{original post had no questions}

"Actors usually charge a much higher appearance fee than a fan
convention can shell out."

Actually, a lot of our cast do fan run conventions...Jerry and
Richard were at Shoreleave and a cruise, Rick has been to Marcon, a
slew of other local fan-run conventions as well as others overseas,
Stephen was at Rebelcon a few weeks ago, Pat does an assortment of fan
conventions, so this ain't as true as might be assumed.

jms

{original post had no questions}

Yeah, Pat and Bill are, I think, our only cast members who had
any real convention experience prior to B5, which is why I've taken
pains to try and help them understand the whole fan scene...which is
where the "nobody gets cut off the autograph line" notion came from,
for instance. By helping them understand the venue, they're more
comfortable with it, and thus spend time not just hiding in their rooms
as is often the case with other shows, but instead go down to the bar,
the lounge, the room parties, and hang out with the fans. (The tales
of Richard Biggs dancing on tables at Marcon, Bill Mumy at the parties
in the UK, others...they go on and on.)

jms

{original post had no questions}

Thanks. My main concern at these things is always with the
fans. My belief is that these people came a long way, and paid a fair
amount of money, and they deserve to get what they paid for with the
least amount of inconvenience. I tend to be very hands-on when my name
is attached to ANY convention. At my first Wolf, for instance, I made
it a point to check out the area where we'd be doing our main
presentations the night before, and found that a number of the chairs
had been set up behind pillers and supports so that their view would
be, essentially, blocked. When I talked to one of the people doing the
arranging, and was told that no, that was the way it had to be ("that's
why we've got some monitors back there, so they can watch it on
TeeVee," I was told, which was a completely unacceptable response), I
(and Kathryn) got in there and personally began rearranging the chairs,
spending a fair amount of time doing so until we found a configuration
that would let people see the stage. (We drew quite a few startled
glances from some fans who happened to wander in at one point.)

Having been (and still being) a fan for most of my life, I can't
condone anything which, in my view, ends up with the fans getting
shafted. If that means being a pain in the ass on occasion, them's the
breaks. But I'd rather do that than something that violated my
conscience.

jms