Liveblogging the Xena Convention

Well, seriously, do you think when my parents paid to send me to journalism school they hoped one day I'd consider it the pinnacle of my professional life to be covering the  Xena convention?

I am truly very shallow. Just as Gina has always suspected.

Right now I'm watching a hysterical fan video called Xena and the Soul Sucker of Japa, that ues footage from the show, dubbed in fake Japanese, with English subtitles, this thing is freaking hysterical. Between each seen they play the Law and Order "duh duh" music. We just finished up watching an audience Q&A with Adrienne Wilkinson, who played Livia/Eve on XWP.

Steve Sears just came onstage... says he knows everyone wants to talk about Xena, so he'd just rush through his own life....  he was one of the show's exec producers and main writers.

He's plugging a famine relief effort for Oxfam and that's a good thing so I'll help pimp it now.... Steve is donating a book of his favorite Xena photos to be auctioned off for a Xena fandom Oxfam fundraiser in the UK. "There is not a fandom on the planet that can match the generosity of our Xena fans."

He's now daring the fans to come up with some trivia he knows but we don't.... To challenge him to tell them something he knows about an episode that the fandom doesn't know. Started out with a sort of dud, the original title of "Lost Mariner" was "Cecrops the Sailor" (demonstrating I have NO idea how "Cecrops" is actually spelled).

"Dreamworker" was just a "what if" he proposed to Rob Tapert and that's how he got hired. Great episode ultimately, I'm glad they made it.

"Hooves and Harlots" originally sucked... and Steve had to rewrite the entire script from scratch. He wouldn't tell us  the original title of "Hooves and Harlots" because there are children present.

"When in Rome." Favorite line: "Why do they call you Xena? Because Ceasar was taken."

"Between the Lines." He believed Gabrielle would be the light of the world, ruling through compassion. But, he said, the peacemakers are always killed. They need to be protected.  Gabrielle and Xena will always be together through all times, he said. They are soulmates.

I missed something he was saying about the Ceasar arc, because the soulmates thing made me all gooey inside for a few minutes. But he said something feminsty that got everyone cheering.... he said something to the effect that the people who object to strong women in history are usually the same kind of asshole men who wrote history.

I sure like this guy. No wonder XWP rocked my world the way it did.

He said Xena always did what she did not for fame, nor in his view, to redeem herself - she knew she could never redeem all her evil acts, so she was doing only what was coming from her heart, which was good. And this was an important theme in his scripts.

"The Greater Good."  He'd been told Robert Trebor (Salmoneus) can be difficult at times. Sometimes he "questions the material."  He said that Trebor just tries to search for the levels in his character. Trebor i s the one who came up with the line "Proud warrioress."

"The Price." Steve's father was in Special Forces in Viet Nam.... think Apocalypse Now. Yet this is the man who tucked him in at night, loved him, supported his career choice, and yet... he was paid to kill people. When he wrote "The Price," he tried to revisit who his father was, what he did... he wrote it based on a couple of actual historical accounts of battles during the Zulu Wars. "Xena was my father. Gabrielle was me." He said he'd never told anyone that before.

A fan asked about the creation of the character of Gabrielle.  "Very early on... I felt there was so much richness in this particular character. The way I always looked at it was this. In a lot of ways... (she) was the true hero of the series." Xena made a decision to turn from evil, darkness into the light.

Gabrielle chose to go from the light into the dark. She had a destiny, and she wanted to follow this person. She made the choice to go from light into the darkness, and that's a hero to me.

"You have to have the right actress." None of the writers knew what the actresses were like. He said when Renee came in for the final reading ... the other actress was "cuter," and Renee was the better actor. A lot of people in the studio did not want Renee. "This had to be an actress, not a fixture." And n0t, he said, just a sidekick either.

"We know Renee can be chatty, give her the chatty superficial crap."  They made Xena Clint Eastwood.

"However... the more we kept giving them, the more they made out of it." They realized they had real actresses, so you give them more. "Then when you get the dailies you just sit back and go wow, we're brilliant." He called it lightning in a bottle.

"I'm a witer, and I have to say, without Lucy and Renee in those roles?" And he shook his head.

"Then again, they couldn't have read the phone book, either."

He has not watched episodes filmed after he left. That really surprised me. He felt that once a character has answered their raison d'etre, what's left? I believe he left at the end of S4, but I need to check on that. I had a hard time with the show after S4 myself. Interesting.

"Day in the Life." He didn't write it, but.... RJ Stewart wanted to write a script about all the things you don't see, like the heroes taking a crap.  Or cooking. Or domestic things. "The entire end sequence with the giant was from another episode." That's a great episode, that and "Been There, Done That" are two of the funniest episodes. (I think so, too!)

The show was a combination of drama and comedy.... a fan asked if that was intended from the beginning. Steve said he always wrote both drama and comedy. He said there was a flaw that arose in the series as it was being made. After a while, especially during the Rift arc.... there was so much pain the characters had. It went beyond drama to melodrama.

You needed something light, but you couldn't connect them, the comedic and dramatic. So the two became divorced. Comedio episodes were comedy, and drama was D R A M A. He called it "drastic," and said they almost had two audiences. "On most series, that's death."

Someone asked if he would have killed ("terminated") Xena at the end of the series. He says he had his own idea for how the series should end. Everyone did, he said. What he was trying to lead up to was related to the Battle of Corinth where humans threw off the yoke of the gods (in Xena's past). He thought history would repeat itself. A battle for the light of the world... the leader of the world would be led by Gabrielle, because of WHO she was, not her expertise. Compared to LOTR, Middle Earth. At the end Xena would die, Gabrielle would be on her throne with a ghost of Xena with her hand on her. That Xena would die because she recognized Gabrielle, the little girl she picked up in the village, was the hope of the world, and she'd have died to protect her. "I'd have killed her off, but for completely different reasons."

What other historical figure would he have put Xena up against? "He's going to be out of office soon." Much laughter. He then also answered, "Hitler." He had a plan for a show involving the D-Day invasion. (For those who don't watch the show, they did film several episodes in other time periods.) He ultimately felt it wasn't possible to do a Hitler arc on this show for a variety of reasons.  "What if she'd have met Hitler? She'd have kicked his ass."

He said he'd just talked to Hudson Leick (Callisto) and she's doing movies and is very happy. He said he'd not have had Callisto become an angel at the end of the series. YEAH!

He said he'd wanted to do a Callisto story (he never wrote one).... they kept tryng to figure out how to bring Callisto back. Callisto decided to trade in her godhood to Kronos, god of time, to be sent to a different time. Xena worries Callisto will take her evil to another time, and so she chases them. They end up in modern LA, fighting and speaking ancient Greek. And a man selling flowers recognizes her... says, "Xena?" It's Cecrops (who was immortal). He translates for Xena and helps her defeat Callisto.

I'd have loved that. Sigh.

Zoe Bell is supposed to be on now, no idea if she's late or he's running over... I see no one givng him the evil eye. She was Lucy Lawless' stunt double, and also doubled for Una Thurman in Kill Bill.

He's a real history buff. There is a Steven W. Sears who is a true historian, he gets a lot of his mail.

He doesn't watch network TV, because he doesn't like commercials running across the bottom of the screen. He waits for the DVDs, or watches screeners if he gets them. He mostly watches movies - but he watches Battlestar Galactica. YAY - best show on TV, IMO. ! Likes Entourage, which I've never seen. Used to watch Nip/Tuck. Likes Dexter, Rome, Deadwood. "I'm pissed off at Dexter. Know why? I SHOULD BE WRITING THAT!"

Someone asksed the subtext question. Sigh. I'm tempted to leave the room, this topic drives me nuts. "When we first started the series.... this series could so easily have been Xena and her sidekick."

Lots of people thought that's what this series would be about. Sidekicks exist when you underwrite them and don't care about them. Not only Steve but the other writers loved Gabrielle. But the biggest thing, he said, was the chemistry between Lucy and Renee, which came across. In their mind, it wasn't the series about Xena, but the series was really about THEM.

Sometime in the second season, they realized there was no way to divorce those characters, to tear them apart. Both characters had to stay. The relationship between the two of them runs the gamut. Everyone can do what they want with that, with the subtext.

So, what about YOU, Steve? He says not wanting to put labels on it is a cop out. YES.

He said the subtext was deliberate, and the characters were INSEPERABLE, willing to die for you, to change their entire life for you, it's love. At a certain point, people wanted a definitive answer, which they didn't give, because they didn't have to. Let people think what they wanted. (Still a cop out, IMO.)

He said you could definitefly support a friendship or more than a friendship, either way.

He said on the other hand, he's a big supporter of equality for everyone. "It's in the Constitution."

"When I look at it through my eye, to me there's no doubt (they are in a sexual relationship)..... However, that's because that's my mindset."

"Did I write the characters that way? No.... So to this day.... it's still ambiguous." 

He just got the two minute warning ..... he was telling the story about some actor from Vanished, which starred Gale Harold, who gave me my cold. Wow, it's a small world.

Sort of.

Now he's tellling a story about when he was a writer on the A Team. Okay, I'd have probably not brought that up. I'm just saying.  It's a cautionary tale, he said, about not pissing off writers.

See ya!

Comments

Sears worked with John Allen Nelson on "Sheena". Nelson later played Senator Collins on "Vanished."

[Gina]

You're using MY laptop, yes? This means it has been infected with the fangirl virus. Now I'll HAVE to let you buy it. I'm on to your nefarious scheme.

[Christie]

It is totally covered with fangirl virus, probably the minute you try to use it again, you'll suddenly start stalking Lucy Lawless and Gale Harold. It'll be ugly.

You should really just GIVE me the laptop.

[tgflux]

"When in Rome." Favorite line: "Why do they call you Xena? Because Ceasar was taken."

Sorry to nit-pick (you or Steve?), but the line starts "Why do they call you the Warrior Princess?"

Appreciate your Con write-up (next best thing---by a LONG shot---to being there ;-/)

[Flo]

How could he have gotten that wrong?! Why do they call you Xena? Uh, cause thats what my mother named me... ^_^