James Marsters

My Three Conversations with James Marsters

I’m back from the Canadian National Expo in Toronto where I had a VIP pass to see James Marsters and access to check out the rest of the convention. I thought I’d share with you my three conversations with James Marsters during the autograph sessions at this event.

As a VIP ticket holder, I got to approach James three times for an autograph. I probably have his autograph a dozen times by now and really don’t care if he signs anything for me or not. The main reason fans love the autograph sessions is that it gives us each 20-30 seconds of James undivided attention where we can have a one on one conversation. For the most part I will be paraphrasing as I am going from memory, but specific words or phrases that I remember clearly will be in quotes.

Friday Night

I told James that I was very happy that I would be able to see him again on my tv screen and that I hoped his stint on Smallville would be 10 episodes instead of only six. James leaned in close to me and said "it’s 10" I know the reports say 6-10, but it will be 10. He went on to say that there’s even talk of bringing him back as a totally different character the following season.

I also talked to him about a Spike Movie. I reiterated to him that Joss Whedon had approached Tim Minear to write and direct. [Note: James learned about Tim Minear earlier that day during the Q&A]. James said he thought Tim would do a good job and mentioned Tim being ruthless in his writing, which James liked. I mentioned reading that Joss was putting together a writing team and that I thought Jane Espenson would be a good compliment to Tim - she would be the light to his dark. James agreed and added that "Doug Petrie" and "Steven DeKnight" would also be good for the job.

James also said he was surprised originally when Joss told him that he (Joss) was going to write/direct because Joss wrote/directed so little of Spike on Buffy. James said that Spike wasn’t a character that Joss really got or could relate to very well. In fact, when asked during a Q&A what it was like to be directed by Joss, James said he couldn’t honestly tell us much since he was rarely ever there providing direction to James as Spike.

I mentioned some of the things Support Spike has been doing to push for a Spike movie. James said he is aware the constant rubblings about a Spike movie and that if it does happen it will be a credit to the fans efforts because they’re the ones making it happen.

Saturday Afternoon

Today is the first day we were allowed to hand over gifts to James in the autograph line. I had a birthday card from the Whedonverse Multimedia Project to inform him of all the great things all of you fans have been doing to support the ’verse. It was a handmade card using scrapbooking material and incorporated a smaller version of the same drawing we gave him last time in Houston.

He seemed genuinely touched when he looked at the front of his birthday card. He opened it and read the whole thing. On the inside left it read: "We wish you all the best in you life, love and career! Happy Birthday!" and on the inside right it contained details of how many DVDs the Project has donated and how many individual fans have donated on their own.

James got a HUGE smile on his face and then told me something that I wasn’t expecting at all: "You know I brag about this project to stars of other shows!" he said exuberantly. He said, they’re like wow, your fans do that for you? He laughs. I tell him we’ve donated to 10 libraries across the United States and Canada. He said, and "you donated to Modesto!" I said, yes we did. Modesto got 3 copies of Buffy seasons 1-7, 2 copies of Angel seasons 1-5, and we threw in a copy of Firefly just because we could. He laughed again. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I floated away.

Sunday Afternoon

On the last day, I wasn’t sure what to ask to James and we wouldn’t have as much time to chat since there was a much longer line for autographs today than there were the two previous days and I was asked not to take up too much time. I hadn’t heard any talk about the MacBeth project all weekend, so I asked him about it. He said he was working on getting the money to buy some camera lenses. He was planning on filming it digitally. He mentioned something about digital making things look "flat" compared to film. I asked, didn’t Amber Benson do Chance digitally. He said yes and that she was very smart about the set in terms of making all the colors really bright because digital doesn’t pick up color very well. He was going digital because it was a lot cheaper. The money he thought he had fell through and he’s going to make the movie with 6 million dollars instead of 40 million, but he’s still working on it. I said keep trying. He said I will.

I may add more to this report as I remember more details. If you’re looking for a more complete convention report with his Q&A’s and such, I’ll be searching the ’Net for reports and as soon as I get permission to repost and/or link to them I’ll post those over on the convention reports section of the Whedonverse forum.