Ringer Marysia wrote this excellent report about Billy Boyd’s Q&A at the SFX Awards.
*
Billy Boyd was a very last minute addition to the SFX Awards Event
lineup after several major guests dropped out at the last minute. He was also the only LotR guest, the other guests being Dominic Keating
from Enterprise, Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf, Dean Haguland from
X-Files, David Palffy from Stargate, Kristen Dalton from The Dead Zone
and SuAnn Braun from Stargate. Andy Serkis appeared at the Awards
ceremony only.
Billy made a flying visit in between filming in Glasgow for his new
movie On A Clear Day, arriving in London in the afternoon on Saturday
and departing half way through the awards ceremony on Sunday evening.
He did two question and answer sessions of about 45 mins in length to
an audience of about 150 at the extremely under-attended event as well
as signing autographs and posing for photos. The low numbers meant he
could really take his time in the autograph sessions and everyone who
wanted to got to have a nice chat and some extremely lengthy
personalisations. Among the presents he was given at the session were
two diving toys (referring to the script he and Dom are working on), 4
plastic dinosaurs (see the Q&A info below) and a framed sketch of he,
Dom and Elijah at the SAG Awards.
The Q&A was a little awkward at first, there can’t have been more than about 150 people there (far fewer than the room could hold) and the
audience was a little reticent on the asking questions front. As a
result Billy decided to ask the audience questions. He started off
asking trivia questions about the cast and including Dom’s birthday
and Elijah’s sisters name.
He answered a few questions about Master & Commander and then told us
about “Instant Credit”, the short film he has just completed work on.
It will be screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in
August and also on ITV (though I suspect Scottish ITV only). The plot
concerns a Scottish chef who meets an obnoxious rich man and
accidentally ends up with his credit card. Knowing the man will be in
transit for the next day he takes advantage of his good luck. The film
was shot in Glasgow and Paris and is made by the same people behind
Sniper 470.
Billy has no theatre work planned at the moment and when asked about
pantomime said that he had done a lot of it before he became well
known and hadn’t forgotten how tiring it was yet. So maybe in the
future but not this year.
His current interest is computers and as well as trying to learn how
to use them properly he also hopes to make his official site the
worlds first smell-o-vision website. He plans to start with the smells
of different cheeses. Another personal project is to sail round the
west coast of Scotland with friends on a surfing tour of the islands.
When asked what the most extreme thing a fan had done to get his
attention was he replied that hadn’t always used false names at
hotels, but he found people would phone him at 7am and ask him to come
down into the lobby and sign stuff. He thought it was weird how some
people didn’t consider that you might have something else to do, like
sleep, rather than sit and wait for their call. Someone then asked if
he’d ever been flashed as a followup. He said no but if the girls on
the phone had proferred that he might have gone downstairs.
When asked about his music he said he was getting distracted a lot by
trying to learn more about computers, but he was hoping to arrange a
gig soon with the musicians he’s been working with. The gig will most
likely be in Glasgow and the band are currently doing cover songs. The
gig may be announced on his website but he’s not sure yet. In a
related question he said the most star-struck he’s ever been was
meeting Prince as he is a huge fan of his music.
When asked what his most embarassing moment on set was he couldn’t
think of one, but then remembered something from primary school and
decided to use that instead. At assembly when he was about seven, the
headmaster/mistress (I forget which) was telling the girls off for not
flushing the toilets and he started wonder if the boys should flush
them or not since she just seemed to be singling out the girls. He
didn’t actually put up his hand and ask but he came incredibly close
to doing it and still feels embarassed today thinking about what would
have happened if he had asked.
He would love to see Crime and Punishment, a favourite book of his, as
a movie and said there was an adaptation floating about he’d like to
be in.
At his second Q&A on Sunday he talked a little about how much he liked
Robert Burns and that he wouldn’t mind playing Burns, unfortunately
the role has already gone to Gerard Butler (a fellow Glaswegian). He
then proceeded to lead the audience in a complex discssion of the
functioning of light sabres, having them vote on whether they worked
using the force, or by a button, or by pressing a button using the
force and whether the colour was dependant on the morality of the user
or pre-programmed.
when asked about his current movie, On a Clear Day (directed by Gaby
Dellal) he gave us two possible options as to the plot. Either it was
about a couple of young guys who want to swim the English Channel or
it was about a dinosaur detective trying to teach another dinosaur how
to use the internet. I suspect the truth may be that it’s about a
dinosaur who wants to swim the English Channel.
When asked about the script he and and Domhave been working on he
seemed a little frustrated that it wasn’t proceeding as fast as he
liked, but he said they were still working on it and it would get
made.
At the Awards ceremony he arranged for the organisers to move him to
the same table as Andy Serkis so they could have some more time to
talk before Billy left. The ceremony was hosted by Chris Barrie and
LotR won several awards including Best Director and Best Film. Billy
and Andy went up together to accept the Best Director Award and
claimed that together they weighed the same as Peter Jackson. Andy
accepted the Best Film award alone as Billy had already left.
