Fanfest 2010

by Parsley on Mon, 2010/07/12 - 8:34am Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Event Review: Fan Fest 2010 Review (24-25/04/10)
3 months ago the London Film Museum played host to an ambitious array of Bond girls, Bond villains, film technicians and even James Bond himself (two actually: George Lazenby and Sir Roger Moore). I went to see what it was like and to meet my heroine Madeleine Smith…

It is an incredible act of synchronicity when someone wants you to go exactly where you want to go anyway, but that’s what happened when Shadowlocked.com (sci-fi website) invited me to check out Fan Fest 2010, a spy and sci-fi event being held for the first time at The London Film Museum, in County Hall on the South Bank of the Thames.

I had always been a big fan of the Museum of the Moving Image at the National Film Theatre and I used to take overseas visitors there to bring them up to speed with film and TV culture in an enjoyable way. The London Film Museum is a similar pandora’s box of iconic film and TV images, but it’s less methodically historical.

County Hall, the home of the Museum, is an old fashioned council building that was formerly the home to the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone, before it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher, only to resurface as the Greater London Assembly in a new building further down the Thames. As such it is full of wooden panelled doors and rooms, and is great fun for adults and kids to explore, particularly now those rooms have been made into shrines for various film and TV icons. Visitors face the surreal spectacle of Star Wars Imperial Storm Troopers standing guard outside rooms, and the occasional dalek following them down a corridor. It’s a bit like visiting the Beatles house in the film ‘Yellow Submarine’ where strange things seem to be going on in side rooms, or the sequence at the end of ‘2001:A Space Odyssey’ where space travel pods sit incongruously in hotel rooms.

Fan Fest 2010 brought together an enormous array of actors, actresses and film technicians in this amazing setting to talk to fans and answer their questions in the large debating room, or to enjoy face to face meetings in a long collection of adjoining rooms on the other side of the building, with the occasional signed photograph available at £15 a time. There were also stalls selling rare Bond toys amongst other film and TV memorabilia, and a bargain book table from publishers Reynolds&Hearn. A Corgi James Bond Car in its original box apparently goes for £220-£280.

Having got past the stalls, the first thing I did was bump into legendary effects man Brian Johnson, sitting in the autographs area, and I duly interviewed him (see http://bit.ly/dBEQYU). Next I was wandering ‘rabbit in headlights’-like past an array of Bond girls and seeing my fave Madeleine Smith - in the flesh! - talking to the excellent Edward de Souza, while Richard Kiel (‘Jaws’) smiled, without metallic teeth, in the distance. By this stage it was easy to think I was still in bed dreaming.

Most of the stars and film professionals turned out to be extremely nice, enjoying the longevity of their fame, and occasionally creating a cottage industry of photo opportunities and nostalgic reminiscing. My Shadowlocked colleague Phil Rackley described the Bond girl experience for Shadowlocked (http://bit.ly/cyUpri). I would only add: eat your heart out internet Madeleine Smith fans! I stood with my arm around her in person, grinning like a Cheshire cat for a photo.

At his Q&A session, George Lazenby told how Bruce Lee chose him to be in his ill-fated final film after seeing him waiting for a bus because he was broke.

The day climaxed with Sir Roger Moore accepting an award on behalf of Christopher Lee. He was charming and funny, and many of the Bond girls had come to the main hall to hear him speak. For me he will always be The Saint, filmed in Borehamwood, and he gave us his Borehamwood memories of the show. These included reversing film of Borehamwood’s main road so that people could appear to be driving on the right, and also being forced to act in the rain. They would continue to film provided the rain didn’t show on his suit that he wasn’t in the exotic location he was supposed to be in!

On the Sunday I was back for more. It was as bewildering as Saturday, and a bizarrely surreal spectacle as Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, Madeleine Smith and Britt Ekland all sat within one gaze. It would normally have taken a lottery win to arrange such a vast and amazing collection of heroines.

George Lazenby was there too, but he told me he was too busy to talk to me as he had to autograph some photos. So he added not giving an interview to me to his extensive list of professional mistakes, that included turning down the role of James Bond in a further film for £1 million, and a shooting incident recounted by Brian Johnson in his Q&A session.

Instead I chatted to the excellent Jenny Hanley, also a Bond girl, but more famous to men of my age for starring in ITV’s ‘Magpie’, their street-wise answer to ‘Blue Peter’. Hanley played her part in the breaking down of male stereotypes by doing those previously male things, such as skydiving. She was candid about the genesis of this, saying that the only way for Magpie to get an edge on Blue Peter was for its female presenter to carry out the stunt that the male presenter on Blue Peter had done.

We remembered Mick Robertson’s amazing frizzy hair, and a famous April Fool’s Day scam about tablets of dehydrated water that campers could use if they were thirsty. As I’m in a band that perform the ‘Magpie’ theme I asked her what she thought of when she heard it. She explained that for her it meant ‘run!’ as if it started and she wasn’t on the studio floor she would have to run to be on screen at the right time!

Madeleine Smith gave a Q&A session in the main hall where I invited her to name who she would single out as comedy geniuses amongst the many she had worked with. She particularly mentioned Arthur Lowe as having natural ability, and Ronnie Barker as performer and scriptwriter.

Overall it was an exhausting, exciting and thoroughly enjoyable weekend at Fanfest 2010, and we can only hope that the London Film Museum will see fit to continue the idea or something similar next year.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]