Well, it has come and gone and I’m now sitting at home here in Los Angeles reflecting back on an amazing 2008 Comic Con in San Diego. Comic Con has become something of a holy pilgramage for those belonging to the geek nation. It is Mecca, Jerusalem and Minas Tirith all rolled into one for a proverbial orgy of comics, video games, TV and most importantly (to me) movie culture. And at this Orgy, the spunk is flying!
Something you should know about me when it comes to events like Comic Con that is unlike just about every other movie website out there. I don’t go to “cover” the convention. “Covering” is what news sites do, and as I’ve said a million times, The Movie Blog is NOT a news site… this is a blog. As such, I’m not a reporter… I’m a blogger. I don’t report the news… as a blogger, my job is to communicate my experiences, my opinions, my thoughts and my points of view. Yes, that often means you get all the news, because that’s what I’m giving my opinion on… but there is still a fundamental philosophical difference.
With that in mind… when at an event like Comic Con, my idea of a good time isn’t sitting in line for 3 hours, and then just sitting on my ass in an auditorium for several more hours listening to panels, nor is it to go into a room with 40 journalists and sit at “round tables” as actors and filmmakers all give the exact same quotes. How is that a good use of my time? I can just read what was SAID at the panels on 1000 websites that all say the exact same thing… I can just read what was SAID at the round table interviews that 100 other sites repeat verbatum. I want to EXPERIENCE Comic Con, and you can’t do that while spending most of your time sitting in a chair.
So I made a decision… I wasn’t going to go to any movie panels or do any round table interviews at all. I turned down interviews for Watchmen, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, The Day The Earth Stood Still… yadda yadda yadda… because round table interviews are useless unless you’re a news site… just reporting the exact same thing everyone else is reporting.
I wanted to EXPERIENCE Comic Con… that meant parties, the floor, screenings and meeting people that I was interested in. Sharing lots of pictures and putting up lots of video (although we didn’t put up as much video as we should have).
You see, most other sites just wanted to give you the INFORMATION of Comic Con. Movie Star “A” said this. Movie producer “B” said that. We wanted to give you guys a taste of what it’s like to actually be there. We wanted to communicate a bit of the EXPERIENCE of Comic Con… and I think we did an “ok” job at it. Many things we could have done better… but overall you guys seemed to like the stuff we put up, and I hope on some level it made you feel like you were there.
WEDNESDAY
Doug, Ann and myself arrived in San Diego, checked into our hotel and relaxed for a few hours before Doug and I headed down to the Convention Center to pick up our Press Passes. I was AMAZED at how many people were already there. Officially the Con didn’t start until the next day, but there had to be 50,000+ people there outside already. Doug and I had to stand in line for over 2 hours just to pick up our Press Passes that we were already pre-resistered for. INSANE! They have to improve this for next year.
Once we finally got the passes we went in to see the “special preview night”… which was basically just walking around and seeing the floor. And let me tell you, the floor was IMPRESSIVE! So much to see, so many sights and sounds (and smells of unbathed fanboys as well). The floor was HUGE!!!! It took me 20 minutes just to walk from one end to the other… granted much of that time was due to the human traffic… but it’s still bloody massive. I couldn’t get over the sheer size of the floor. Insane!
Later Wednesday night we took in our first screening of the Con which was Tropic Thunder. The theater was packed out. I wasn’t sure how good the film would be… honestly I thought it would suck and that Robert Downey Jr. would be the only good thing in it. Thankfully I was wrong and the movie ended up being HILARIOUS! You can see my review of the film here.
THURSDAY
Thursday was really all about “The Masters of the Web” panel. I got to sit on the panel with guys like Robert Sanchez (IESB); Garth Franklin (Dark Horizons); Mike Sampson (Joblo); Erik Davis (Cinematical); Brad Miska (Bloody Disgusting); Eric “Quint” Vespe (AICN); Devin Faraci aka The Internet (Chud); Paulington J. Christensen III (Movieweb) and Kellvin Chavez (Latino Review).
Honestly I didn’t think 50 people would show up for it… but by the time we started the panel the room was packed over capacity with people crammed in standing along the walls and a ton of people had to be turned away. It was so much fun. You can see some video from the panel here.
Later in the evening we went and checked out the party put on by G4 Tech TV. The club was nice… but at 10pm they closed the open bar. LAME!!! All of us cheap ass web guys split after that. The funniest moment of the night however (and I don’t think he’ll mind me sharing this) came at about 1am. After leaving the lame G4 party, I was exhausted from the long day and just decided to go back to the hotel to relax. At 1am my phone buzzes with a text message… it was from an already drunk Brian Taylor (one of the Directors of Crank, Crank 2, Game) saying “Dude, we’re fucking shit up over at the Ivy party. Get over here douche bag”. Sadly I was already in bed and didn’t participate in “fucking shit up” that night. :P
FRIDAY
Friday was great… ate at several fantastic restaurants (actually, we ate at great restaurants all week!), did a really fun interview with the girls from “Bitch Slap” (you can see the video here), walked more of the floor and then headed to a midnight screening of “Midnight Meat Train”. The screening was totally sold out within hours of the passes becoming available over a week ago… so it was supposed to be a full house. But the problem was, a lot of people who had passes were exhausted after a full long day of Comic Conning… and the screening was at midnight… so some of the people didn’t show up for it. Now this part is great… when most of us think of Studio Execs, we think of fat lazy bastards who are so out of touch with reality they think Comic Con is a funny criminal. But not Robert Burke, the Senior Vice President over at Lakeshore Entertainment (the production studio behind Midnight Meat Train) decided he wanted people to see this movie… so he PERSONALLY went out into the streets and started handing out free passes to people to come into the theater and watch the movie. I saw him out there and was like “dude… what are you doing out here?”, and he replied “not all the seats are full… why waste them?” That was cool… seeing an exec down to earth enough to personally hit the streets and hand passes out to average folks.
SATURDAY
This is where everything just sort of becomes a blur. Saturday same and went so fast. Once again we hit the Comic Con floor, met people, chatted, ate great food… but really the whole day was about the annual Masters of the Web party later that night on the roof of the Hard Rock Hotel. Over 500 people turned up including TONS of Hollywood A list names. It was a blast. It was so popular, that when I arrived (one of the Masters of the Web) me and my group (Doug, Ann and Kat) couldn’t get in! Thank goodness Robert Burke (yeah, same guy) personally came down to get us escorted in. Rob and Lakeshore were the main sponsors of the party that the crew over at IESB were responsible for organizing.
There was MUCH drinking (no lame open bar closing at 10pm), much partying, and much showcasing the upcoming “Crank 2” and “Game” movies (which should both be a lot of fun by the way. We had SOOOO much fun. Good times, good times.
SUNDAY
Did NOTHING except sleep in a bit, eat breakfast and drive home.
OVERALL
I had a magnificent time over all. The Con is a bit too crowded though. They need to either find a bigger venue (although I don’t know how that’s possible), increase the price of the tickets to reduce sales, or limit how many tickets they sell, because my one complaint of the event was standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people for hours at a time trying to walk around the floor and seeing people having to stand in line for 4+ hours just to watch a panel. That’s not cool. But I guess if your biggest problem is the size of your success, you must be doing something right!
Comic Con 2009 can’t get here fast enough!
John,
You guys should do a contest where the winner gets a trip to Comic Con with you and Doug. I’m in Atlanta and would love to see this in person one day. I am just a rube though and don’t have the pull to get passes like you all.
If you’ve done this in the past, I apologize as I’m new to the site.
thoughts?
I’m hoping i will go some day to the US to attend an event like this. It’s bigger than everything I can imagine.
Enjoy it!
“no lame open bar closing at 10pm”
You’re right. It was more like 11:30.
But by then I was drunker than any man has any right to be, so it’s probably for the best.
I made the mistake of leaving Thursday morning for the con, so I got caught up in four hours of traffic because of that truck accident on the 5. The party sounds like it was awesome and I regret not making the panel.
I’ve got to agree with you about how crowded it was. One of my friends said they actually reduced the number of tickets sold this year because of how crowded it was last year, but I can’t believe that. If you showed up for a panel two hours in advance, you might make it in. Even on Sunday, I went to the Cartoon Voices II panel right after the Phineas and Ferb panel, and the room had already hit capacity. I made it in after half an hour, but Jesus wept, the lines were ridiculous. Family Guy was a terrible wait as well and there was another in Ballroom 20 where the line stretched down the hall, across the whole balconey and down to the docks.
The convention center is one of the biggest buildings I’ve ever been in and I hate the idea of decreasing the amount of people they let in, but something needs to be done. Last year I could walk right into a panel that was going on if I wanted to sit through that one. This year, you had to wait in line for the room. To say it was frustrating as fuck is the understatement of the year. I’d rather have fun if I’m kept busy like this, not spend most of the week-end stressed out.
Otherwise, it was very nice.
Yeah, it was great and good to see you again (as usual surrounded by multiple hot babes, you dog!). One of the highlights for me was finally meeting Doug – great guy.
The WoC party was great but I was a bit disappointed that the celebs were in a roped off VIP area and I wasn’t able to meet a single one. Didn’t really expect that – thought it would be like last year’s parties.
Oh well… guess I’ll have to work harder this year at climbing from the B-List to the A-List of movie sites. :-)
Vic
On a side note, while I don’t think there is anything wrong with “covering” the event and passing on “information”, I will agree with you that standing in line, sitting and waiting really drains you.
I had much more fun finding this little known comic book called The Black Coat, interviewing and talking about it with the author Ben and then reading it later.
That was probably my more favorite part of the entire thing.
Hey John,
Thanks again for the tip on the press passes, I was able to get there and cover the stuff I wanted to.
Mike
PopCritics.com
Hey Melbye,
Yes… they really did camp out over night in line. CRAZY!
Insane. I heard people slept outside on the pavement just so they could participate in the Heroes and LOST-panels. That’s extra insane, no that’s more than insane, tah’s Comic-Con(damn, that was a bad 300 reference)