A San Diego Comic-Con Memoir, Part Two: Pummeled with Gray Foam Bricks

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“Try not to harm Carl any more in the next few minutes,” I say, only half-kidding about the comic book’s current storyline.

“Where’s Chandler Riggs [the actor who plays Carl on the show]? No one knows,” Kirkman answers without missing a beat.

I’m on to you, Kirkman.

All of the show’s main stars besides Riggs are on hand – and there’s no sign that executive producer Frank Darabont is about to leave the series a few days later. Given the mysterious nature of the show there are few spoilers, but here was my favorite exchange, when stars Jon Bernthal (Shane), Andrew Lincoln (Rick) and Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori) answer my question, “I know it can reach the temperature of the inside of the sun filming in Georgia in the summer and you may be getting carpal tunnel syndrome from all the ax swinging and running from zombies. Physically, how difficult is shooting the show?”

Jon: I played sports in high school and college, I’ve played pro sports overseas, I’ve boxed…

Sarah: “The best all-around athlete in the Screen Actors Guild.”

Jon: Thank you, Sarah…and I do, I consider myself a very athletic guy and it’s just hard physically, but…and you had to say this friggin SAG thing.

Sarah: You’re the one who said it.

Jon: [laughing] Now I’m making it worse.

Sarah: Now I’m throwing you up in front of the press.

Jon: That’s fine, bring it on.

Andrew: We’ll do a reality show, the crazy stunts from Season 2.

Sarah: Yeah, live up to that, pal.

Jon: The point that I’m saying is it’s fricking hard, man. And I did a small part in a show called The Pacific, and we did a boot camp in the Marine Corps and all background guys were Australian military and they said that the boot camp that we went through was harder than their real boot camp. All the guys I’ve become friends with from The Pacific and everyone talked about how difficult that was, and I say to every single one of them, it isn’t even close to what we do here. And yes, it’s physically really hard, but at the same time, there’s not one second where you can just drop out and say all I need to do is run from here to here and kill that zombie.

Sarah: You can’t coast.

Jon: There’s always so much going on and so much at stake always and there’s always a relationship at stake. And I think that makes it more powerful. And I’ve never seen a more game bunch of actors who are down for whatever it is. And if you get hurt, you get hurt.

Sarah: We’ve sent a lot of people to the hospital. We eat a lot of protein.

Andrew: And a lot of tick bites.

Sarah: I almost went blind last year and Laura had to get X-rays.

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Jon: I lost my eyesight, I punctured my cornea.

Sarah: [points to Andrew] This guy is stronger than he looks. I’ve got to tell you, some of the things I’ve seen him do this year, I was like, there’s no way.

Jon: When you threw the football, I said to my brother Nick, because he’s an Englishman he’s not really from Kansas, you know that. And when you threw the football, you’ve got a cannon, man. He’s a great athlete.

Andrew: Yeah, I’m the greatest athlete in British Equity. [They all laugh]

FRIDAY 7 P.M.

After a Fright Night press conference, it’s Friday night and my appeal to the gods this morning that I would never drink again has gone right out the window.

Colin invited me to a private Syfy party, because damn it, it’s his birthday and he’ll invite who he wants to. Over drinks, I tell some of his castmates about how I ran into Colin again years after we lost touch after graduating college.

I had been watching Eureka for two seasons and thinking to myself, “Wow, that actor Colin Ferguson is the spitting image of the Colin Ferguson I went to college with and knew from the McGill University Improv team. It’s uncanny.” And then I didn’t think any more of it until I was at a New York City Syfy event for the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and Colin comes bounding down the stairs, runs over and gives me a big hug.

Then I realized, it IS the same Colin.

“Wait, you really couldn’t put two and two together?” an incredibly beautiful actress asks. And I remind myself to never tell that story again, or at least embellish it with ninjas or something.

MIDNIGHT

My roommate Paul Dergarabedian, the box office analyst extraordinaire from Hollywood.com, and I went from the model-infested From Dusk Till Con party – right back at the rooftop bar of the Stingaree club where I was just hours earlier – to the geeky male-infested Marvel Comics party. Paul, who’s the textbook definition of a single player, thinks we made a tactical error. But we meet up with Joe Quesada and after I introduce the two, they strike up a long conversation about box office trends, Paul’s area of expertise.

Of course, they bond by making fun of me – and my love of the sport of kings, broomball.

“Let me tell you something, one day when heavy metal-loving, broomball-playing aliens colonize our planet, I’ll be laughing while you’re building pyramids.”

Neither looked impressed.

The best part of the evening: my friend and former Marvel contact, Jim McCann, enters the party a conquering hero – with an Eisner award statuette he won that night for his graphic novel, Return of the Dapper Men. I get to hold it, another in a long line of trophies I’ll never win.

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