Comic Con NY 2009: Day 1

I just got home from the first day of NY Comic Con a little while ago. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures to prove it to you. My still camera was acting up so I decided to just shoot video and I will then take stills from it. Don’t worry, they won’t be photos of just color and motion blur, I got many people in some great costumes to pose. I also got “video photos† of some cool looking swag, which I picked up by the bagful. Today I filmed over 3+ hours and I will probably film even more tomorrow. Here’s a rundown of what I covered so far.

I arrived at Comic Con about 10:30 as I predicted and after a little trouble finding the Press Room, I got my press pass. In the room there was some swag already set up for us so I picked up a few things. Since I had so much time to kill before the Yatterman press conference, I went to get lunch. The Con technically wasn’t open so the Food Court was empty. I ate my $15 burger/fries/drink combo and then went to the Yatterman conference. Here’s an exclusive photo they gave me.

The film looks weird. The trailer had some crazy visuals and the story is pretty out there. It’s based on an old Japanese cartoon that was insanely popular in Japan but never made it stateside. Director Takashi Miike and star Sho Sakurai spoke about the film (mostly in Japanese) and had some interesting things to say. I loved Takashi Miike’s answer to how he feels about American remakes of Japanese films/cartoons, which was essentially Japan does them better. I filmed the whole press conference so I will have some stills and footage up next week.

After the conference, I headed upstairs to the exhibition hall and made my way around the floor. I picked up a ton of swag and got some cool info about some upcoming films. The mask and knives on display at the Anchor Bay booth makes their claim that the killer (Chrome Skull) in Laid To Rest will be big seem promising. Out of all the booths, so far Fox seemed to be giving the most out. I got S. Darko t-shirts, posters for about 50 different things, Dragonball Z bouncy balls and even Choke licensed anal beeds cleverly disguised as bookmarks.

At 3:30 I again found myself abducted by aliens this week when I attended the Alien Trespass panel with director R.W. Goodwin and one of the stars, Dan Lauria. After the very funny and informative panel, which I of course taped for your viewing pleasure, I had my secret interview for the day. That secret interview was with director R.W. Goodwin. But my interview became a two-fer when Dan Lauria also agreed to answer a few questions. They were both great guys and really fun interviews. Dan even gave me some great advice on filmmaking from his experience as an actor in this business for many years. Before I left them in peace, I had them sign a couple of posters to give out to you guys.

I went back to the floor and walked around some more. I got some more free stuff and saw some previews for a few upcoming video games. I got some “video stills’ of a ton of people in some awesome costumes and then I stopped by the After Dark Films booth. I spoke with Miss Horrorfest and she had a special message for you guys, which I will post later. I picked up a few more posters and then decided to skip the movies and go to a panel hosted by MTV.

The panel was “Who is the Greatest Movie Badass of All Time.† They had a rather interesting choice of panelists including Judah Friedlander and Method Man. The main reason I decided to skip the movie was to see Judah Friedlander and I was lucky enough to meet him afterwards. The panel was really funny although I did disagree with some of the choices the viewers voted for the top 10 on mtv.com. (ASH is not even on the list!) The panel ran a little late but he stuck around to sign autographs and take pictures with everyone. I asked him to do a quick interview and we ended up talking a good 10 minutes. He even talked about some of the cool geek stuff he owns and told me the worked needs more movie geeks. After I turned the camera off, we started talking again. He was a very laid back person, exactly how he is on 30 Rock. He also told me that he is a 100% movie geek and that he would be coming back to the Con tomorrow just to walk around and pick up some DVD’s. So to all you Movie Geeks going to the Con tomorrow, if you see someone that looks like Judah Friedlander, it’s probably him†¦or someone in a movie quality costume. (Sidenote: I saw a Chewbacca that would make George Lucas want to reshoot every scene with this guy in front of a green screen and add it into the film then rerelease it.) I started talking to Judah about my film and he took a copy and told me he will let me know what he thinks. I also talked to him about WAMG and he said that he might send in some stuff to us in the future.

I thanked him again and left only to find out that Con was closed. I mean empty. Scary empty. The Javits Center was silent. I was really surprised since it was only like 9:30 but if I waited any longer, my jacket probably would have been locked in the press coatroom since they were shutting it when I got there. There was only a handful more, either they were the employees locking up or some journalists went home very cold tonight.

So that’s it. Day 1 is done. It’s close to 1 am now and I need to wake up at 6 so I’m going to get to bed. My first tape is still uploading but I should be able to get some stills from it for tomorrows update. Then next week I will start uploading more photos and videos. Why should Comic Con only be 3 days? I declare next week, NY Comic Con week on WAMG. Actually, I didn’t run that by Scott so I take it back. But I will still be posting my con coverage well into next week. I’ll be back tomorrow with more updates and the unveiling of who my secret interviews are for the day. The con is on!

Jerry Cavallaro –Â  www.AreYouStuckLikeChuck.com