Preview
2005 SPACEY AWARDS
Sunday, May 29 at 7 p.m.
Space: The Imagination Station
There is no red carpet, thus there are no red-carpet interviews. For that blessing alone the creators of the Spacey Awards on Space: The Imagination Station deserve to be commended.
No, you won’t see the irritating likes of Star Jones (ABC’s The View) and Ben Mulroney (CTV’s e-talk Daily) jostling with each other for an inane 20-second sound bite with a Hollywood star on this unconventional awards show. The Spaceys don’t pack an auditorium full of people to pass out their hardware – they take their bug-eyed alien award statues to the recipients.
The result is an original awards showcase packed with unpredictable field pieces and comedy bits. Honouring the best in science-fiction cinema and television, this year’s edition of the three-year-old Spaceys is being hosted by Space on-air personalities Jonathan Llyr, Natasha Eloi and Kim Poirier.
Spaceys production supervisor Simon Evans says the unusual format of the show presents some challenges. "Not only do we have to travel the world looking for the people we want, we have to fit their schedule into our schedule."
With more than half the award categories decided by online fan voting that doesn’t stop until a couple of weeks prior to the program’s debut, field video crews are left scrambling to pin down many of the award winners.
Then there’s the task of convincing honoured performers that the whole thing is genuine.
"Most of the American actors we go after have never heard of Space, because the station is not available in the U.S.," says Evans. "So we have to convince them that this is a real channel with a legitimate awards show, because they don’t know what it’s all about."
Still, the prestige of Canada’s sci-fi awards is growing, as evidenced by the long list of celebrity award presenters recruited for the 05 Spacey telecast. Xena, Warrior Princess, a.k.a. Lucy Lawless, is part of the proceedings, as are starlet Carmen Electra, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and accomplished film directors John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) and Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy).
One past Spacey recipient, Lord of the Rings film director Peter Jackson, is an admitted fan of the alien-head award statues. "He’s a fun guy," Evans says of the burly New Zealander. "He understands (that) without the fans you’ve got nothing. Even though he was working on one of the most epic productions of all time he still took time out for us. He genuinely seemed to appreciate what we gave him." Evans thinks it’s refreshing that Jackson gratefully accepted his Spacey awards both before and after his major Oscar haul of last year.
Evans concedes that expectations for the original awards broadcast were low. "I think the first year we just tried to see if anybody cared," he quips. "The response was pretty good. So now every year things ramp up a little bit more, because the fans kind of expect it now."
While the Spaceys continue to gain momentum in terms of star power and awareness, Evans makes it clear that the show will always remain lighthearted, mostly out of necessity. "We can’t take ourselves too seriously," he says. "Look at what we do. We live in science-fiction land." |
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