2008JeffReports

Hello! How are you? I am back from my July 16-21 trip to Los Angeles. I stayed at the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, the site of this year's Dark Shadows Festival (June 18-19-20). This convention was called Dark Shadows Resurrected in anticipation of the upcoming major motion picture starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins. I enjoyed seeing the Dark Shadows stars and my many pen pals again, and the Collinsport Players' revival of my 1997 dramatic play Curtains was outstanding.

My room (266) at the Marriott turned out to be a suite, with a living room, a sofa, a refrigerator, a bedroom, two beds, two flat-screen televisions, and a CD player. Except for the first night of my stay, I shared the room with my Orlando pen pal Patrick, whom I had met at the 2005 Dark Shadows Hollywood Weekend.

On Wednesday evening, July 16, my Los Angeles friend Arlena picked me up and took me out to eat. Arlena is a former Nashvillian who moved to Los Angeles in 2002; I saw her when I went to L.A. for the 2005 convention, as well. Arlena and I drove to Century City and ate at Pink Taco, a trendy new Mexican restaurant, where I enjoyed delicious shrimp enchiladas. At the table, I gave Arlena a DVD of the wonderful 2007 movie Enchanted. Our waitress noticed the DVD and told us that she had waited on Enchanted star Amy Adams.

After we ate, Arlena drove me around Beverly Hills and Hollywood, past landmarks such as the Hollywood Bowl, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the Crossroads of the World, and the unmistakable Hollywood Hills. Then, we went to Amoeba Music, an enormous, two-story LP/CD/VHS/DVD emporium which recently was judged, along with Ernest Tubb's Record Shop and another Nashville store, as one of the dozen greatest record stores in the United States. I understand why: Amoeba Music sells almost any album, movie, or movie poster that you could ever imagine or want. I found one of the very few Shirley Bassey albums that I did not have on LP or CD. While Arlena and I were at Amoeba Music, my L.A. friend Joe met us there and looked around with us.

Although the Burbank Airport Marriott was being remodeled, there was very little inconvenience there or at the Convention Center next door. I enjoyed the hotel's pool, hot tub, gift shop, restaurant, and free computer, and on July 17 I rode the hotel's shuttle to the Burbank Town Center Mall. Soon, quite a few Dark Shadows fans whom I knew, as well as my roommate Patrick and the Dark Shadows stars themselves, began checking in to the hotel. I enjoyed seeing and talking with various fans, some of whom I had met at the very first Dark Shadows Festival, in Newark, New Jersey, 25 years ago.

On Thursday night, some of the Collinsport Players--Amanda, Eileen, Jeff, Jonathan, and Laura--met in my suite and rehearsed Curtains, my play that would be performed the next night. I would serve as the narrator. Because the other four cast members live in the Los Angeles area, they had been rehearsing Curtains all summer--and it showed. The Players did three excellent run-throughs in my suite.

The 25th-anniversary Dark Shadows Festival began at 6:00 PM on Friday, July 18, and offered the 1500+ fans of all ages in attendance an entire weekend of exciting activities. This year's guests of honor were Jonathan Frid (Barnabas), Lara Parker (Angelique), David Selby (Quentin), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie), John Karlen (Willie), Marie Wallace (Eve), Robert Rodan (Adam), Jerry Lacy (Trask), Christopher Pennock (Jeb), Roger Davis (Jeff), Sy Tomashoff (scenic designer), and Robert Cobert (music composer). Quite a few of the stars slipped back into their TV characters over the course of the weekend. Selby began his talk about his play-turned-novel Lincoln's Better Angel by throwing confetti and declaring, "I'm Quentin Collins, and I'm running for president!" Parker played Angelique in the Collinsport Players' Saturday-night skit, Another Day at Collinwood. With candelabra and casket on stage, Karlen and Frid re-enacted the famous 1967 scene in which Willie opens the chained coffin and releases Barnabas. Davis, Parker, Rodan, and Wallace reprised their TV roles as they performed a staged reading of the script of a complete 1968 Jeff/Angelique/Adam/Eve episode which was never produced. By late 1968, Dark Shadows creator/producer Dan Curtis had been eager to wrap up the Adam/Eve storyline and move on to the Quentin storyline, so he had written LOSE THIS across Gordon Russell's script and shot the next day's script instead.

Other highlights were rare screenings of the unaired 2004 Dark Shadows pilot for the WB network and a 1970 episode of CBS-TV's The Governor and J.J. guest-starring Joan Bennett (wearing a dress that she had worn not only on Dark Shadows but also in House of Dark Shadows); discussions of the upcoming Johnny Depp Dark Shadows movie, the new CD audio dramas featuring the original cast, and the new book The Physics of Dark Shadows; two charity auctions of memorabilia; showings of three of Dan Curtis's films, as well as Black Sunday and The Haunting; and the Costume Gala, in which fans dressed and performed as Victoria, Barnabas, Angelique, Nicholas, Naomi, Joshua, and other TV characters. Another exciting moment was the unveiling of a missing scene from Night of Dark Shadows--now complete with music, sound effects, and dialogue recently re-recorded by David Selby, Lara Parker, and Diana Millay. "That was the hardest I've ever worked!" Selby told me in the autograph line. "We had the script, but we didn't know the exact words we'd said, so they brought in lip-reading specialists to help us match our dialogue to the picture."

I had the chance to speak with all of the other stars either in autograph lines or in brief, private moments. I reminded Jonathan Frid that I had seen him last in Dalton, Georgia, in 2001 when he had performed his one-man show there. I compared notes with Lara Parker, who is an adjunct instructor of remedial and college-level English at a Southern California community college. We discussed some of the literature that we had taught (e.g. Matheson's I Am Legend, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five), and she was very interested to hear about my use of Maya Angelou's "Why I'm Not a Complainer" and Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Richard Cory" with my students at Tennessee State University.

All of the stars' question-and-answer sessions were quite interesting and informative. Robert Cobert said that his favorite composer was Igor Stravinsky, and Cobert mock-conducted a recording of one of his Dark Shadows music cues for the fans. Kathryn Leigh Scott revealed that she had auditioned for the role of Elizabeth in the 2004 WB pilot. Roger Davis told the fans that he recently had had life-saving heart bypass surgery. "My brother died," he said, "and the doctors told me I'd be dead in 90 days, too, if I didn't have this operation." Marie Wallace remembered that Dark Shadows had offered her a fourth role, which she had not been free to accept because she was already under contract to NBC-TV's Somerset. "I don't know what the role was," Marie admitted--but I would guess that it would have been the part of Samantha Collins in the 1840 storyline.

Eighty-three-year-old Jonathan Frid gave two special presentations during the course of the Festival weekend. In Saturday's The Growth of Barnabas, Frid showed clips of some of his favorite scenes from the 1967, 1795, 1968, and 1897 storylines and discussed his portrayal of Barnabas Collins. He also paid tribute to undoubtedly one of the finest actors on Dark Shadows--Thayer David. When a fan asked him about Grayson Hall, Frid confessed, "She was a little too much for me!" In Sunday's An Odd Assortment of Stage Events That Determined a Career, Frid reminisced about his days at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and his roles in Julius Caesar, The Rivals, And So to Bed, The Heiress, and other plays, and he read aloud from The Heiress and Washington Square. He also showed clips from his new DVD Frid-Evil, which features 1990 footage from his one-man show of dramatic readings.

The Collinsport Players presented two productions, the first of which was my dramatic play Curtains. I had written and performed Curtains for Dracula 97: A Centennial Celebration, and I had always wanted to see it revived at a Dark Shadows Festival. Based on Dracula, Dark Shadows, Dracula's Daughter, and my own imagination of "what if," Curtains reveals a shocking connection between Victoria Winters and Count Dracula, brings Dracula and Barnabas face to face, and ends sadly, in a change of pace from the Collinsport Players' usual fare of hilarious farces. Amanda (as Vicki), Jeff (as Barnabas), Eileen (as Julia), director Jonathan (as Dracula), and assistant director/sound engineer Laura brought my play to life expertly, effectively, and memorably. Curtains came off as serious and even scary! The audience screamed when the vampires' fates were revealed. Another Day at Collinwood, the next night's production, provided a rich contrast as the audience roared with laughter at the comedic misadventures of Barnabas, Julia, Roger, Carolyn, Adam, and (as performed by Lara Parker herself) Angelique.

The Dark Shadows Festival climaxed with the banquet, attended by 660 fans and stars, on Sunday night, July 20. I sat with Amanda, Bryan, Laraine, Jeff, and other old and new friends and ate vegetable lasagna, carrots, salad, and dessert. I was hungry, for I had been living on Pop Tarts and Eat-a-Snacks all weekend so as not to miss any of the non-stop, all-day events in the main ballroom, the dealers' room, or the autograph hall! After dinner, everyone watched the re-recorded Night of Dark Shadows scene, as well as some Dark Shadows stars' appearances on Into the Night in 1991 and Soap Talk in 2002. After the banquet, I chatted with one dozen different fan-friends and then placed a few phone calls and text messages to Nashville. I flew back to Music City on Monday, July 21, and wrote this e-travelogue to you on July 23. I now have caught up on all of my post-trip work--letters, e-mails, newspapers, TV programs, e-travelogue, etc.--except for seeing The Dark Knight, which is next on my to-do list! I hope that you have a pleasant, restful weekend. Please write, e-mail, call, and/or visit me some time soon and catch me up on all of your news!