Collectors and fans might go overboard, but they're not so different from you and me
by Tamar Wilner
There's little indication from the outside what you'll find in Brett Black's home. The house is muted tan with green shutters, on a quiet street in an average West Knoxville subdivision. A petite sculpted cat licks its paw on the front stoop.
But head downstairs and you'd swear you're descending into the Millennium Falcon. Every nook is stacked with Star Wars memorabilia weird and wonderful, from cake pans, valentines, candy molds and underwear to beach towels, pillows, toothbrush holders and a ceramic cookie jar. There's an R2D2 telephone, signed by R2's alter ego Kenny Baker, that rings by emitting the droid's characteristic bleeps and squeals. There's an Obi Wan Kenobi mug, a C3PO tape dispenser, and a red-and-white cloth Jabba the Hutt belt, as well as disarmingly realistic statues of Yoda, Anakin Skywalker, and Jar Jar Binks.
A sticker advertises "The Star Wars," while a flyer promotes "Revenge of the Jedi." Black shows off his favorite item, one of the original 32 silk-screen promotional banners sent to theaters in 1976, now worth a cool $8,000. Black also boasts 200 posters, 106 original comic books, 30 hats, 15 crew jackets and 20,000 trading cards. The total size of his collection? Ten thousand pieces, plus the cards, all insured for $200,000—the largest Star Wars assemblage in Tennessee.
Black devotes about four hours a day to his collection, re-arranging, dusting, preparing for conventions and searching the Internet for new finds. Is he a bit nutty? Not really.
"I would say that I definitely talk and do something with Star Wars every single day, but I don't eat, sleep and breathe Star Wars," he reassured this reporter.
Such an assertion seems hard to believe. After all, as much as we might like a given movie, most of us wouldn't collect 10,000 souvenirs to prove our affection, or make our basements into shrines to our passion. So one might expect such collectors to be frighteningly fanatical and perhaps socially inept, as they subordinate lesser pursuits to the quest for completion. One pictures The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy: an individual consumed by esoterica, his being set aquiver by the latest Ebay offering, even his sexual fantasies satisfied by pixel superheroines. While these characters are occasionally borne out in reality, the truth is more compelling: collectors are mostly like us.
To observe collectors and fanatics in their natural habitat, your best bet is to head to the Merchants I-75 Expo this Saturday and Sunday. There, a brand-new event called Adventure Con seeks to lure them in with over 250 tables of collectibles, from Star Wars and G.I. Joe to comic books and antique toys, plus appearances from a cadre of quasi-celebrities. Yvonne Craig and Julie Newmar, TV's Batgirl and Catwoman, will be on hand. Dick Durock, known best for playing the Swamp Thing in movies and TV, will sign autographs within shouting distance of Dick Warlock, Michael Myers in Halloween II. Fans can take pictures with Richard Kiel, who played the James Bond villain Jaws. Best of all for folks like Black, Peter "Chewbacca" Mayhew will greet his zealous supporters.
The hardcore fan bases for most of these "celebs" are sprinkled thinly across the globe. An Internet search finds no local clubs for Batman or James Bond. But Star Wars is another story. Ever since the theatrical re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, interest in the movies has exploded faster than the Death Star. Conventions sprang up; collectors once scouring the earth for the few remaining mementos rejoiced at a flood of new products. Episode I, 1999's The Phantom Menace, only increased the buying frenzy, and early this year the Tennessee Star Wars Collecting Group (TSWCG) was born. Black administers the TSWCG website (www.thejawa. net/cgi-bin/YaBB/TSWCG/YaBB.cgi), where members help each other track down action figures, ornaments and Pizza Hut cup toppers.
TSWCG members have a vested interest in making Adventure Con a success. "As many people as possible need to turn out for this show in Knoxville," Black writes on the TSWCG site. "East Tennessee is not considered a sci-fi stronghold but if enough people turn out for this type of show and to see the actors, they will continue to bring in new guests each year."
According to Adventure Con promoter Marcus Wollack, Knoxville has never had a convention on Adventure Con's scale, never brought in guests of the same stature. He says past toy and comic shows were poorly organized, and Adventure Con is Knoxville's first in three years.
Two weeks before the convention I headed to the Expo, where TSWCG members would be meeting with Wollack. I wanted to see real fanatics, hopelessly dorky ones, with auras of social awkwardness glowing like light sabers. I wanted, frankly, a story. But I would have missed the collectors completely if I hadn't noticed three Star Wars mugs perched on a planter beside them. Sure, Adam Matthews was wearing a Star Wars hat and t-shirt, but those somehow managed to be subtle. Barry Cain wore a mock turtleneck and jogging pants—not a speck of The Force on him.
"Excuse me, are you from the Star Wars Collecting Group?" I asked Matthews.
"Uh, yeah..." he replied warily. Clearly, this is something difficult to admit to a complete stranger. And who could blame him? In a recent Internet Movie Database (www.IMDb.com) poll, Star Wars fans were voted the second "geekiest," right behind Trekkies. Whether the followers of Yoda live up to their reputation depends on how you define "geeky."
Some might say it's nerdy just to devote one's time and energy to a movie or TV show. If that's the case, "nerd" is a label the TSWCG members can hardly avoid. Black has been collecting for 25 years, seriously since 1990. He spends about $1,000 a month updating his collection, while Matthews and Cain spend several hundred. For seven years Black has led Star Wars panels at sci-fi conventions in Atlanta, Nashville, Detroit and elsewhere. He's an advisor on "Matters of the Force" for Atlanta's Dragon Con, one of the nation's largest sci-fi conventions. There, panels focus on everything from collecting and running fan clubs to making props and costumes, and can draw 200 people each.
But most would agree there's more to geekdom. We consider geeks beneath us: they are folks on the bottom of the social food chain, those who can't operate within acceptable parameters of "normal" human interaction. Fanaticism leads to geekism when the fan loses touch with reality, when his complete fixation makes him hard to be around. Maybe he just talks about his obsession incessantly. Or maybe, after dressing up as a favorite character and learning to speak that character's native tongue, the fan loses himself, and becomes merely a creation of Lucasfilm or Gene Roddenberry. Black does not approve of such extreme behavior.
"If you do a very good costume, it can be done very well. To get so much into those parts and think you're the person, or throw together a bad costume, that's what gives Star Trek and Star Wars a bad name," Black says.
And while Clones do exist, most Star Wars enthusiasts carry on normal lives. Cain, Black and Matthews all sustain happy marriages to non-Star Wars collecting women who insist Star Wars merchandise not stray from a designated room in the house. Black says his family actively seeks out new items for his collection, and his wife has sewn him Darth Maul bedroom slippers and a Star Wars logo pillow. His wedding featured an R2D2 groom's cake, but no worries—the main wedding cake was traditional white. The three fans maintain outside interests: Matthews, a landscaper, nurtures an interest in art nouveau painting, both creating and collecting.
But what could be more natural to collect than Star Wars? After all, most people born in the 1960s and 1970s spent their childhood or adolescent years watching Star Wars movies in the theaters, sleeping on Star Wars bed sheets, and brushing their teeth with Star Wars electric toothbrushes. A lot of them would have valuable collections now if they hadn't chucked their Return of the Jedi stickers out with their He-Man lunch boxes.
"They'll kook on it, but then they'll see your stuff and say, 'Oh, you have this?'" Matthews says of his friends.
While Adventure Con will offer hobbyists a chance to expand their collections, most say their biggest interest is in seeing the stars. Wollack also believes the celebs will be Adventure Con's biggest draw. For his part, Peter Mayhew (a.k.a. Chewbacca) says he enjoys the fans' company. He notes most Star Wars fans at conventions grew up on the original movies and are now 28- or 30-years old. Unlike teenagers, mature fans seem to recognize their idols are human and capable of conversation.
"They'll come up to you and talk to you rather than standing there just looking at you," Mayhew says.
The only person who seems more excited about collectibles than celebrities is, well, one of the celebrities. Richard Kiel is most famous for playing the steel-toothed henchman Jaws in two 007 films, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). That's a distinction he's not thrilled about, since he played many roles before the Bond films.
"After 17 years I was suddenly an overnight success," he says.
Kiel has appeared in numerous movies since then, written several screenplays and even penned a 542-page novel about the life of Cassius Clay, the 19th-century white abolitionist for whom Mohammed Ali is named. But Jaws he is to most who seek his John Hancock. So maybe it's understandable that Kiel approaches conventions with little enthusiasm for meeting and greeting. When asked whether he enjoys going to conventions, Kiel immediately responds by listing the relics he's had the fortune to find for his children and grandchildren, not (as Mayhew does) by praising the fans.
Kiel does have a small, devoted following, some of whom place the Bond role low on their list of favorite Kiel moments.
"I started seeing Richard Kiel six years ago when I started getting into B-grade horror movies, so I thought, 'This guy is big, that's pretty cool,'" 16-year-old New Hampshire resident Mark Santoski says. "...I was actually kind of surprised when I found out he's in James Bond."
Santoski runs what he calls "The Shrine to Richard Kiel" at www.angelfire.com/nh/kiel. There, fans from several countries debate such questions as what Kiel would have done had he not become an actor.
"I think a sportman. A swimmer, something like that," a Scandinavian fan opines.
It's a devotion Matthews finds slightly ridiculous.
"Some people will get into anything," he laughs.
May 30, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 22
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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