At this year’s Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, fans were treated to reunion panels for two iconic 80’s films – Back To The Future (guests: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Tom Wilson & James Tolkan) and Goonies (guests: Sean Astin, Corey Feldman & Ke Huy Quan).
Photo By Keven Skinner
Back To The Future Cast Reunion
Michael J. Fox was initially supposed to attend last year’s Calgary Expo, but was unable to because he needed surgery. In 2019 – the Canadian acting legend was determined to make up for the missed show and Fox showed up for the fans, even though his Parkinson’s disease must have taken a major toll on him all weekend long. The actor looked noticeably fatigued but he was in good spirits reminiscing about Back to The Future with the rest of the main cast. He joked constantly about how he had no clue what he was doing professionally while making the movie and that his only goal was to be the voice of the audience and to be as funny as possible, while the rest of the cast were focused on portraying these over-the-top characters with the strangest quirks and traits.
Photo By Keven Skinner
“Some days I would run onto the Family Ties set and just yell DOC!” – said Fox, as his worlds between TV and film began to collide while working on Back To The Future.
Christopher Lloyd was about as chill a human being one could imagine and the soft spoken actor recalled that when coming up with his character’s mannerisms in the films, that he focused on learning as many scientific facts as possible – and really just embraced the science terminology overload and let that bleed into his performance. His favorite line from the trilogy was, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” – which he gladly said in character to the eager Calgary crowd. James Tolkan couldn’t hear a single thing – so Tom Wilson had to repeat every question and even hold the mic up to Tolkan’s face when he was talking, adding some great comedy to the panel. Tolkan was there to recite his famous lines from the film – not much more. He did recall that he based his character on a horrible teacher he had growing up, which makes a lot of sense. The biggest surprise for me personally, was how entertaining and funny Tom Wilson aka Biff was during the Q&A. He even brought his own camera to record the damn thing – the man knows how to work a crowd and Calgary loved him.
Photo By Keven Skinner
Goonies Cast Reunion
“It’s about time!” – actor Ke Huy Quan on seeing more major leading roles for Asian actors.
Photo by Keven Skinner
Seeing Sean Astin, Corey Feldman and Ke Huy Quan together on stage to talk about the beloved cult classic Goonies, was a reunion I never thought I’d see in real life. I wasn’t even sure I needed to see it, but after seeing it — I’m happy that I did because that film is so cherished among fans of 80’s cinema and it’s so quotable all these years later… Astin, Quan and Feldman were having a blast on stage and I have to say I really dig Feldman’s rockstar look – the dude was on point and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand. The man is such an iconic child performer but man oh man – why are we not seeing Feldman in more mainstream roles? He’s the best… He handled the crowd so well that he managed to even breeze right through the year’s most horrible audience question and he did it admirably.
We all experience it at least once every convention – the dreaded room killer question – the one that makes the entire crowd cringe for the actor who has to respond. This one took the win for not only 2019’s worst question, but maybe the worst con question IN THE HISTORY OF CONVENTIONS.
“Mr. Feldman – I know that you work with children who have also been sexually abused. What I wanted to know is whether or not any of the other actors had any dark stories to share from their childhood about being abused as well?”
DEAD.
This cat just asked the cast of the Goonies if they had been sexually abused as kids, and then asked them to elaborate on that scenario — all in the same question.
LOL.
Photo by Keven Skinner
Feldman, like a damn pro – talked briefly about how it’s important to talk about these types of issues but questioned whether or not this was the appropriate space for those kinds of discussions. Sean Astin, looking absolutely bewildered himself said, “That’s such an inappropriate question, especially for this venue. Maybe let’s just talk about the Goonies and try to keep it light in here for everybody.” And so they did…. It’s these kinds of moments where I ask if volunteers vet questions before fans line up to the microphone, because that one… That one should have been deleted right away. Good times. lol.
I thought long and hard about whether or not to include that moment but I think it’s VERY important for people to read about these awkward moments, so that we can further try to prevent them from happening. The Goonies reunion was awesome – and it was fantastic seeing these guys together on stage to chat about it. Period. Maybe just don’t ask the guests if they’ve been sexually molested next time OK fans? Let’s aim for that.