I attended yesterday's Vampire Weekend event at the Paley Center for Media. I only attended the panel segment moderated by Ken Tucker of our friends at EW and was unable to stay for the trivia segment. Here is just a snapshot of the event and hopefully they will show the video of the event soon. The panel consisted of Chelsea Doyle, Freelance writer, Starplus.com; our Jim Pierson; Andi Teran, Contributing Writer, Vanity Fair.com (Twilight Saga); Sammy Buck, Blogger, tvland.com; Angel Cohn, Senior Editor, Television Without Pity (True Blood); Alan Kistler, Comic Book Historian/Writer (Vampire Diaries, Forever Knight.
Negatives: the panel started late. It was suppose to begin at 2:30pm and started something like 2:48pm and it was not because of the typical late arriving New Yorkers (jk). This sold out auditorium was there eagerly awaiting the panel to arrive;
because it started late the moderator did not allow any questions from the audience!!! That was promised in the beginning of the panel introduction; when the trivia segment started the panel just disappeared and only Sammy Buck stayed.
Perhaps this is why the Paley employees encouraged us to complete the event review survey prior to the show starting which was kind of unprofessional;
during the panel discussion often the guests would continue conversations between the two debating a topic while another guest was trying to speak;
No photography anywhere was permitted-I wanted to take pics of Marie etc...the DS at Twilight huge banner inside the lobby;the employees were watching everyone like hawks;
the guests disappeared after they left the stage so there was no opportunity to speak to them outside of the room;
Positives:
Marie Wallace made a surprise appearance! She was introduced to the crowd near the end of the segment and the crowd gave her a nice ovation. She stood up from the 1st row and waived to the crowd.
There was a nice applause from the crowd when JP announced that there was going to be a new Dark Shadows movie that was being filmed next year with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and will be released sometime in 2011 (I was kind of surprised that many of the fans in attendance did not know about the movie);
When it was Jim Pierson's turn to speak they shows brief DS clips 1st starting with Marie Wallace being bitten by Barnabas( unfortunately many of the crowd started laughing and that was when Jim yelled out [people this was filmed live on tape])
a clip of Barnabas and Josette holding the music box, a clip from the destruction of Collinwood sequence and Barnabas at the Old House looking out the window longing for his Josette;
The highlight of the panel was Jim Pierson. He brought his A game to the panel and he was by far the best speaker. Jim was not bothered by the 1000 things on his mind when he is at a Fest and was not distracted at all. JP defended Dark Shadows with great passion and his intellect reminding the panel that Barnabas and DS lead the path for the current crop of Vampires. JP spoke the most out of the group.
Some topics that I could remember as things went by real fast was the absence of coffins in the modern vampire shows and how disappointing that was; the majority of the topics were how each of the shows differed from each other; the role of a normal woman falling in love with a vampire-if you check out paleycenter at twitter they posted some of the discussions I can't remember at the moment;
the 1st 100 people in the audience received a gift bag consisting of:
2010 Dark Shadows Calendar
one set of white vampire fangs
11-10-09 issue of EW featuring Team Twilight on front cover
HBO promo Tru Blood Positive Blood Orange Bottle 14 fl. oz on bottle "Enliven yourself with this uniquely carbonated, slightly tart, lightly sweet blood orange drink"
The Complete First Season on DVD TrueBlood
I also liked how the auditorium was set up by the geography of the shows ie... I sat in the "Collinsport" section-I wanted to take that flag jk
Twilight fans were heavily represented but everyone was very respective of each other shows and finally it seemd from speaking to others in the audience that fans of the new shows are now learning that there is a Dark Shadows that preceded their shows.
