Missed - WATCHMEN, SPACED and Joss Whedon.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S THE VISIONARIES: SHOWRUNNERS. This panel included Lost creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, Chuck and Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz, Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller and Josh Friedman creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. This served as my substitute for not attending many of the individual panels that these guys were doing later in the weekend. Lots of talk about the Writer's Strike and how you catch viewers up next season.
Terminator had a good, but unintended cliffhanger and they start a mere two seconds after last season ended. Others, like Pushing Daisies will start up again six months further into the future. Most of the talk centered around the more dynamic creators of Lost and Terminator. I love Josh Friedman's dismissal of questions about other Terminator stories - "I don't think that Terminator would really work as a feature film - it's really TV or a musical only." Carlton and Damon suggested that all that was really lost during the strike was more of the "freighter folk" stories - many of which were delayed until this coming season. Carlton waxed about the influence of Watchmen on Lost. He said it helped him realize that a story didn't need to be told in chronological order. That you may only have a few main characters, but then you need to tell the stories of the characters around them in order to understand the main characters. And that telling the stories partially in flashback could be a powerful tool.
Missed - THE WOLFMAN (the 2nd biggest bummer of the Con), THE SPIRIT
SPOTLIGHT ON JAMES WARREN. Jim Warren is old. The man created Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella among hundreds of magazines. He started off by asking our small room if we wanted him to "tell you what you want to hear or tell you the truth." It didn't really matter what we wanted, the old man couldn't hear the questions and just went on telling stories for an hour. There's always some gems in there - that's why I love seeing the old-timers at these events. Their stories are actual history now. And someday will be lost to the world if we're not there to hear them and repeat them to friends like this. Highlights included - Jim started with a magazine called After Hours with Forrey Ackerman to compete with Playboy in 1955.
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