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Date Posted: 23:01:42 03/03/06 Fri
Author: KatRose
Subject: BSG event write-up inside
In reply to: KatRose 's message, "Battlestar Galactica season finale" on 05:38:07 03/03/06 Fri

Tonight a Q&A session for Battlestar Galactica took place at the Directors Guild of America's 600-seat theater. There were that many people interested in the entire event (the William S. Paley Festival), that the Museum of Television and Radio had to move to a bigger facility. Nice change of venue. :-) The BSG event was sold out within an hour of tickets going on sale. I was VERY happy I was one of those that got tickets.

We arrived early to ensure good seats and waited and waited and waited and waited. Then we start seeing flashes of light over in the back corner of the lobby, the cast had arrived. We all got up and slowly made our way to the theater doors and our seats. I caught a glimpse of Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell chatting with some camera crew and saw Grace Parks giving an interview to a woman with a small tape recorder. Katee Sackhoff had come in, did her picturing taking thing and went back out. She's BEAUTIFUL!

On the stage in front of the movie screen are nine chairs, three small tables and nine bottles of Aquafina water and glasses - gotta get the product placement in early, lol. The curtains were open and the screen shows the MTR logo. We listened to various TV soundtracks as we waited for the appointed hour to arrive. Then it did.

We went though about 10 minutes of "give us your money and support the arts", blurbs about the founder of the MTR (William S. Paley) and then a few clips from previous shows. Then the current president of the MTR came out to introduce William C. Paley (S's son) who's a big fan of BSG. He gets up on stage and does a pretty moderate fan-boy thing for BSG before turning over the mike to the president again. She introduces the moderator of the Q&A and gets off stage.

Twit (for lack of his real name) introduces each cast member as they step out on stage and then sit in designated seats in the audience. Each cast member got a little blurb of their career highlights. He really screwed up EJO's blurb. He said that EJO produced and starred in "Stand By Me," for which he received an Oscar nomination. And this was from note cards! (If you didn't know, the movie was called "Stand and Deliver".) The producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick came out and did a fun riff on BSG, the fans, the early hysteria and current hype of the show. The best part was when they joked about how people were ticked about all the things missing from the original series, including Starbuck's . The audience went wild. Katee was cracking up in her seat. I knew we were in for a fun ride. Then Ron and David introduced the episode we were going to see: Part 1 of the season finale.

We sat back and watched a really good episode with the cast and producers sitting amongst us. The laughter and screams of "oh no!" and squeals of "YES!" must have made them all feel like they had done something right - and it was a LOT of somethings right.

After the episode (and previews for next week's 90-minute finale), Twit reintroduces the cast and everyone sits down after getting mic'd by the sound guy. Jamie Bamber kept losing his mic. Every time he moved, it fell off. He'd turn to Katee (who was wearing a turquoise blue halter top that exposed more than it hid) and it would fall off. She'd turn to him and it would fall off (Jamie's mike, not her shirt! Get your mind out of the gutter!). He finally got it clipped properly and the Q&A began.

Twit starts with David and Ron, asking how they got involved with the show and what their initial reactions were. Keeping true to all past interviews, they talked about how they didn't want to get involved at first. How they weren't inclined to work on a reimagined show and how Ron had already spent the last 10 years in space and wasn't sure if he wanted to spend more time there. I wish I could remember everything they said, it was pretty funny. They talked about the initial pitch meeting with the head of SciFi and how during the video conference Ron was distracted by the picture-in-picture of themselves in the lower corner of the screen and he kept thinking, "Am I in frame?" Ron said that he knew when the show had been sold, it was when he said that Starbuck was a woman and the head of SciFi (who was a woman too) clenched her fist and said, "yes!" They talked about how Ron wrote Roslyn with Mary in mind and how they wanted Adama to be played by EJO. Twit then turns to the two lead actors and gets them started.

EJO is a very funny man. One of the lines that stuck with me throughout the evening was a comment his friend said to him. It was about her nephew who was excited that Latinos were in the future. She was crying when she told him that. It brings home the fact that there are so few non-white faces on TV, especially in lead roles. I can't imagine the burden and joy it must be to represent those faces. EJO seems to love it though.

He talked about how he wasn't interested in doing another TV show, let alone a sci-fi series and almost didn't read the script. He said that what got him was the two-page mission statement that was attached at the front of his script. He was sucked in by the eloquence of Ron's words and when he turned the page to read the script itself, he was enthralled.

We were to learn a little while later that the mission statement was never to have been given to anyone but the executives at Universal and Sci-Fi because it was just a part of the pitch package - or so Ron thought. David was the one that made sure the actors got a copy of it too. He thought it might help and it did.

Mary was a hoot. When asked why she wanted to get involved, she aped EJO's comment of "wanting to be the first Latino in space." That got the audience, and EJO, laughing. She explained that she loved the idea of a middle-aged woman with no history of wanting or needing power suddenly finding herself with a lot of it. She wanted to explore how that could change a person and how the person could change the power too. She also liked that Laura isn't always right or always strong, she likes that Laura is a flawed character.

In fact, that comment was made by every actor there. They like that the characters aren't perfect. That there are many times they're all frakked up (they did use that word a lot - lol), yet continue to go about their daily lives in spite of it.

Katee came next. She talked about how she needed a job and wanted to shoot a gun. That was her criteria for auditioning for the role. She also talked about how as the audition process went on, and she got notes that she wasn't tough enough or old enough in the eyes of the casting people, she talked to her dad and he kept asking, "Have you watched the original?" She kept saying "No" and would ignore the idea. It wasn't until she got the part that she and a girlfriend got the video and watched it, only to be confused by all the comments of "Starbuck" and yet she couldn't see her. Her telling of it was pretty funny, and I know I'm not doing it justice.

Moving onto Jamie Bamber. His real voice is so different than the one we hear as Lee Adama. It's not better or worse, just not what you expect. He talked about how he came to audition for Apollo. He was on a two-week break from some TV show he was doing in the UK and called his manager to say, "I want to fly to LA and audition for something, anything. Do it." He then laughed that one of the reasons he wanted to audition is because he'd just found out his girlfriend was pregnant ("with me, I think" - which I think should be translated to "by me") and he was freaking out. When he got to LA and was handed the script, he immediately handed it back saying, "Right, what do you really have for me?" then got sucked in like EJO by the mission statement.

He talked about how after several auditions, he, Katee and other Apollo/Starbuck wannabes were put into a room and played a Survivor like game of doing the same scenes over and over and over and over again until it was whittled down to four. Katee's sitting to his left cracking up and nodding her head. I think I saw tears. Grace is two seats to his right and laughing too. She'd auditioned for Starbuck too and was in on that whole round-robin audition session.

James Callis, man I want to take him home. Snarky, yet gentle in a way. Great combo. James also talked about how his manager first approached him about the script. He read it and was intrigued, then asked, "What role am I up for?" and was told, "Baltar." He said he was "gobsmacked" because he didn't want to be evil and prance around in a cape.

His audition process was a little different. First off, he showed up on the wrong day. When he got the right day, he was asked to do the scene where Six finds Baltar in bed with another woman. He did it many times and every time he got the same comments from the director - humor is bad. He said he didn't understand the comment and eventually asked when he came back the second time. The director didn't want any humor to mar the seriousness of the scene or the show. Humor was bad for the show, was pretty much what he'd been talking about.

Well, James does the scene again with more executives in the room and can't stop himself. It's exactly as it had been the day before .... With humor. The director came up to him when the scene was done and said, "I was wrong. They like the humor." With that, the Baltar we know and love was created.

Grace Parks sat at the end and fairly whispered, "I feel so boring after all this." Katee chimed in with "Hey, I said I wanted to shoot a gun" and shrugged. Grace then told us how she's originally auditioned for Duella and then later for Starbuck, getting passed over both times. She was then told she got the part of Boomer. She was devastated, she didn't want to play the girl-next-door, she wanted a meatier role. Then she reread the script and got to the end with "By your command" and thought, "When did that change?" She admitted that when she read the script the first time, she hadn't paid that much attention to anything other than Starbuck.

At this point, Katee and Grace start cracking up about how they both wanted the other's part and how they wanted "her". James snarks in, "And I want you both." I don't know who was more surprised or laughed hardest, the cast or the audience. Twit, on the other hand, didn't react at all. Like I said, twit!

We got a few more wrap up comments by Dave and Ron and then twit said we had run out of time. There was a quick trivia contest - cheesy questions if you ask me ;-) - and then it was done. There was security to keep the audience from rushing the stage and the cast escaped out a backdoor a few moments later.

I had a great time and wish you could have been there. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for MTR to put this session on DVD like they did with Lost from last year. So you might be able to see it yourself in the near future.

Take care and talk to you soon.

Kat

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