[IMG:L]Geeks take note: A few years ago, people like you were being urged to move out of your parents’ basement, and now you’re one of the most desirable demographics a film or TV show could hope for.
If you like stories that take place on starships, feature characters who can walk through walls or involve vampire slaying, if you track the continuity errors between seasons one and seven of genre TV shows in chat rooms and show threads, or if the island schemes of The Others makes more sense to you than the plot of the last Matrix movie, you’re actually more mainstream than you might imagine. It’s officially cool to like science fiction and fantasy now. Shows like Heroes and Lost are in the top 10 and the biggest movie opening of all time is a comic book.
Even the stars are into it, as attendees at the 2007 Saturn Awards proved. The show, honoring achievements in genre movies and television, attracted glamorous nominees and guests who revealed their affinities for material that used to get kids beaten up in school.
The stars of Heroes, whose show won for Best Network Teleivion series and whose costars won acting awards, know what their show has done to make geek chic.
[IMG:L]Greg Grunberg – Heroes
“J.J. Abrams has done a lot for the genre of TV. The creators of 24, all that stuff, serialized drama that has a sci-fi or horror element, if it’s good, it’s got a great audience. If it’s bad, you’re off the air right away, so these guys know what they’re doing it. Tim [Kring] is just great. It’s such an incredible show. Because you know what they do? They make it a character drama first and foremost. That’s what it is.”
Leonard Roberts – Heroes
“I think that our show gives a lot to the sci-fi genre fans and no one’s alienated. I don’t know if you can even call it strictly a genre show. It has such a wide appeal and it doesn’t talk down to either audience. That’s what I really love about it. I love that it’s smart, it’s quick, sci-fi fans dig it and then I know people that really love film, they’re just like, ‘I’m really into the show.’ So you can’t get a better combo than that.”
Jack Coleman – Heroes
“I don’t know that sci-fi was ever not cool. To a certain extent, Spider-Man is sci-fi. It’s comic book, it’s super hero and I think that’s what we are. So yeah, I don’t think it ever was not cool in my opinion.”
Even glamorous girls now relish the geek factor of appearing in cult programming:
[IMG:L]Jennifer Love Hewitt – Winner of Best Actress on Television for Ghost Whisperer
“I’m sort of becoming [a genre fan]. I think it’s more of a guy thing in the beginning but it’s something that I definitely started to pay more attention to. It’s really fun and I went to the Comic-Con convention which once you’re there you’re sort of addicted because people are so lovely and it’s just infectious. It was really fun so I’m definitely getting more into it now. I didn’t even think I’d really be working so this is all sort of icing on the cake and really lovely.”
Traci Bingham – Baywatch
“[I’m a] big sci-fi and big horror movie fanatic. I just love to be scared when I watch movies. I think it may not have been so cool to be admitting that you liked sci-fi back then because sci-fi back then was considered maybe a little eerie or strange, or if you were to watch this, you were a weird person. But now it’s more about the artistic thing about it. To be a person who enjoys horror and sci-fi is someone who has artistic ability. I’m a very artistic person. I like good writing. I like to be scared and I like the whole story of a good movie, the whole wrap-up of a movie.”
Hollywood is indeed becoming dominated by producers who began as sci-fi geeks themselves. These are the guys who hire fellow film geeks like Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi to make big budget movies.
[IMG:L]Dean Devlin – Producer of Stargate, Independence Day, Saturn winner for Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines
“I think The Matrix did a really great job of bringing the hip factor back to science fiction and kind of opened the doors on not only the special effects but also the subject matter of what you could write about and the tone of what you could do in a science fiction. The thing is in Hollywood, the studios tend to want to make something that was successful last year. They want to make it again. I remember when we did Stargate, a little over 10 years ago, 12 years ago, every studio in town said, ‘Well, sci-fi is dead. Nobody wants to see a sci-fi.’ Suddenly there were big, giant successes. A few years ago they said pirate movies are dead, nobody wants to see a pirate movie. Then someone makes a good one and suddenly it’s the biggest hit in the world. So I think science fiction has always had a loyal following, but I think science fiction fans have a very high standard. Just because it is science fiction doesn’t mean they’re going to support it, but if it’s something they feel is appropriate and up to the quality level that they demand, they’re going to support it in big, big numbers.”
Tom DeSanto – Producer of X-men, Battlestar Galactica, Transformers
“I’ve been here [at the Saturn Awards before]. The first one I came to was ’95 so it’s great to see it come into its own. It’s kind of like the journey we’ve had with genre films. When we were trying to get X-men made, nobody wanted to make comic book movies. Batman and Robin had just failed. Marvel was in bankruptcy and I think the genre film has really become legitimate. It hasn’t become the sort of castoff it used to be. Lord knows it’s been a lot of work. For me to be able to pull projects I wanted to do since I was a kid and make them reality, whether it’s X-men or getting Galactica jumpstarted and brought out of mothballs or even Transformers. I’ve been really lucky.”
The Saturn Awards also include horror movies, and that subgenre was well represented at the 33rd Annual show as well.
[IMG:L]Jenna Fischer – Star of The Office, and wife of Dawn of the Dead writer and Slither writer/director James Gunn
“I love horror and yes, I’ve always loved it. My favorite movie as a kid was Poltergeist and that was followed shortly thereafter by Legal Eagles, the Robert Redford/Debra Winger film. But I’ve always loved horror.”
Mary Elizabeth Winstead – Final Destination 3, Grindhouse, Black Christmas
“I’ve always been a huge fan. I love being scared and kind of being put in a dangerous situation but being in the safety of a theater or your own couch has always appealed to me. They make a lot of money at the box office, which I think is a huge indicator. Horror films tend to always be at the top so I think it’s something everybody’s interested in now. It’s like everybody wants to be scared and put in that position but feel safe at the end of the day.”
Eli Roth – Cabin Fever, Hostel, Hostel: Part II
“I think that in a way, a few years back, you had things like wrestling kind of came out of the closet for lack of a better term. They had these MIT professors having Monday Night Nitro parties and it’s like, ‘Yeah, we all love the stuff. We know it’s fake and we love it and we don’t care. We’re enjoying it.’ Suddenly everyone admitted they were wrestling fans. Then when X-men came out, suddenly it was like Comic-Con was the big thing. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we all love comic books. It’s just not a few geeks.’ That’s kind of what’s happened with horror where horror has really gone mainstream where a lot of people who before, horror’s taboo because people think, it’s like when you bring your friend to a horror movie and the movie’s really disgusting and they look at you as if you’re responsible. Like, ‘I didn’t make that. ‘Now everyone’s saying, ‘You know what? We all love this stuff. We know that it’s fake. We know it’s just storytelling. We love violent movies and let’s enjoy them.’ It’s just a movie. We know it’s fake.
