Category: WWdN in Exile

I had a very short day today, and was wrapped just after lunch, so I had the afternoon to myself to take care of some very important business.

Before I get to that, though, a little bit about working on Eureka…

The good news is that I was given permission to twitter and photograph from the set of Eureka. The bad news is that this episode is so awesome, everything I'm shooting or watching is a special delivery from Spoilertown … so I end up taking boring pictures of the outside of the old Battlestar Galactica stage. This may seem silly, but knowing that I'm >this< close to where that show was made gives me a little bit of the nerdsquee every morning. I mean, it happened right there!

I thought some of you would like to know that Neil Grayston is awesome. I've worked with him in all of my scenes, and I really like him. It turns out that we have a lot in common: we both played D&D when we were kids (I started with Basic, he started with 2nd edition AD&D), we both love acting, we both like science fiction, and we both love being on the show.

Okay, now back to (my) business. When I came up here last week, I felt like my suitcase was lighter than it should have been. I decided that it felt that way because I didn't bring a heavy coat, and I was used to carrying suitcases to cons, which are usually pushing the weight limit with books and pictures inside.

Well, when I got here and unpacked, I discovered that my suitcase was light because I'd left a load of laundry in the dryer and hadn't packed it. Oops. Luckily for me, I had enough of everything I needed except jeans and socks, so on Saturday, I ran over to a nearby department store and bought 4 pair of socks plus two pair of jeans.

This morning, when I was getting ready to get dressed for work, I saw that the cashier dude hadn't taken that giant plastic alarm-ringer-thingy off one pair of the jeans I'd bought. Luckily, I saved my receipt so I could get my GST back when I go home, so I knew I could just go there today after work and get it taken care of.

I felt very self-conscious walking around with a pair of jeans folded up underneath one arm for reasons I can't explain, and I guess I had good cause to feel weird about it because I was really aware of people looking at me when I walked past them. On my way to the store, it started to rain, so I decided to walk through a different department store that was a block closer than my destination. Of course, the alarm went off on the way into the store, drawing even more unwanted attention my way. I waited to see if someone in the store would come over and see what was going on, but nobody did, so I walked through the store and out the other side.

The alarm went off when I went out. I thought, "Seriously? This couldn't have happened once on Saturday, and it's happened twice today?"

An older man in a long coat and a jacket – looking very much like one of the bankers the headcrusher guy from Kids in the Hall hates so much – gave me a withering look, like he was convinced I'd stolen the jeans that were rolled up underneath my left arm. I can see why it would have appeared suspicious to, well, anyone. Again, I waited for someone to come over, and again nobody did. "Maybe Canadians are just more trusting than Americans," I thought, as I walked across the street and into my destination.

As I stood at the light and waited to cross, I noticed that a pair of girls were looking at me and whispering to each other. "Okay, Wil, you're totally being paranoid now. Maybe it's time to go back to the hotel and lie down for a little bit. Also, the light just changed so get a move on."

I walked into the store, and the alarm went off. "Of course," I thought.

I headed to the first cash register I could find, and waited. When an employee arrived, I blurted out, "I'm not a criminal!" She looked at me like that's exactly what I was, so I continued in what I hoped was a calmer voice, "I bought these on Saturday, and the guy forgot to take the tag off." She looked at me warily. "I have the receipt," I said. I pulled it out of my pocket and set it on the counter.

I remembered a day, about a year ago, when I was at a Staples near my house buying printer paper (yeah, they've got that) and a couple of full-on tweakers came in, trying to "return" a handful of pens and stuff they carried in a well-worn plastic bag. The manager made them immediately, and while the female half of the couple tried to convince him that they'd bought them the day before and just didn't need them, a car alarm went off in the parking lot. The guy half of the couple was seriously high – picking at his neck, tapping his foot, the whole thing – and he started looking around furiously while he said with increasing volume, "Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! ALARMALARMALARMALARM!" 

I got out of there before things got ugly. Well, uglier, anyway.

The cashier looked at me again while she picked up the receipt, and I was convinced she was seeing that tweaker couple in my face. "I have the card I paid with if you want to verify that I'm telling you the truth," I said. I don't know why I felt so guilty, but I wouldn't have been surprised at all if I got the tap on the shoulder and the "Sir, will you come with me, please?"

After what seemed like a very long time, she apparently decided that I wasn't making up a story, took the plastic alarm thingy off, and gave me back my jeans.

"Do you think I could have a small bag, please?" 

She just looked at me with a mixture of incredulity, confusion, annoyance, and other.

"I feel a little weird carrying a pair of jeans around town," I explained. With obvious reluctance, she gave me the bag. Needless to say, I got out of the store pretty quickly.

Once I was out of the store and on a fairly busy shopping street, I relaxed … for about a block, when I noticed that people were still looking at me. I remembered feeling like a circus freak when I was a teenager, because people stared at me all the time after seeing me on their TVs…

…and that's when it hit me. "Oh. People are looking at me because I was on TV last night and they're trying to figure out where they've seen me before."

Mostly out of relief, I laughed out loud and relaxed for real this time. I walked back to my hotel feeling fitter, happier, more productive.

I'm in Canada, working on Eureka, so I couldn't watch the previews CBS put online for The Wheaton Recurrence. Using all of my Evil Wil Wheaton powers, I contacted a sympathetic mole deep within the CBS Fortress of Power and got my hands on this preview.* I'm sorry I had to disable embedding, but it's the only way I could outrun CBS's army of lawyers. I'll leave it online as long as they let me.

Believe it or not, it was really difficult to get the timing just right on the reveal of Evil Wil Wheaton. The camera had to move into a precise position, and then Jim and I had to be in exactly the right place when he sat up and I turned around. I think we had to try it eight times before we finally got all the pieces to click together correctly.

The Wheaton Recurrence airs Monday, April 12, at 9:30pm on CBS.

*CBS asked me to take the video down once the episode aired. Since I'd like them to employ me (and let me do awesome stuff like this) in the future, I complied.

Greetings from Vancouver, where I sit high above the city, looking out over a balcony, through a sliding glass door that I dare not open, because single digit temperatures in Celsius are just as cold as their Fahrenheit cousins.

If you're joining the broadcast late, I'm here for an episode of Eureka, playing a brilliant-but-sarcastic scientist who is sort of a nemesis to Fargo, and my episode airs July 23rd on the Sci-Fi – *grumble* I mean SyFy – channel.

My day started at areyoufuckingserious in the morning, so I'm more than a little blurry in the brain, but I had some stuff I wanted to share:

The cast and crew of Eureka are, without exception, awesome. Every single person I've interacted with has been incredibly kind and welcoming, and I instantly felt at home on the set. I've only been here two days, but it feels like everyone likes each other, which confirms what I'd heard from people who have worked on the show when I asked about it.

We did a read through of the episode yesterday, but not all of the actors could be there, so a lot of the regulars just filled in for them. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair laughing when Colin Ferguson read one of them – who will remain nameless – in a voice that was disturbingly (or amazingly, depending on your point of view) similar to Mayor McCheese. After fifteen minutes with him, I could see where Carter's wry humor comes from.

Last night, I had dinner with my friend Aaron, who is also an actor and lives here. While we were waiting for our check, he asked me if I was excited to "go be an actor for a week."

"I really am," I said, "but I'm also a little nervous. I've spent so much time being a writer, I'm afraid that I'll get stuck in my head once I'm on the set."

I was talking about this thing that can happen to actors who are over-prepared or inexperienced. To really live in a scene and to really be connected to the other actors, we have to stay in each moment, reacting honestly and simply to what the other actors are doing. I do a ton of character preparation. In addition to knowing what my lines are, I know why I say each one. I know all sorts of stuff about my characters, because the more I know about a character, the wider my range is when I play him. I need to know what I want from each other character, what my purpose is in a scene, and then let all of that stuff fall away into some kind of subconscious background noise while I'm actually performing the scene … or I'm stuck in my head, thinking about things and watching things, instead of living in the scene.

I continued, "so I think I'll probably be a little rusty at first, but I've done this long enough to trust that I'll settle in. Not as quickly as I'd like, but I'll settle in."

"Well, I'm sure you're going to have a great time," he said, in that way one actor tells another to get the frak out of his own way, trust his instincts, and just enjoy the work, without really saying that. It's sort of a pep talk between friends, I guess, and it's one of those things that I just love about being an actor with some good friends.

I got to work with Neil and Erica for 6/8 of a page today, and though it took me longer to find my character and settle in than I wanted, it was, as they say, like riding a bike … and I didn't even fall off and scrape my knees.

Between rehearsal and filming today, I walked around the set a little bit. It's magnificent; I felt a sense of wonder and awe that I haven't felt since the first time I walked through the Enterprise on stage nine in 1987. The little details, like the signs on the walls, fingerprint scanners at the doors and the texture of the fake concrete make it feel like it's an actual building that happens to extend fourteen stories underground. I just love that I get to use my imagination to pretend I'm a person who works in this place. 

Vancouver is as beautiful as I remember it, and since I have the next three days off, I plan to put on my tourist hat (which is actually just a PAN Fleece to carry my geek gear) and see as much of it as I can.

If any locals want to mention some must-see places – especially art, non-touristy or geek-related – in the comments, I'd love that.

Reader G.M. e-mailed this picture and said, "How the f**k I ever believed that THIS was E.T., I'll never know — but I still played it for hours and hours."

The picture unlocked a memory I haven't thought about in a long time, but wanted to share:

Around 1982 or 1983, before City Walk at Universal Studios was even an idea, there was a big E.T. thing at the top of the hill, by the Whomphoppers and Victoria Station restaurants. Part of it was a giant silver spaceship (just like E.T.'s) that had eight or twelve Atari consoles around a pillar in the middle, all of them playing the E.T. video game.

I was seriously into video games then, and my parents had given me permission to play the E.T. game for like an hour or something while they did whatever parents did at an E.T. exhibit. (Eat lots of Reese's Pieces, I suppose.) I was beside myself with glee … until I played it for about ten minutes. It was the most beguiling, horrible, opposite-of-fun experience I'd ever had. I found my parents and asked if we could leave.

We've all heard the legend of the landfill, and the way I remember it, that's probably where this game belongs, but maybe I'll dig up E.T. on Stella and see if it really is as awful as I remember it.