San Diego, CA - Sci Fi Channel is known within the media for its out-of-this-world parties, but the bash it threw (in tandem with Entertainment Weekly magazine) at the rooftop pool of San Diego's Hotel
Solamar in San Diego Saturday night brought out a stellar group of television producers even more dazzling than the celebrity guests who walked the red carpet.
Babes of Battlestar
Okay, perhaps they weren't as dazzling as the sensational women of Battlestar Galactica -- Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Lucy Lawless and Mary McDonnell -- but check out the names in the next
paragraph and then tell me you wouldn't be excited to see them all huddled together in one spot.
At about the stroke of midnight, a once in a lifetime constellation of television's greatest science fiction producers - all in town for last weekend's mind-blowing convention - were seen clustered in a corner cabana, busily
exchanging compliments about each other's work. The super-nova included J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost), Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly), Ronald Moore and David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) and the legendary Stan Lee (creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and a multitude of Marvel heroes, and currently the host of Sci Fi's Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, now in its second season).
Stan Lee
Bryan Fuller, the creator of Dead Like Me and next season's hot new show Pushing Daisies, was also sighted. The buzz for this show is huge. Daisies was the top pick of the critics who
attended the just-concluded Summer Television Critics Association Tour in Beverly Hills. The Daisies cast drew hundreds of rabid fans to the enormous Warner Bros. booth in the middle of the Comic-Con floor - and the show doesn't even premiere until late September.
I can tell you that Abrams wouldn't reveal details about his upcoming top-secret feature film, the one without a title that is set to open on January 18, 2008, but he lit up like a kid on Christmas morning when I simply
mentioned the release date. And I can tell you that at 1 a.m. the indefatigable Mr. Lee, who has been writing comics and superhero stories for more than six decades and is now in his mid-80s, was still busily working the party.
What I can't tell you is which one of the producers mentioned above was overheard saying as he entered the pool area, "So
this is what a party looks like - when it doesn't suck!"
In addition to the beautiful babes of Battlestar Galatica and their hunky co-star Michael Trucco (whose character, Sam Anders, was one of the many Cylons shockingly revealed in the third season finale), Colin Ferguson and other cast members from Sci Fi's Eureka were also at the party. Robert
Downey Jr. (at the Con to promote his upcoming feature film Iron Man), Liv Tyler, Sarah Silverman and Zachary Quinto (the sinister Sylar on Heroes) were among the other celebrities who stopped by. Matthew Atherton, whose alter-ego, Feedback, was the season one
winner on Who Wants to Be a Superhero? was there, too, along with Nell Wilson, a.k.a. Fat Momma. Atherton told me that Feedback is featured in the upcoming made-for-Sci Fi movie Mega Snake, scheduled to debut on August 25.
