Last weekend, Michelle Mower and the good people of SWAMP offered to pay my way to have me drive to Houston so I could emcee and moderate a Q&A for Amber Benson's indie film LOVERS, LIARS AND LUNATICS. Amber's best known for her role as Tara, Willow's lover on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. I'm best known as the guy who ran the Buffy Sing-Alongs in Austin, so the chance to meet someone from the show, much less someone I'd sung along with dozens of times before, was not something I was going to let pass me by.

The screening was at the Rice Media Center, a small screening room on the Rice campus that I wasn't aware existed but Sarah knew all about from her days going to school there. I'm not sure how they publicized it, other than newsletters to their members and some posters around the campus, but it was kind of fun (and luxurious) to not have to worry about it. This wasn't my event, I just got to be the host.

That in and of itself was a weird thing. Because, really? They were willing to pay for my gas (insert obligatory comment about the high price of gas this summer here) and get me a hotel room just so I could be the guy pointing at audience members and saying, "Yes, you. What's your question for Amber?" I was flattered, but also a bit confused when Michelle asked me to come out for that. But like I said, my confusion was in no way going to make me pass the opportunity to meet one of the Scoobies by.

Instead, I wanted to take my duties seriously so that I could actually perform a service that was worth the trouble and expense for the group putting the whole screening together. I've certainly been to my share of both good and bad Q&A's, and I think I have an idea about how to do them right, so I figured this would be as good a chance as any to test them out.

See, some Q&A's don't have an emcee at all, and the filmmaker or special guest or whoever just comes out on the stage, awkwardly laughs for a minute, asks if the crowd has questions, and then things go from there. Thats simple, and it can work, but the beginning is always a little bit of a stutterfest. There's almost never a hand raised immediately, as the crowd is a little bit shy to address this person they admire. So then the guest says, "Well, I guess if there are no questions, I can just go home then!" Everyone laughs, then someone decides to be brave and just shouts out a question. To me that always feels a little jarring and gets the mood in the room down to a weird level.

Other times, a Q&A will have an emcee who's directly involved in bringing the guest in, and that emcee can easily fall into either the "I'm so great, and I put this thing on because I'm awesome. Don't you think I'm awesome?" trap, or the "Look how well I know this guest. It's like we're friends. I'm going to mention something about our conversation backstage just to let you guys know that me and this guest are really good friends." Both of those are horrible and just leave you feeling bad for the host. Of course, nothing is worse than the, "I will now ignore the audience and ask my own horrible question" trap. Ooohhhh, that's just the worst.

but I think there's a way you can have an emcee run a Q&A so that it feels more like a conversation, and from my experience with Amber, I think it definitely works. What I try to do is have a couple of questions ready to go at the beginning, and I'll ask the guest those preplanned questions before turning it over to an audience Q&A. During the time when I'm asking my question or two, I'll be sort of candid and ask a follow up question if the guest leaves some thought hanging, sort of playing like I'm a talk show host instead of a moderator. That can get the ball rolling, and it serves two purposes - the audience has time to think about what questions they want to ask, and you can prep with the guest and have them ready with one of their best anecdotes so the audience gets to hear that story right out of the gates. I feel like that worked in this session with Amber, but you can judge for yourself. Here's the beginning of the Q&A. I slipped up just a little bit right off the bat, but then went into asking her about how she financed the movie.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgbgFts9lkE&hl=en]

At any rate, even if you thought my technique was horrible, Amber was awesome, and totally started getting into telling full stories at every question. My favorite, and I think everyone's favorite, is her description of what it was like to shoot the climax (literally) for the Under Your Spell song in Once More With Feeling (the Buffy musical episode for anyone completely uninitiated:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=RX4RZjyK9ss]

So yeah, all in all, I think it was a success, and hopefully SWAMP is happy that they decided to bring me out. Plus, Amber and I are totally best friends now, and we shared all sorts of stories backstage. I'd tell you about them, but that just seems so tacky, doesn't it?