'Beth and I were interviewed by a journalist named Trix at Gatecon. Her article was published in the VPRO Guide. Gerda on rdanderson.com posted these scans, and generously gave me permission to post them here. Trix herself translated the article, which follows.
Here come the original pages from the article
page 2
page 3
Here is Trix's Translation (slightly edited, with apologies, to conform to MOL guidelines):
| QUOTE |
GATE TO THE STARS
-Trix Broekmans
The Gatecon in Vancouver is the biggest fan convention of North-America. Fans of the television series Stargate SG1 gather here to meet their heroes. And each other.
Twenty years ago the American actor Richard Dean Anderson saved the life of Orlane Ros from Les Arcs, France. His name was MacGyver then, in the tv-series of the same name that ran between 1985 and 1992. Orlane: ‘I was fourteen when my favorite aunt died. That got me so depressed that I want to end my life. And then I saw MacGyver on television. MacGyver never gives up, always has a positive attitude. That lifted my spirits so high that I didn’t want to die anymore. So I owe my life to him and that’s what I want to tell him personally.’
And that’s why she has traveled to Vancouver, where Richard Dean Anderson is the central guest of Gatecon, the biggest fan convention of North-America, for which fans from all over the world have come to this city on the Canadian West-Coast. The festivities go on for four days and are centered around the science fiction series Stargate SG1. There is a bus tour along filming occasions, panels with actors from the show, a costume parade, autograph sessions, workshops, meetings with stars and most of all: meetings of the fans with each other.
Last year the show was canceled, after ten years, which was greatly regretted by the fans, but thankfully there is Gatecon, where they can meet their heroes. The biggest hero is Anderson, who, five years after MacGyver took the part of Air Force Colonel Jack O’Neill, who leads his team of three through the Stargate to travel to other planets and fights against the most horrific enemy of all times, the Goa’uld.
The buzz of excitement travels is almost touchable in the ballrooms, the conference rooms and the corridors of the Sheraton Wall Center: He is here. Anderson is known for his fierce aversion to publicity, which he avoids like the plague. He lives like a recluse, far from the spotlights. Only once in a while he makes an exception in favour of the charities he supports. One is the Sea Shepherds Conservation Society, that among other things battles against illegal whaling and the slaughtering of seals. Every day Anderson is on stage for an hour in the big ballroom downstairs and next to that he does daily photoshoots and autograph sessions with fans.
He’s so adorable
Every photo and every autograph brings money in the till of the Sea Shepherds. Not all fans are lucky enough to get a photo taken or an autograph signed: there’s a couple of hundred VIP-tickets – sold out within the minute in January – and there’s been a lottery that has made a couple of hundred winners very happy. Those lucky bastards will have a photo moment with RDA, or get his autograph. Some get both.
Orlane Ros is not among them, but she keeps hoping for an encounter, no matter how brief. ‘Juste une minute’, she repeats over and over again, every day. She’s often to be found at the door behind which RDA is at work. When the door opens, Orlane catches a glimpse of him. He is standing in front of a camera, puts his arm around the shoulder of a fan, Flásh goes the flash and then the next fan is on. In front of the door there’s a long line of waiting fans. Anna from Finland, nineteen years old and an RDA-fan since her fifth, says: ‘My turn is on Sunday. By that time you can carry me away.’
Through the other door step the lucky ones who only just a little while ago had the arm of their hero around them. They look dazed, laugh, wipe away tears.’He’s just só adorable’, says Bekki from Ontario. ‘He said: Hi, I’m Rick.’
With all the attention for Anderson, one would almost forget that at this Gatecon a lot of other actors are also present. It started on Thursday night, at the Meet & Greet. A ballroom in the basement is filling up with a part of the nearly thousand Gatecon-goers. From time to time actors drop by. The more famous they are, the greater the excitement. Corin Nemec (Jonas in the series) who during a year took the place of Michael Shanks (Daniel), and Alex Sahara (a regular guest star) smile, chat with the fans and willingly pose in front of countless camera’s. Orlane is happily posing with them. Hey, what’s going on? Why are people crowding near the entrance? Orlane’s body suddenly goes rigid. Could it be... Richard Dean Anderson? No, it’s Cliff Simon, the most handsome bad guy (Ba’al) in the show and very much loved by the fans, although he’s the one that has tortured Jack O’Neill to death many times – which is possible because he has a sarcophagus in which he can revive someone. Simon is a nice guy who likes to mingle with fans. ‘That’s why I think conventions are fun. I love to play Ba’al. Baddies are always fun for an actor. Besides, Ba’al is not bad through and through.’
Oceans make me wet
The next days, Cliff Simon is in several panels with other actors – every time a merry event. Simon also talks about his charity: he saves fight dogs, as well as so called bait dogs, that are thrown into the ring before a fight, to set on the fight dogs. Their job is no other than to be ripped apart, he tells the fans. They sigh in horror.
When the panels are done the actors put their signatures on big glossy pictures and pose with their fans. They can keep the money they earn with this, a nice extra earnings when you’ve nothing else to do for a while. Central guest Anderson gives everything he earns to the Sea Shepherds: the photo sessions, the autograph sessions, even his costumes (someone pays four thousand dollars for a leather jacket he wore in the Pilot). And on Saturday evening he leads the auction of items that are connected to him and others. A cap with his autograph is bought for a couple of hundred dollars. A large poster with his signature is sold for over a thousand dollars. One of the highlights is a doodle he makes on the spot that bears the line Oceans make me wet. He bets with the organizers that it will not be sold for more than 200 dollars. Eventually it is sold for over four thousand dollar. Anderson is visibly shocked, but embraces the lady buyer warmly. ‘God bless you’, he says to her. The revenue of the auction totals 28.000 dollar. The whole Gatecon brings in 80.000 dollars for the Sea Shepherds.
Another session passes by more quietly. Sabine Bauer, writer of several fanfiction books about Stargate SG2, is leading a workshop for writers of this very specific prose, a genre that is practised intensively in America. The internet is bulging with truckloads of Stargate fanfiction, in which the authors give their heroes new adventures. They do it purely for fun and make no money with it. Only some exceptions like Sabine Bauer get to be published – ‘A dream come true’ she says.
But the fan fiction writers don’t care. They keep on writing anyway. Cat Mercer, who’s author’s name is Lothithil, calls her writing ‘a guilty pleasure’. Through the internet she got to know Louise Owen aka MacBeth (shortened to Beth), like herself an avid MacGyver-fan, whom they keep alive in new stories, sixteen years after the series finished. There’s circulating a lot of crap on the fanfiction sites, but these two write good, exciting stories. On top of that Beth does impressively much research for her stories, that are as long as a substantial book. Lothithil is the writer of more than a hundred short stories, so called drabbles. Beth: ‘We now have fans, too. That’s so freaking weird!’
Fandom is love
Perhaps they, being hardcore fans, can give a definition of what a fan is? Lothithil is silent. Beth bursts out: ‘To define what a fan is, is just as impossible as to explain what love is. Because fandom is about love.’
Kate Ritter of www.rdanderson.com, known all over as the best RDA-site, says: ‘’Fandom is still a mystery to me.’ And she herself nota bene has been a fan since MacGyver: she met her idol when he was doing a charity for the deaf children she teaches. They’ve become friends since then. That’s what other fans would like too.
Brenda – who shows her ‘brag book’ to anyone who wants to see it, with photos of the four times she has met Him – says: ‘He is a very private man. I always ask if I can take a picture. I’m ashamed for people that don’t do that. Rick is very shy.’
Rick? That’s what his friends call him, she says. So she considers him a friend? She smiles. ‘When my husband had died I went to look for someone that could replace him. To whom I could look up to. And that’s Rick.’ Tomorrow she will meet him in a photoshoot for the fifth time. She’s already laid out the clothes she is going to wear.
Kate Ritter, considered by the fans as the chairwoman of the non-official RDA-fanclub, is not surprised by these kind of stories. Orlane’s story sounds familiar, too. ‘Many fans claim that Richard has changed their lives. He himself has no idea. He is surprised that people still know him after the series has stopped – he had already left two years before that, by the way.’
Hey Jude
On the last day that Richard Dean Anderson steps onto the stage, the fans bring the house down when surprise guest Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter) appears, and the excitement reaches a peak when his ten year old daughter Wylie joins him. He says: ‘All my efforts for a better environment are for her. And all other children, of course.’ Thundering applause.
And then tears are shed, for after Andersons appearance there’s a memorial for Don S. Daves, who played General Hammond and who died at the end of June, of a massive heart attack. His widow talks to the crowd, on big screens a special video is shown, with Hey Jude by the Beatles.
Immediately after that Anderson hurries to another photo session, followed by a signing session. Downstairs a parallel autograph session is going on, with all the other actors present. Long strings of fans are waiting in front of the tables where the actors are signing. Orlane Ros commutes from one room to the other. Her hope for that one minute with Anderson is starting to crumble. In the room next to the room where Anderson is signing the crew of Legends Memorabilia, that has sold all kinds of props from the Stargate-show, is packing up. The Gatecon is nearing its end.
Fans walk to the exits and hug each other to say goodbye. Around seven in the evening only outside the RDA-autograph room a line of fans is still waiting. There is Anna from Finland, exiting the room. She shows the picture of MacGyver. ‘Anna!’, her idol has written on it, with his name under it. ‘I told him: my mom says hi, and he returned her greetings. I didn’t know anything else to say.’
Orlane looks on, in silence. She has resigned herself to her defeat. She will not meet him and she will not be able to tell him that’s she is still alive thanks to him. And then her face lightens up. She sticks up her chin: ‘Next time. When there is another Gatecon. Then I’ll go. Then I will succeed.’
Very briefly, she looks like Scarlett O’Hara, at the end of Gone with the wind. |
|
Only enough time to pop in and say, I'm having the time of my life!! Everybody is so wonderful, Vancouver is beautiful, and the fun is just getting started!
keep the reports rolling in guys and take lots of pictures! 
I can't wait to hear more and see your pictures! Woo hoo! 
* 
called out "Will you take it off?"
very interesting.
Beth and I were interviewed by a journalist from Holland about Fandom and Fanfiction writing. 
(And I hope nobody did mind that it was at least one octave too high for me)