Here's one of those questions I said people should send in, though she sent it in before I posted that. Jennifer Luchsinger writes to ask...
I am new to Comic-Con (been there '08, '09, '10). I like to ask questions of the panelists, but after making a total idiot of myself with Kevin Smith in '08 ( just to put it in perspective, he asked me if I was into getting tied up...in front of the crowd in Ballroom 20. Oh, my.) I wish to make my inquiries a bit more specific and relevant to the panelists in which I am interested. (...and to answer KS's question, the answer is "no." :) ) I'm just your basic geeky fangirl who loves comics and creativity, and wants to know more about the people who bring them to life.
Having been a panel moderator for what now amounts to years, can you think of any questions that can be (or should have been) avoided in a panel? How do I word potential questions to the panelists to make them time-efficient? I'd like to ask questions that are things most people (or fans) might like to know, and make them timely and present-relevant. Any ideas? An answer would be gratefully accepted.
Well, you just asked a perfectly good question there, Jennifer. Let me see if I can lay out ten simple rules that will help not just you but anyone who tries to ask a question from the floor, any floor...
Listen to the panel before you ask something. You'd be amazed at the number of people who ask a question and the answer is something that the panelist said forty minutes ago. If you came in late or weren't paying attention, maybe you shouldn't have the floor.
There's a rule most lawyers have in grilling someone on a witness stand: Never ask a question if you don't know how they'll answer. You don't have to follow that rule in asking questions at a panel, either as a moderator or audience member, but there's also nothing wrong with it. A lot of times, I know the person has a great story about eating a cheese sandwich so I ask, "Could you tell that great story about eating cheese sandwiches?" Or maybe, if I'm lucky, I can be more graceful about it and still achieve the same result. This is what most TV talk show hosts do for a living. Johnny Carson would say to a guest, "Someone told me you had a weird experience in a canoe." Roughly translated, that meant: "The Talent Coordinator who did your pre-interview suggested I set you up to tell that canoe story you told them." And don't think Johnny didn't know exactly how the canoe story went before he asked for it. It's fine to ask someone a question for which they might not have a great answer...but it's also not a sin to set them up to tell a good story. Just don't pretend too much that it's spontaneous or you'll look like an audience plant.
The faster you can get to the question, the better.
And if there are multiple folks up there, preface the question by saying if it's to one of them, two of them, all of them, whatever.
Most panelists do not like vague questions like, "What's it like to be so famous?" or "What was it like to work with So-and-so?" There are exceptions to this but usually, a question that includes the phrase, "What was it like...?" is too vague a question. Vague questions usually lead to vague answers, and vague answers aren't usually that interesting.
Here's a way you can be valuable. You've been sitting, listening to the discussion before they get to the part where the audience gets to ask things. Did you notice something missing? Some important area that got skipped over by accident? Someone recently sent me a recording of a two-hour panel discussion with Mel Brooks, Susan Stroman and other folks who were behind staging The Producers on Broadway. For some reason — and I'm sure it wasn't a deliberate snub — they got through the whole thing without mentioning Nathan Lane. If I'd been there and able to ask a question, it would have been about him. And I'll betcha the folks on stage would have been grateful that someone caught their glaring oversight.
In much the same way: Sometimes, you go to a panel with six people on it and only five of them get to speak. So direct a question to that quiet, neglected person.
No one appointed you spokesperson. Sentences should not start with phrases like, "On behalf of everyone here..." and "I know I speak for everyone in the room..." People who say this stuff don't seem to comprehend the difference between an applause-evoking compliment and a question.
On the other hand, ask something on behalf of everyone. I've had people get up at the mike and act like they're having a private conversation with a panelist, discussing some personal matter that would only be of interest to them.
Mainly, remember it's not about you. This is probably the biggest problem and it's the reason a lot of panels don't do Q-and-A with the audience. Too many questioners don't really have a question. They just want to talk about themselves in front of an audience and maybe pretend they have some sort of relationship with the important people on stage. So the rule here is don't talk about your life, your career, your work, how you discovered the panelists' work, etc. It's possible to craft a reasonable question that might require you to allude to such things...but don't.
The Saturday programming schedule for Comic-Con is now up. Some real good stuff on there. I'll be hosting the annual Quick Draw! at 12:30 and then in the same room (6CBF), my comrade Earl Kress and I will be co-hosting the first of two big Cartoon Voice panels that weekend at 1:45. A lot of folks like to get seats for the first and stay over, treating these back-to-back events as a double feature. We have some big surprises planned for both presentations.
Later in the day, I'm hosting a panel with Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil and Paul Levitz discussing the seventies' revamp of Batman. It's called "Taking Back the Knight" and it's at 4 PM in Room 8. Then at 7:30 in Room 4, I'm moderating a tribute to the late and very great Dick Giordano and at 8:30, I hustle back to 6CBF for the world premiere of a new documentary about Stan "the Man" Lee with a panel discussion to follow after.
This year, the convention is spilling out more to nearby hotels. I never thought this would work. There's so much to see and do in that main building that I doubted people would want to leave it and shlep to somewhere else. But they have such tempting program items at some of the off-site locales that it just might get attendees to do that. Anyway, when you check the schedule, you might want to consult a map and see how close some of those venues are. They may be closer than you think.
And I'll mention one more that always amuses me: The Ralphs Market at 101 G Street, which is a 5-10 minute walk from the convention center. (Because of the way the streets are laid out, it's faster to walk there than to drive. Or if you feel your life is meaningless and won't mind it ending, you can take one of those pedal-cabs and have a reckless teenager haul you there.) The market is open 24 hours and in the evening, you can find an awful lot of conventioneers roaming its aisles, stocking up on food and supplies. One year, I actually ran into an editor there and picked up a new assignment along with a bag of Baked Ruffles and some luncheon meat.
Hey, I'll be answering questions here about the con for the next ten or eleven days. Send in anything you'd like to see discussed. We're here to help.
Penn & Teller are performing in London this week. Here's a long profile of them in a London newspaper.
Penn, by the way, has a new series of ranting podcasts up on the web. I used to like listening to the guy but some of these...well, watch a few and see what you think. It's starting to feel to me like his whole life is like his act where he does all the talking and never has to listen. I started writing but haven't completed a post here about how I think their Showtime series is really good some weeks, really awful in others, and the difference isn't at all because of when I think they're right.
He and Teller, by the way, are doing a one-hour presentation/talk at the Comic-Con on Thursday evening, July 22.
This is the opening for the 1966 cartoon show, Super 6, which is largely forgotten, though it lasted several years on NBC's Saturday morning schedule. That's Gary Lewis and the Playboys, who are also largely forgotten, singing the theme song. It was the first show the DePatie-Freleng studio produced for Saturday morn and it was written and animated by a number of refugees from the old Warner Brothers cartoon studio. I haven't seen one in years but I remember them as being clever cartoons about unclever, uninteresting characters...with one exception. The main part of the show was these silly super-heroes but there was also a strange cartoon each week about The Brothers Matzoriley. The Brothers Matzoriley was/were a three-headed person with multi-ethnic heads. Daws Butler and Paul Frees generally did their voices but every so often, one head was Pat Harrington. One of the heads was a bad Chinese stereotype...and I guess that explains why you don't see those cartoons around these days. Here's the opening...
July 9, 2010
