On the weekend of the 8th of May I jumped on a train to somewhere in Holland, in pursuit of my childhood hero and long term crush, Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. For anyone drawing a blank, the actor that played Starbuck, Dirk Benedict, returned to television as Templeton Peck or “The Face” in the A-team, some years later.
This plan surfaced one night out in town when I had been captivated by a glossy convention poster promising not only Dirk but A-Team companion Dwight Schultz, the endearingly insane Murdoch. The convention was aimed at Sci-fi, horror and cult fans in general with signings and question and answer sessions with other stars. These included Robert Englund who played Freddy in the Nightmare on Elm street movies, Jason from Friday the 13th (who, for reference, has a super upper body, and is very probably a dedicated gym bunny), Chewbacca (accompanied or rather led by his dominating Texan wife whom I had already had the pleasure of meeting before), some less than memorable exotic female alien types form the new Star Wars movies, oh, and David Prowse who was and forever will be “the guy that wore the Darth Vader suit in the first 3 movies, but wasn’t the voice”.
After the not insubstantial journey of 3 hours (I was nearly in Belgium!) I arrived at the station in Tilburg. The hotel hosting the convention was 20 minutes or so out of the town and I was lost as to which bus would get me there. I spotted a stern looking Dutch woman and her daughter scanning the bus timetables who then opted for a cab. I stumbled over waving my NewStarCon internet printouts at them, asking were they going to the convention too and could we share the cost? The daughter understood and asked her mother who didn’t invite me along as much as didn’t actively object to my getting in the back of the cab. I attempted some conversation with young geek girl “Isn’t it great! Dirk Benedict! And Dwight Schultz! Are you excited?” but she kept to one word responses each time, so I shut up and sat quietly in the back of the cab. I sank down in my seat feeling a little oppressed by the mean, chapparoning mother figure in the front. On arrival the mother cheerlessly took my money and strode off. I was reminded how good it is not to be a teenager again.
The convention was pleasingly busy and the dealer room was packed top to bottom with interesting curios, photos, autographs and kitsch. I made my way over to the celebrity room and made a beeline for Mr Benedict, who is still a strikingly handsome chap, with an unmistakable wry grin even at his sixty or so years.
I made my way in line to the autograph desk, feeling slightly sheepish at my eagerness to part with 20 euro for an autograph. Dirk was busy signing when he looked up straight at me, and held my eye, “Well, hello…” he said with a flirtatious smile, “Do you have a boyfriend?”. Slightly taken aback, and with everyone in a 5 meter radius looking at me, I barked “No! Well, er, well, yes, really” and Dirk smiled, went back to his autograph and complained that all the pretty ones had boyfriends. When he came to sign my autograph I chatted with him about macrobiotics, which I am currently dabbling in and which he claims saved him from a tumor in his late 20s. He assumed I had read his book, and I had to tell him that no, actually, I just read an except from his website. Never slow to self-promote he insisted I must read his book since it is a marvelous story about love, forgiveness, survival and so on. Er, yes.
During his spiel, he messed up my autograph and ordered another photo so he could write it again. When he asked what I would like written for my autograph I cheekily suggested “Something about how wonderful last night was, would work pretty well” and without missing a beat he laughed and wrote “To Loothi, May last night be the first of many! Love Dirk.”
Click to see the whole Dirk Benedict autograph!
As I left he called to me “Hey, y’know.. if you ever get lonely..”. How better could my encounter with my favourite space cowboy have gone?
Later on, I had a photo shoot with Dirk and Dwight. By this stage I had been drinking pints at the hotel bar and was feeling rather effusive. I walked in and Dirk (my best buddy, by this point) said “Oh here she is…”. I remember bouncing up to Dwight and Dirk and saying “Lets make this one an action shot! Yeah?!” and raising my hands in the air, exclaiming “Wooo!” or similar for the photo. I shook Dwights hand energetically and thanked him before he had a chance to react. As I skipped away, I heard Dirk saying “Got me pretty flushed, that last one”.
Barbie Wilde as a female cenobyte
My objective met, I decided to film people in costume, of which there were many. Strangely Star Wars still appears to be the number one genre. There was a sweet little Jawa, a heavily smoking Darth Maul, several click-clacking Stormtroopers (“The Tupperware boys” as they are apparently called), a number of young Luke Skywalkers (or Anakins, I actually don’t know) and a few wannbe-Natalie-Portmans, all looking very young and fresh faced.
The Germans made a good turn out, and guessing from the heavily drinking and smoking group I sat next to, they were all staying en masse at the hotel. Mysteriously, nearly all the Germans (bar one spectacular half naked conan the barbarian) had chosen the grey Imperial military uniforms, officers class, er, you know.. the ones that look like Nazi uniforms? I doubled checked with a Dutch guy and he laughed, and confirmed they often prefer to dress that way at all the European conventions and the English are more likely to be stormtroopers.
I spent some time meeting the actors and actresses toward the end of the day. There were three or four Clive Barker demons from Hellraiser including Pinhead himself. Two were very English thespian types, and one vivacious American woman who had been a “female cenobyte”. When I asked what work she was doing currently she explained “Well, you know, you get to a certain age and the roles stop coming in. I didn’t leave acting, as they say, acting left me”. A very entertaining woman, she further told me about her subsequent forays into casting, writing and her love affair with a composer who she lives with in Paris.
I had a chat with David Prowse who seemed to be a very nice English gentleman. I was a little horrified however, that his life now consisted entirely of attending conventions, around 40 per year at his own estimate. “Well, you must get to see a lot of the world!” I offered, “No, rarely more than the hotel I am staying in. I fly in and fly out again.” he replied flatly.
Fairly exhausted I made my way home again around six o’clock. The day was a wonderful success. I was sorry I had to leave before the Dirk and Dwight question and answer.
I should also mention all the lovely people I met. Robert who was a dashing Darth Maul and a mine of information about DV, Robert the Star Wars collector who gave me a lift home (and got randomly pulled by the police for the favour), Arwen and her sister resplendant in full colonial warrior outfits, and the cool guys from Star Wars line up gang. The organisers did a good job too, despite logistical problems with getting the photo shoot pictures printed before the end of the day. I hope they didn’t go too grey over that one.