Guest Interview: Adam Malin
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Guest Interview: Adam Malin |
| Interviewer: | Joyce Mason, editor of The William Shatner Connection |
| Interviewee: | Adam Malin |
| Date(s): | August 1991 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom(s): | Star Trek: TOS, Star Trek: TNG, conventions |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In August 1991, Joyce Mason interviewed Adam Malin. Mason was the editor of The William Shatner Connection, an official fan club publication.
Adam Malin was one of the producers of Creation Con.
The interview took place in Los Angeles ad the Shrine Auditorium to promote the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek.
Some Topics Discussed
- how Malin and Mark Berman (co-producer) met, their history with conventions, "It just seemed like a matter of time when Gary and I would pick [Star Trek cons] up. It’s almost as if we were destined to be involved."
- a likely reference to Star Trek Lives! as a "mini-con"
- how fans and conventions have changed and become more sophisticated, about early cons and their "naivete, certainly was charming though limited"
- how fandom used to be a "closet industry" and now it's a large and visible money-maker
- the purpose of Creation Cons
- he and Berman's relationship with William Shatner, other "talent," and Paramount
- how Paramount and Shatner have both been "good to us"
Excerpts from the Interview
{{Quotation|
Gary [Berman] and I grew up together in Queens, New York... and have a really affectionate and good relationship. We collected coins and a consequence of being a collector is that you sell. And so we got into marketing. From there we went to comic books and were buying and selling when we discovered comic book conventions in the late ’60s. It was 1969 when I went to Phil Souly’s Comic Art Convention. It changed my life. I found my nitch [sic]. And so I spent a couple of years going to conventions and assimilating all the different aspects of fandom. It wasn’t long before we came up with our own convention/marketplace concept for comic books. It wasn't an original concept but it was fueled by our love of comic books and the fact that we felt that we could do this. We spent our first ten years of Creation Conventions doing comic book conventions. We were both fans of Star Trek but we weren’t connected with the Star Trek talent or Paramount.
We just sort of gazed longingly from afar and admired and went to [[the early mini Star Trek conventions that were happening in New York in the early 70s. The embryonic Star Trek convention movement. It just seemed like a matter of time when Gary and I would pick it up. It’s almost as if we were destined to be involved. We always loved Star Trek and science fiction films and finally we simply got to the point were we kind of busted out of the idea of comic conventions and in January of 1976 we did our first science fiction show called "Telefantasy." That was at the old Commodore Hotel in New York. It wasn’t for another four or five years that that type of a convention concept would take seed and become a success. Finally, beginning in the ’80s we started going full tilt with Star Trek and we have spent the last 10 years or so doing science fiction/fantasy film and TV events with strong skewing toward Star Trek.}}
We’ve grown extremely affectionate toward both casts and Roddenberry and really have just become a part of that whole family. I don’t know if I quite feel like family with Paramount yet. We’ve recently become licensees. I’ll tell you, Paramount has been good to us. Mind you, it’s a big company; they’ve got lots of rules. The licensing process is a tedious one, a complex one; but they have been good to us. And we feel a certain responsibility in the marketplace to project Paramount’s interests as well as the interests of the fans. And I think by doing that we’re helping to create a long-term structure by which Paramount will want to continue to work with the fans, cooperate with the fans at the conventions, knowing that they're getting a little bit of return in terms of our consideration of them.
The product has gotten a lot better [over the last ten years] and a lot more sophisticated. And therefore the fans have changed. They have become more sophisticated, more demanding more discriminating and, quite frankly, that's the way it should be. Star Trek and science fiction were more like closet industries in the beginning but with the big budget movies and the Next Generation on TV with unbelievable production values, it's now into the mainstream, it's in the forefront with the big bucks being spent on it. You look at Terminator II, how much they put into that, it's really an incredible phenomenon. It's great to see our genres finally getting the good end of things.[...]
Something clearly is gained and lost. The innocence of the early convention events, the naivete, certainly was charming though limited. Frankly, I'd like to think that as we get older, our techniques in presenting an event are refined and we do better things performance-wise.
... we're trying to position Creation as planners and promoters to the film industry. When they have a film project that's coming up of a genre nature, science fiction, fantasy or horror; we want them to come to us and say “Creation, you do a special event for us to help promote the opening of our movie. ” We're doing that with Terminator II and we're going to be doing that with Quantum Leap to promote the next season with Universal. We also did 10th anniversary of Star Wars with Lucas; that's clearly the positioning we want. It's the genre that we love and we feel that that's the contribution that we can make to the industry.
I love [William Shatner]. He's a dear man. He's very, very gracious and he's taken good care of me. He's been a good comrade, a good companion on our city sweeps and I admire him tremendously.