Kyle Goes

George Mcfly: Crispin Glover signing posters for Willard at the SDCC Frank Castle’s car that he, uh, punishes in/from. Note the bullet holes! Dude, the Punisher logo is one of the coolest things ever created. Skulls rule! Here’s where Thomas Jane was seated later on in the day, signing autographs and smiling and waving at me in particular. Sadly, at that point I had put my camera in the trunk before lunch, so I can only describe that scene to you. But isn’t this a great table? Movie props from The Punisher. Dude, this movie will rule! Here I am, checking out the crowd of reviewers and fans and reporters as we all wait to enter the ceremony room for the Razzies. As always, it was held in a great beach hotel and I went and jumped in the ocean when it was all over. Have I mentioned how great California is? Here I am, checking out my brand new James Bond spy camera, conveniently located inside a Zippo-like lighter. Very cool, very concealable, and very “me.” Can you dig it? This is the main stage where the Razzies’ program will run and the awards will be distributed. Those are like CNN and MSNBC cameras up there, taking footage of we the audience. I hoped I looked hot enough for that Paula Zahn, or whichever female cable news reporter is the most hot. Is Serena Altschul still around? Is that how you spell her name? She’s hot! The audience at the Razzies. It’s not that big a room, since most the members of the Razzies academy are too busy or famous or hung over to attend the ceremony. Still, everyone smelled really nice. An artistic shot: me shooting the photographers shooting me. Too Lynchian! It’s the Long Beach Convention Center, where Wizard World Los Angeles was held! This is the prize wheel at the Punisher booth that I stood in line many, many times trying to win a Punisher T-shirt. Alas, I won only a cool Punisher keychain, a couple posters, and a whole bunch of raffle tickets for a T-shirt raffle. No shirt for me. But it’s nice to just try, you know? Notice to the right is a screen showing the trailer for The Punisher non-stop. You’d think I’d be sick of it after seeing it literally 50 times that Saturday, but it just makes me more excited about seeing The Punisher in April. Yeah! Note to the left of the wheel a stormtrooper and a member of the Emperor’s elite Royal Guard. Yep, those are acceptable fashions, but only at a con like this. I didn’t know these people, but I used to be into Star Wars as well. So I kind of understand. But only kind of. Note that even hot chicks get into the dress-up craze at these conventions! Yeah, baby! It’s David Carradine, soon to probably be Uma’s final casualty in the (presumably) appropriately-named Kill Bill Vol. 2. I’ve never seen an episode of Kung Fu. Should I have?

You might think that the life of a Mutant Reviewer is an insanely glamourous one, full of parties with celebrities, cool free swag, and secret tattoos. You’d be right. The problem is we’re all so busy with our crazy lives that often we just don’t have the time to transcribe our adventures. But occasionally, thesis notes and phone messages from groupies get pushed aside, and it’s time to type up a nice film-related article so Justin won’t fire me. So here we go.

Actually, I’ve been meaning to write something up because as time goes on and I become more and more of a bronzed Californian, opportunities to get involved with good old Hollywood pop up more and more frequently. It’s a blast, man, if you dig that sort of thing. I’m not claiming that I do, but it is fun to have the opportunites. And it’s easier to get more excited about upcoming movies when you can get early glimpses and actually meet the casts.

But first things first. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but a huge benefit of living in California is being able to easily attend the San Diego Comic Convention, held every Summer at the convention center in San Diego. It’s a pretty big deal, pop culture-wise, with tons of comic book creators and all kinds of film actors, directors, and writers.

The best part isn’t seeing all those people, though. The best part is getting free movie-related stuff! I’ve got Daily Bugle notepads (Peter Parker’s newspaper), Batman keychains, shirts, hats, blah blah blah. Actually, maybe it’s not that great. I mean, no offense to anybody, but who really likes to wear stupid movie junk in everyday life? I’m not one to talk: I own a couple James Bond shirts and I had a cool X-Files shirt I wore back in the day, but for the most part I don’t really dig that sort of stuff.

‘Course, there are plenty of people out there who wear film-related clothes and put the free movie pins on everything they own, and (I hate to say it) often smell pretty bad when you walk by them at these conventions. And yet, they don’t give out Star Trek anti-persperant or X-Men deodorant or anything. No hatin’, friends. Just pointing out a fact. Peace, brothas and sisters!

This has barely been about movies at all, hasn’t it? Anyway, this is all necessary to set up how excited I am about The Punisher movie. During the summer 2003 SDCC, there was a lot of love given to X2, and there was a lot of looking forward to Freddy vs. Jason, Spider-Man 2, Hellboy, and The Punisher. I was looking forward to all of them, but I was especially hoping The Punisher was going to kick major butt. I guess I’m just super confident that Spidey 2 and Hellboy are going to absolutely rule the roost. But who knows about The Punisher? I bet it will, though. Here’s hoping, and we’ll find out soon enough...

So, flash forward from Summer 2003 to February 2004. It’s time for the Golden Raspberry Awards! Yep, I’ve always heard about them in Entertainment Weekly, but for the 24th Annual Razzie Awards I had a ticket to go. Apparently the Razzie dudes are writing up a book or something, and they wanted some quotes from MRFH. As a result, the MRFH now gets to vote in the Razzies and we get tickets to the award ceremony. It’s a blast, and it gets national coverage.

[Justin's note: MRFH was contacted by the guy who runs the Razzies to ask our permission to quote a review(s) in their upcoming book. In return for our permission, I got to be a voting member on the Razzie ballot, and they sent me two tickets to their award show. It being in California, we sent the tickets over to Kyle. Two of them. I think he eschewed a date just to take up two seats. One for him, and one for his spare candy bars.]

Described as a “light-hearted parody of award shows in general (and the Oscars in particular)”, the Razzies are actually a lot of fun. Sure, they trash the lower cinematic achievements of the recent year, but they’re all in good fun. Their big award winners in the past have been Howard the Duck, The Postman, Cocktail, and, of course, big winners like Showgirls and Battlefield Earth.

Yeah, the ceremony was pretty fun. There is a Razzies cast that runs the program, and they all participate in handing out awards and singing song parodies and stuff. It’s pretty cool. As you might guess, despite real competition from Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle and From Justin to Kelly, 2004’s big winner was Gigli and everyone involved with it. Sadly, Ben and J-Lo (JLO?) didn’t show up to claim their awards. Pity. Still, it was fun to be part of the audience, and I felt like a real film reviewer. Loads of street cred came along with that little adventure!

Finally, in the middle of March I attended Wizard World Los Angeles. Held at the Long Beach convention center, this was the first LA con for Wizard World, which was previously the east’s answer to the San Diego con, which I think is the biggest in the world. It was definitely smaller than the SDCC, but it was still worth checking out on a Saturday, especially since the convention center is a half block from the beach and one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in all of southern California. Mmm, mmm, I love the cheese enchiladas dinner plate! I order it everywhere I go, and only occasionally do I have to shoot the chef (semi-regular Johnny Depp in-jokes end here, promise).

Wizard World was totally awesome because, by managing to sneak in a little earlier than all the rest of the “common” attendees (long story), I got to all the free stuff while there was still a wide variety available. I grabbed tons of DC Comics buttons, Hellboy movie posters and keychains, anything and everything Punisher, and met the guys who are writing the upcoming 24 comic book. Jack Bauer rules!

I also went through the spin-the-wheel-win-a-prize line at the booth promoting The Punisher like a million times, trying to win a shirt with the Punisher skull logo on it. I didn’t win, which really sucks, though would I have really worn it? (see above paragraphs) Plus, consider this: if The Punisher is as big a hit as it should be, everybody is going to be wearing black skull shirts this summer. Yea! I’m headed for Hot Topic to buy mine now, who’s with me?

My ultimate point, if I have one, is that going to these conventions is really fun and it’s a little bit of a guilty charge when you spot a celebrity. On the one hand, it’s like “Hey, they’re just like anybody else, their job just put them on the movie screen” and on the other it’s like “Ohmigod it’s Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher! I love you, Thomas Jane!”

It’s not always your proudest hour, but grabbing handfuls of free stuff that you can sell on ebay to people in the Midwest who can’t make it to any conventions makes up for it. You can get autographs from movie people, if you’re willing to stand in line, but it’s a lot more fun to stand back, maybe snap a picture, but mostly just take a look at somebody who looks a lot taller in the movies and go “I could take him, for sure” or “Wow, she’s just my type! I should ask her out.” That’s a lot of fun, as well.

So if you should ever make it out to Hollywood, look me up! We can party down and maybe catch a matinee of The Punisher or something. Totally awesome! I can show you where The O.C. is based and filmed and stuff, and you can whack me in the end for loving that show so much, and then we can go on a studio tour or something. Movies rule!

• Kyle in front of an Arnold Terminator statue used to scan in Arnold's body for the Terminator 3 video game at the SDCC

• Kyle is... BATMAN!

• Holding a "wish you were here!" sign at a mock-up of Camp Crystal Lake at the Freddy vs. Jason booth at the SDCC

• Okay, here I am outside my first hotel in San Diego (I went down too early to check into that spiffy resort!) and on the first night, I get back from dinner to find that the dude who was hired to drive around a huge truck outside the SDCC advertising The Punisher was staying there as well. This meant the truck with the huge Punisher ad was right there in the parking lot! So here I am in front of it. Again, skulls rule!

• This is just me drinking me breakfast at that nice San Diego resort. Don't worry, though: it's just Naked Juice. Would I drink anything else? Of course not!

• Finally, after all of these crazy adventures, it's time to just lay back in my nice robe and rest with my faithful pug Jordan while we watch the Los Angeles Lakers kick butt on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Ah, California!