San Diego Update!

Hi all,

Saturday seemed to go well at the San Diego Comic Con. Antonia had
her interview/Q&A at 11am. Everyone I've heard from said it was good.
We showed clips of her from UFO, Percy, The Boy Friend, and the Sylvia
Anderson interview featuring Antonia in her Moonbase costume. A common
reaction was that people were suprised to learn about Antonia's career
outside of UFO (including her being nominated for best actress in the
London run of CHICAGO in 1979). The only complaint I heard was that
I wasn't speaking into my microphone properly during the first part
of the interview, so people couldn't hear my questions but they
could hear Antonia's answers. Dan counted 65 people in attendance
during the panel, and it ran for a full hour, including about 8
minutes at the end for questions from the audience. Shawn videotaped
the interview, so it's possible we might be able to send folks a
DVD-R copy of it if the quality is good enough.

Afterwards, Antonia went down to the booth and signed autographs,
with a break for lunch. I only was there for the portion before
lunch, where I was amused by someone who brought an issue from
WEEKLY WORLD NEWS about Aliens landing on Earth, which featured
a photo of the spacecraft from UFO (in a shot from COMPUTER AFFAIR),
and the artist for the UFO comic showed Antonia the original artwork
he did for still yet-to-be-released comic. Also, director Robert
Burnett (FREE ENTERPRISE) showed up, and pointed out that the
purple-haired wig in this movie was a tribute to UFO, and that
he wanted to use Ed Bishop in FREE ENTERPRISE 2 in a "Straker like"
role. There was also some talk about a UFO documentary that he
might be doing, but I'm not sure what that was about.

I don't know if anything notable happened during the second
autograph session, but perhaps Anthony Taylor could fill us in?

In the evening, we had our fan dinner, although it was rather small
-- a table for 7, and we went outside of downtown to avoid the
crowds from the con.

Today, Antonia will be signing autographs for a bit, and then will
return home!

Marc

Great update Marc.
Steve Christensen


>From: "Marc Martin" <[hidden email]>
>Reply-To: [hidden email]
>To: [hidden email]
>Subject: [SHADO] San Diego Update!
>Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 08:21:32 -0700

Thanks for the report, Marc!

> Dan counted 65 people

Hey, sounds like a full success to me! :-)
It's great that so many people are interested in Antonia!

> Shawn videotaped the interview,
> so it's possible we might be able
> to send folks a DVD-R copy of it
> if the quality is good enough.

I'm sure it *will* be good enough :-)
Please, count me in for a copy!!
(Of course, I'm paying your expenses.)

> I don't know if anything notable
> happened during the second
> autograph session, but perhaps
> Anthony Taylor could fill us in?

Anthony, you're needed! ;-)

> In the evening, we had our fan dinner,
> although it was rather small --
> a table for 7

Uh! Who were these Magnificent Seven? :-)
Wish I could have made it eight...

Thanks again, Marc!
And don't forget (in a Straker imitation):
I want a *full* report till next week, Commander!
And from you too, Colonel Taylor! ;-))

Christian

> I want a *full* report till next week, Commander!
> And from you too, Colonel Taylor! ;-))

A full report?

It seems like I just spent the entire weekend with Antonia Ellis!

Antonia was absolutely delightful, and really seemed quite pleased
with the whole weekend. She signed a whole bunch of extra photos,
so I expect their will be a glut of signed Joan Harrington photos
on eBay in the coming years (I told her this, and she didn't think
that this would necessarily be a "bad thing").

I think the only thing that could have been improved upon was putting
Antonia in a hotel walking distance to the con. I spent a lot of
time driving her back and forth, and we were contantly stuck in
traffic (besides the convention crowds, we had to deal with street
closures courtesy of the police's crowd control, plus construction
projects, trains and trolleys, and general gridlock). The good
news is that during all this traffic, I had Antonia sitting right
next to me!

She also hit it off particularly well with my wife. I guess it
was a case of females bonding amidst a great amount of male fans.
(she even commented on the high ratio of males during her interview
session). Also, Antonia is rather "new age" these days, so she
had a lot to talk about with my yoga-teaching wife that she probably
wouldn't be able to talk about with anyone else.

The Q&A session was certainly loosely based on the Fanderson
interview (which we learned was done two years ago), plus I added
some standard questions which Fanderson didn't ask. During the
audience's questioning, they asked a few questions that Antonia
didn't know the answer to, but I did. The video clips were received
well, and Antonia wanted a copy to show her kids, because her kids
seem to be largely unaware of her acting past.

Also, there were several girls at the con wearing purple wigs.
I got one to pose with Antonia, and I think the picture turned
out quite cute (but I'll have to upload it to my computer before
I know if it's in focus!)

I'm returning home tomorrow...

Marc

--- In [hidden email], "Christian J." <memorymetropolis@y...>
wrote:
>
> Thanks for the report, Marc!
>
> > Dan counted 65 people
>
> Hey, sounds like a full success to me! :-)
Definately a success!! Marc did an excellent job throughout!!
Thanks to you and Anthony for pulling this together!!!

> It's great that so many people are interested in Antonia!
Each time I went to the FABGear booth, she was busy talking with
someone and signing. She had very little down time. In fact,
I don't believe she got the opportunity to check out the con.
She always had a smile and appeared to genuinely enjoy being
there!

> > In the evening, we had our fan dinner,
> > although it was rather small --
> > a table for 7
>
> Uh! Who were these Magnificent Seven? :-)
There was Marc and his wife, myself and my son, Sean(sp) and
his wife. We went to a Thai place just out of town. We talked
about her desire to get into some type of acting role again now
that her kids are all grown up. Although, it may not be theater
as she had some concerns about going onstage and going 'dry'.
She's working on her jewelry business, even sold a piece to Angelica
Houston! She was wearing some of her jewelry, but I'm a guy,
it looked nice, but don't know how else to describe it.

So, there's a bit more!
Dan

>Although, it may not be theater
>as she had some concerns about going onstage and going 'dry'.

Yes, during the dinner conversations, she mentioned various
occasions when onstage and someone would forget their lines,
and sometimes just have to only work on television and movies,
where it doesn't matter if you forget your lines.

She also has pretty nasty arthritis, and spoke of how increasingly
difficult it became to dance in shows because of this.

>She's working on her jewelry business

She told my wife that she sells her jewelry at weekend flea
markets. I just noticed that I don't have any photos of
her on the website from Sunday -- I'll have to fix this,
because she had some pretty nice jewelry on that she made
herself on that day.

Marc

>
> > Uh! Who were these Magnificent Seven? :-)
> There was Marc and his wife, myself and my son, Sean(sp) and
> his wife.

Dan,

thanks for all the infos! You are lucky guys, sitting next to Antonia
having a chat *sigh*...

Are you portrayed on one of Marc photos?

Christian

>thanks for all the infos! You are lucky guys, sitting next to Antonia
>having a chat *sigh*...
>
>Are you portrayed on one of Marc photos?

Yes, you can see Dan sitting next to his son in this photo:

http://www.ufoseries.com/ellis/119-1967_IMGjpg.html

Marc

--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@u...> wrote:
> >thanks for all the infos! You are lucky guys, sitting next to
Antonia
> >having a chat *sigh*...
> >
> >Are you portrayed on one of Marc photos?
>
> Yes, you can see Dan sitting next to his son in this photo:
>
> http://www.ufoseries.com/ellis/119-1967_IMGjpg.html
>
> Marc

Yup, proudly wearing our SHADO shirts! :-)

Dan