Real 'con' finds fans talking film, camping it up, acting favorites

News Media Commentary
Title:	Real 'con' finds fans talking film, camping it up, acting favorites
Commentator:	Linda Billington
Date(s):	June 6, 1985
Venue:	newspaper
Fandom:	MediaWest*Con
External Links:
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Real 'con' finds fans talking film, camping it up, acting favorites is a 1985 article in The Anchorage Daily News.

The article is an account of the fifth MediaWest*Con.

It features a reproduction of the art by Martynn from the cover of Field Studies #2.

Some Excerpts

• "The young woman in the hotel elevator wears tight black jeans, black knee boots, an open-collared white shirt, and a wicked black gun rig on her hip. 'Hello,' she says cheerfully. 'I'm a filthy Corellian pirate.' Down the hall in the restaurant, Mad Max deposits his weary leather-clad body in incongruously cheerful surroundings, his leg brace squeaking. An additional incongruity is the fact that he is a she. In the dealers' room, Princess Leia in formal regalia peddles a publication entitled 'On a Clear Day You Can See Dagobah. Welcome to the Lansing Hilton Inn in East Lansing, where every Memorial Day weekend star warriors come down to Earth and figments of fantasy parade through the halls."

• "Button, button, who's got the button? Everyone, that's who. Buttons are ubiquitous, bearing faces, movie scenes, pleas, exhortations, puns, and philosophies."

• "Witness the two young men who come, jointly, as Dr. Who -- clad only in the galaxy-hopping knitted scarf. The scarf is long but that that long. The outfit is a crowd-pleaser."

• "The Art Show offers everything from a tiny pencil sketch of James Kirk to large detailed oils straight out of the artist's fantasies. At Sunday night's art auction, the top-price painting brings $651."

• "Mr. Rogers' Universe" features a sweatered Mr. Rogers interviewing a family of sentient worms; the nematodes (sock puppets bearing eyes, hair, and even spectacles) burst into a chorus of 'We Are the Worms'."

• "Fanzines, or 'zines for short, feature fan-created stories and illustrations, or illos. The quality of the work ranges from the blatantly amateur to the astonishing professional, but one common thread obtains: The people who create them are doing it for the love, not the money. An enormous amount of time and effort goes into a 'zine that will have a total press run of, say 200. Almost all bear disclaimers in officialese, the requisite protestation that no copyright infringement is intended, etc -- a necessity, since most of the characters have stepped right down off of the movie or TV screen. 'Zine editors dance on a tightrope; such big boys as Lucasfilm and Paramount have been known to flex legal muscle in an attempt to knock them off. At present, however, a certain balance seems to have been obtained."