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SVU Seminar November 28, 2000 |
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Ingrid Hiya!! It's kinda late, so it has to be a quick post. Christopher was there...looking gorgeous in oh yes leather pants. It was an interesting moment for cameras to watch us watch him walk in. It was a pretty intimate setting. Melonians sat together one row behind the other [stadium seating so good view]. We were in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th rows. It's a shame we couldn't record them because the panel was excellent. Insightful, interesting and oh god really funny. Chris was hysterical. They all were. We were *not* allowed to take pictures during or after the panel. Luckily, Christopher law abiding guy that he is...sneaked into the hallway with all of us and posed for pics. Hell, even when we were all leaving the restroom and he was also walking out he kept posing for us. Too sweet. He was amazed that Nadine came from Ottawa to see him and well Nadine is apparently never going to stop smiling. Beth took excellent notes of the entire panel. She's going to post them when she gets a chance. Totally amazing..didn't miss a word and never looked down at her pad. Ummm.....there's more but I'm totally fried and tired. I'm sure the others can say more. I'll post tomorrow when I'm thinking more clearly. I arrived at the Museum at 5:30pm and didn t see Elisa or Joann. I went inside and chatted with one of the museum people about the procedures for the panel. Then I found out he was a fan of OZ and of Christopher's. We chatted about Christopher and the website. I believe the consensus was he s a gorgeous and a talented actor. I just love people with good taste. The museum closed at 6pm and would re-open around 7pm for the seminar. When I went outside, I saw that Joann and Elisa had arrived. We chatted a bit and decided that we should just hang outside since with a group of almost 200 people up close seats would be nice. At this point, Christina, Nadine, Carla, Dana, Theresa and Wayne came along. Rounds of introductions, hellos and we think we can take those old women trying to cut us in line . <g> Hey, they were cutting! LOL Eileen came along and then Beth. Yay! The group was complete. So we hung out and took group photos until they opened the doors. We were the first ones there but some people were kind of sneaking in hugging the walls so to speak. Eh, I didn t care if it was 2 or 3 but just not 50.Meanwhile, there was this woman, complaining is a nice way to put it, about disorganization and people jumping ahead. The Not Fair Woman, henceforth known as TNFW[TM], kept giving us dirty looks. I still don t know why since we had been there before her. She thought that since we were a group, she and her brood should be seated before us. I have no idea what kind of logic she was working with. We still went in before her. Okay, so we re in the auditorium. It can seat about 200 but it was a very intimate setting and it had stadium seating. Joann, Beth, Elisa and I were in the third row center. We have a perfect view of the stage. We were sitting down talking, joking around when we realized that our group is the younger demographic in that room. We kept getting looks from TNFW[TM]. I was just happy she was in the aisle rows away from us. People start walking in. We see Sherman come in looking lovely in a leather outfit. More significant others walk in. And then Christopher came down the stairs. LOL I still say it was a Kodak moment to see us watch him. No gasping or such [because we are a proper group], but I think a moment of oh my god he s really here. It s pretty nifty to see people s reaction to their first sighting of Christopher. I did think for a moment Nadine would pass out, but trooper that she is she held on strong. He was wearing the leather pants we had mentioned and a really nice shirt [thank god Joann remembers the color]. And yeah, he looked tired but cute. It was funny though when he sat down in our row further down. The usher made him go sit in the front. The rest of the group-Epatha, Mariska, Jerry and Dick Wolf came in. And it kind of shows how unassuming they are; that their first instinct is to grab the back seats until they see Chris is up front. The moderator-Robert M. Batscha, who is the president of the museum, spoke about Dick Wolf. Nice little joke on whom has more events-him or Tom Fontana. They then showed clips from both shows. The SVU clips were from Closure-Pt2 and Wrong is Right. While they showed scenes with everyone s characters-they showed at least 3 really good specific scenes about Stabler. I was watching Christopher and the group from time to time as they watched the clips. It was interesting to see what they watched intensely at or laughed at. Of course, Belzer s line in "Wrong is Right" about Craig Price having a tattoo of Senator McCarthy on his ass got the biggest laugh from the audience and the panelists. Gotta love Munch/Belzer. They were then introduced and came on stage. If you re in the audience facing them, then the seating was from left to right was-Mariska, Christopher, Epatha, Jerry, Dick and the Batscha. Part Two Batscha, then asked Wolf to explain how he came to hire each of the actors. He also asked them what they liked about their characters and what they liked about filming in NYC. As I said, Beth took excellent notes on this and the Q&A so I won t go into details. I will say they were very expository, descriptive and emotive in their responses. And funny as hell. Christopher is hysterical. They all play off each other very well. You could see that they respected and genuinely like each other. I did think that Christopher was pretty nervous. He played with his hands a lot, flexing them, and did a few things that indicated he was trying to relax. After a while, with the laughter he looked a lot less nervous and in groove with the panel. Frankly, I don t blame any of them for being nervous. I think it must be nerve racking to be put on a stage with bright lights, not performing, but just being you and answering intricate questions about your work and motivations for the portrayals we see week to week. TNFW[TM] asked a question as did her companion who seemed a bit freaky to me. Lots of questions and nifty answers, which Beth will post tonight. She s teaching all day and won t get home until later. I do remember watching Mariska and Chris often confer and laugh trying to come up with suitable answers..ie trying to answer Leener s question. Joann asked a good one as well and let Jerry know how much she admired his work. Jerry seemed to appreciate her words. Both Chris and Jerry agreed and were interested in seeing Wolf explore the partnership that Stabler and Briscoe shared [which was part of Joann's question.] Somewhere along the line, Mariska was answering a question and she stopped to ask whether Baby Killers has aired yet. No one seemed like they were going to answer .so I did. LOL which apparently Mariska and Christopher got a kick out of it. Christopher was the main instigator for joking around. Some of it was quite funny simply because of the facial expressions he had when he said things. He did blush a few times in reference to things that people are not allowed to say and do on TV and Wolf remarked Chris had done them. LMAO Around 9pm, the seminar ended. The actors stayed behind chatting so the group made their way to where Christopher was standing on stage. Apparently, some of our group was a bit eager and left their bags behind. Luckily, Theresa and Dana stayed with their bags. I was walking behind Joann in the row when I looked up and saw Christopher looking at me. He started smiling, waving hi and said you came. So yay! He remembered me, which I am kind of happy about considering the man says he can t remember what he had for breakfast. Joann, Beth and I were standing on the stairs watching people mill around him. It was kind of funny because he was trying to make his way to over where we were standing but he kept getting stopped. One point, he gave us a well I m trapped look. He was signing autographs. Finally, Christopher made it over to me. He greeted me, gave me a big hug and kissed me hello. I realized I had left my lipstick on him but he was like don't worry about it. Okay, fine by me. Never mind, that with the moving crowd.. I am now standing next to his wife. We had a brief exchange since other people came over to say hello. He was taken a bit back when he realized Nadine had traveled from Ottawa. He met andsigned a magazine for Carla. Said hello to Christina. Oh, and it was funny because he looked at Beth and then realizing he knew her gave a big hug and hello. While he was doing that, I had an exchange with Sherman who wondered how we knew he was doing the seminar. I told her on the website. We really are better than the CIA. When he was asked for a picture, he was all for it but the guards said not in the theater. So Chris said let s go outside. Heading up the staircase to the hallway, he began a round of pics with us. I was the last one and I m hoping one of the flashes I saw going off actually took a nice pic of us. I happen to know Nadine faltered and ended up taking pics of the pants. Wacky wench! I hope it did come out. Also, at that point a guard showed up trying to block the picture taking. Lucky for us, Chris ignored them. Hee hee. I did thank him for being so sweet. He said bye and made his way back down the stairs. I wanted to say hi to Mariska but she looked a bit mobbed so instead I ran to the bathroom with the rest of the group. So we re in there laughing and commenting, when someone I think it was Carla said maybe we should speak lower since Chris was in the bathroom next door. Ooops. <bg> When I left the bathroom, I came out in time to see Chris wearing an overcoat, trying to take a picture with Nadine as a guard stood in front blocking them from the camera. Hysterically enough, Chris was motioning to keep taking pictures as the guard kept blocking. He then started jumping up with Nadine so someone could maybe take a headshot. It was really hysterical to watch. You know that man just makes himself lovable. I watched it all thinking he was a total sweetheart and that the guards must hate us. I did tell him to visit the forum. He started chuckling over that. Well, hey couldn t hurt to mention it. We went upstairs and they re all waiting for their respective cars. Chris is still there hanging out so he posed for pictures with Elisa and Beth. I would have asked for another one [since that one would most likely not have a guard blocking] but his car had arrived. Besides, he had really gone all out for us already. We went outside and he was in the car with his wife. We re milling about figuring where we are going to go now when Christopher looks out the car and starts waving bye. Gotta love the man. At this point, some of the group started a bowing kind of thing, which I found funny to watch them do especially since Sherman started laughing. Chris just got a silly grin and then they drove off. I declared it a successful meet, did a little happy dance and then we all headed to a diner to get food |
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