Friends and Fun
Day three of the Con was the biggest yet. I pity any unsuspecting hotel guest who chose this weekend to stay at either of these hotels, unless they happened to be broad-minded and loved science fiction and fantasy. For us, we loved the endless parade of mind-boggling costumes that passed our table. Most of us haven’t had time to visit any exhibits or talks outside of the Tolkien track events, but just watching the other attendees walk past was all the entertainment we needed. Besides, spending all day chatting to Tolkien fans is not a bad way to pass time. [More]
Posted in:
Share:
Fans, Friends and Fun
Day three of the Con was the biggest yet. I pity any unsuspecting hotel guest who chose this weekend to stay at either of these hotels, unless they happened to be broad-minded and loved science fiction and fantasy. For us, we loved the endless parade of mind-boggling costumes that passed our table. Most of us haven’t had time to visit any exhibits or talks outside of the Tolkien track events, but just watching the other attendees walk past was all the entertainment we needed. Besides, spending all day chatting to Tolkien fans is not a bad way to pass time. We had a laptop set up on the table playing the preview and that would act like a magnet, and there’d always be a laugh of delight when we pointed out the moment where Treebeard blinks. It’s always great to see people watching it for the first time – their jaws drop. We gave away copies of the Fellowship to kids who looked sufficiently excited about the whole thing. Especially ones dressed as Harry Potter or as young Jedi who were ready to take on a new adventure. I envied them having the Fellowship to read for the first time.
We had bookmarks to give away – some of them official art generously provided by Houghton Mifflin, but we also had eight designs given to us by TORN fan artists. People loved them and we watched our stacks of bookmarks get smaller and smaller all day.
We closed the day’s activities at the table with a raffle drawing which drew a huge crowd. We had some Houghton Mifflin books and some of our t-shirts to give away. The remainder of give-aways were decided by asking H-M’strivia questions to the people who were left until they’d won everything.
Better late than never – we can announce the winner of our costume competition on Friday night. First place, Lord of the Nazgul, went to Joseph Kiser, who had a great costume and suitably threatening hiss. Second place went to Andy Myers, an uncanny double for Dominic Monaghan whose costume was carefully made. Third prize went to Kathleen Myers, as Aragorn’s mother Gilraen. Overall (and this was something that I noticed about everyone in costume thoughout the convention) one of the challenges that would make or break the ‘believability’ of the costume was their ability to move and gesture appropriately.
Tom Shippey, author of “Tolkien: Author of the Century” gave a second lecture. This one concentrated less on the link between philology and story-telling and more on what he called the group of ‘one-off’ writers like Tolkien, Orwell, Vonnegut, Lewis and Graves who were traumatised by war and each wrote books that were completely unlike the mainstream in literature – they wrote fantasies that tried to figure out what the authors saw as the evils of the twentieth century. If we’d had more time the talk would have continued on with a group discussion on the nature of evil and morality. Which I would venture to suggest was not something that being discussed in many of the other tracks at the convention.
Shippey was a great speaker who laced his enormously learned discourse with great wit and a store of fascinating stories about his connections with Tolkien, C. S Lewis, and the institution of Oxford University.
TORN Digital did an interview with Tom which will appear on this site at a later date. Quickbeam asked him whether he was a Tolkien apologist and Shippey said he would go further and call himself a Tolkien polemic.
There was a very popular talk on arms and armour presented by Joe Piela of Lonely Mountain Forge. He had an impressive array of extremely realistic (and well-worn) weapons and armour. He talked about the way the re-enactment people have discovered, through building and using the ancient weapons, how people must have fought. The shape of the weapon and the armour determines what is possible for the fighter in question. What was very clever was the way he kept referring it back to Tolkien’s writing about warfare. For instance Tolkien described how the riders of Rohan used their spears to skewer the orcs they attacked – and now people who’ve used a horse and spear in modern re-enactments are able to testify how much power an armed rider has to overwhelm footsoldiers in exactly that way. Joe could refer to a section in Tolkien, pull out the armour or weapon to illustrate it, and describe exactly how it was used.
Later, the ‘Elvish 101″ course was totally full as well – in fact they had to present the talk twice to fit everyone in. Since the movie came out, so many more people are able to appreciate how beautiful Elvish sound, and there is a hunger to learn more.
Saulone from the TORN community site There And Back Again was very popular – like every other Tolkien Track event it was full. Saulone gave a potted history of how TABA came to exist. He talked about vector versus non-vector art – the fluid lines of his site are very much what he would call non-vector. It is not mathematically-based. Saulone wanted to build a site using non-vector art.
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH
Due to high demand (YAY) we were moved into a large ballroom in order to give our “Behind the Scenes at TTT” talk. The fans were more interactive and heckled Calisuri over Saruman’s death on the Wizard Kebab scene, even though as he pointed out, there’s no point shooting the messenger. We checked the approval rating for the first film and the casting in the first film, and got the usual hysteria over Legolas. Hey, I stir it up!
Thanks have to go to Ginger, Stefan and Allen who worked tirelessly to get the Greenbriars room set up for each speaker and to provide them with everything they needed. Next year we have been tipped to get a bigger room.
Thanks also go to Jessica who got us great seats in the Masquerade, the eye-boggling costume contest which crowned the evening.
We’d like to thank all the fans that dropped by and said how much they loved our site – some of them were even wearing our TORN t-shirts.
——
Sorry we didn’t post any images up with today’s report. The hour was getting late and we ended up using a digital projector in our hotel room and watching FOTR. Look for loads of images tomorrow for the final day of DragonCon.
Posted in:
Share:
The Drudge Report has reported a rumour that The Two Towers is already available on the internet. WinMX and Kazaa carry several files purporting to be some version of the film, however they all appear to be fakes. Thanks to Sir Mordred, Moses and several other Barliman’s chatters for helping me check these files out.
Posted in:
Share:
