No need to cry on the horsey

Going to pop-culture conventions with my Sestra is a blast. We get to speak with people whose work has really touched us. The risk you run, though, is that over the course of just a minute or two, impressions can be irrevocably changed ... and sometimes not for the better.

Celebs at these functions usually fit into three categories -- ones who really get it, they might have been/still are fan girls and boys themselves. They make you feel like you're the only person they will meet that day. Then there are the ones who are very cordial -- as actors there's probably a reason they succeeded on that career path, right? And then there are those apparently there to rack up some fast cash. They couldn't care less and make you feel that way as well.

With that in mind, we headed to Spooky Empire in Orlando. The big draw for me was Richard Dreyfuss. I love compiling lists -- and Dreyfuss starred in my first three favorite movies -- Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Goodbye Girl. That made me a major fan, I've seen those movies in the triple-digits apiece and the bulk of his work since -- much of it in actual theaters upon release.

But Richard wasn't scheduled to be there until the second day, and we had some great familiar faces to meet the first night. Starting with Daphne Zuniga. We've seen her so many things in movies and on TV over the years with The Sure Thing and Spaceballs at the top of the heap.

Put her in the top celeb category, she was so engaging and attentive. Sestra showed her a Spaceballs magazine she hadn't seen before, and I explained to her that as a journalism major in college, an article on The Sure Thing was one of the first things I had published in the school paper. I tried to induce her to tell me the juicier details of The Sure Thing shoot. But after hypothesizing that I was still in journalism and might reveal tales not for publication, that fell by the wayside.

Daphne did say that the movie was cast perfectly, when she was 19 and co-star John Cusack was 16, and that they both were those characters. "I was like, come on, kid," she said about him joking around on the set. Zuniga remembered director Rob Reiner compelling them to enjoy the experience, because they had no idea how the finished product would fare in the marketplace. "And to this day, after 30 years, I still love it," she added. We do too.

She also talked about being pulled into a fun Twitter exchange with Mark Hamill and William Shatner, who have engaged in a light-hearted social media battle of Star Wars vs. Star Trek. "What would Princess Vespa say?" Bill tweeted at her. Daphne's perfect response? "She'd say whatever Mel Brooks told her to say."

We also spent time with two-fifths of The Breakfast Club. I praised Molly Ringwald for her excellent piece in The New Yorker in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein accusations and said I was really looking forward to the movie's upcoming Criterion Collection release on Jan. 2. Molly said she was too, adding that I should look into Criteron's streaming service, which enables viewers to see all the incredible extras on Criterion releases.

Sestra brought an excellent press booklet for The Breakfast Club she picked up in London to be autographed and Ringwald was so intrigued by it that she painstakingly took pictures of each page of her bio. Anthony Michael Hall -- who introduced himself to us as Michael -- wasn't quite as interested in his, but he was very polite and sweet.

The next day I dressed up as UFO-burned Jillian Guiler from Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- I think I might have been more recognizable if a buddy from the CE3K group who has a Roy Neary flight suit was able to make the event -- and prepared to meet Dreyfuss. I had a spiel prepared for weeks, about how "the fish movie and the alien movie and the Oscar movie made him one of my favorite actors for life." And then that bit about seeing all his movies, many of them in the theaters. It's easy to forget your lines when you get in front of the person, though.

Thanks to Sis, we had the fast pass, which put us behind the VIPs but ahead of general admission fans. That made it roughly a 90-minute wait -- he left for about 20 minutes for a pro photo op -- but I got a little jump-start when Richard animatedly waved at me while heading out for the shoot. I must have exclaimed, "He waved at me!" 10 times.

Usually I'm a quivering mess when it comes to meeting someone who looms so large, but I was able to keep calm enough to take pictures for Sestra, who creatively wished him a happy birthday with a special meme. I got my spiel out largely as practiced for a couple weeks before the event. But I wasn't prepped for his jovial response. Without missing a beat, he said, "You have impeccable taste."

Then I asked Dreyfuss if he knew who I was dressed up as. "I know who I think you are," Richard said. "Who am I?" I responded. "I'd be arrested if I told you what I was thinking," he continued. That might have had something to do with the cleavage and the luscious blonde locks. No wonder I got the animated wave! He penned that sentiment on the Jaws lobby card I brought for him to sign -- I'm pretty sure not many people can say they have something like that in their collection.

When I got to the Close Encounters lobby card, I said it was my favorite film of all and congratulated him on the 40th anniversary. "This is the one I expect to outlive me," Dreyfuss said. With all the films he has to choose from, I was taken aback and sincerely touched by that. We have a whole group of people on Facebook who will eagerly back me up on that sentiment.

I told him Mark and I had just gotten back from Devils Tower, where we spent some time recreating scenes shot by Oscar-winning director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond. Richard said Vilmos was very, very special and had enjoyed his visit to Steven Spielberg so much on the set of Jaws that he stayed in Martha's Vineyard (as his summer home) for the rest of his life. Dreyfuss also let me on a little secret, he had gotten to spend time with another CE3K alumnus earlier in the day -- Cary Guffey who played Barry Guiler in the film at the tender age of 4.

And then on to the third lobby card for The Goodbye Girl, the movie for which Richard won the Academy Award as Best Actor. I told him about how special it was since I watched it many, many times with my mom. "There's something about this one, I've never had more fun," he said. "I've had a lot of fun filming different movies for different reasons, but not like this one. I don't know why..." That was left hanging in the air, so that anyone with half a brain -- like me at that moment -- would know he meant the Oscar, the first one given to a male lead in a comedy. "You sure love a love story," I said off the cuff, echoing Elliot Garfield's sentiment at the end of the film. I wound up having five minutes in his company, a pretty solid amount of time for a man with a healthy line of eager fans.

It was a lot of fun posing for some pictures at the table and then again at the end of the day. Now I was back to my normal hair color (sorta), had washed off my sunburn and donned a Moon Over Parador shirt -- another of my favorite Dreyfuss movies. When it was my turn to take the posed picture by "Jaws," I told him my name again and he said, "I remember." See, he's a really good actor, because I ate that one up, even though I looked entirely different at this point.

Richard rested his head against me and then pulled away, and I immediately said, "No, no, come back!" So he obliged and leaned on me again as the photographer took the shot. But sensing he wasn't looking into the camera -- which proved to be true -- Dreyfuss asked her to take another picture. I got both of them for the price of one.

I added another signature to my ongoing X-Files project at Spooky Empire too. Stan Shaw -- who outside of his guest appearance in the Season 9 episode "Audrey Pauley" I probably know best from Fried Green Tomatoes -- didn't have a picture in The Complete X-Files book, but I wanted to talk with him about the late, great director Kim Manners and one of my favorite shows of the final season of the original run.

In "Audrey Pauley," Shaw's character, Stephen Murdoch, gets trapped with Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) while hanging on between life and death at a hospital. Stan recalled getting a call about the role from Manners, whom he knew from around town. The next day he was on set. "Kim's great," Shaw said. "The scene when I was in (Monica's) arms and disappeared, they had three people pulling me out of the frame as the camera moved around. It was magic."

So now I'll spare as much time for the guest who belongs in that lowest category as he did for me. It may be standard policy for celebs to do a table combo price, but not so John Cusack. It was full price for a photo and full price for a signature. This was after his sister, Joan, bowed out the day before the con opened, squashing our sibling pro photo op.

Anyhow, since I had Zuniga sign my Sure Thing DVD cover, I felt compelled to complete the set with John. It was super quick and he wrote right over Nicollette Sheridan. Sestra wasn't allowed to take a picture of me getting the autograph. "Oh yeah, Daphne's here too," Cusack said to me from underneath his ballcap. That would be the signature next to yours, John, I thought. And that was about it. But if my opinion was irrevocably altered, I didn't even notice. I was somewhere up about as high as the CE3K spaceship climbs after picking up Dreyfuss at Devils Tower.