This year’s Virginia Film Festival, “Funny Business,” will not inaugurate a new era of Virginia Film Festivals wherein funny things—and celebrities—happen. (Onetime local Steven Soderbergh popped in 16 years ago, for Cripes sake!) Things have always tended to get a little funny when Tinseltown’s A- through C-listers come to town. As we reported 10 years ago, the good news then was that Sigourney Weaver was not dropped from a spacecraft into an intergalactic penal colony filled with murderers with YY-chromosomal anomalies. (Alien 3—rent it.) The bad news, however, was that the badly dressed badass’ “flights were screwed up,” and the alien annihilator was late for VFF’s opening gala. Even when Weaver finally showed, those who didn’t catch her in the flash of the cameras likely didn’t catch her at all.
From the archives
“‘She,’ of course, was Hollywood mega-star Sigourney Weaver, aka Ellen ‘Get away from her, you bitch’ Ripley, the badass space heroine of Alien, Aliens, and Alien: Resurrection. Weaver’s high-tech characterizations actually date back to the slime-shooting days of Ghostbusters, but as the minutes ticked by, there was growing trepidation that anything but time-travel would get her to the Bayly on time. Apparently her flights were screwed up.
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“Video artist Daniel Reeves was delivered to reporters as a sort of human coming-attraction, and the press tolerated his quiet musings on alternative exhibit spaces (his work was on display at the old train station) until the call went up ‘She’s here!’ at which point Reeves was dropped like so much stale popcorn.
“Alas, she was not here, and the ever-hungering press corps was left to salivate after the forbidden plates of battered chicken and quesadillas that festival partiers brought outside.
“The lights started flashing again when a Jayne Mansfield lookalike made her way up the path, preceded by a helium bosom and followed by gawking stares. Too bad, she was ‘nobody,’ and the Sigourney vigil pressed on.
“And then, as if in a movie, the leading lady graciously walked into the scene. Fair and tall in a green see-through overblouse and knee-high suede boots, she was reassuringly lined of face and charmingly lucid of thought. Yes, she loved working with [Stan] Winston on Aliens; yes, it was lovely to be at last on terra firma; and yes, she’d love to talk about her new movie. A Map of the World was a ‘real acting experience,’ she declared. Performing in sci-fi stuff, by contrast, was fun but left no lasting impression.
“She took a few more questions as the crowd pressed closer. She shook a few hands. And then, in a flash, she was gone.”
Cathy Harding
October 26, 1999
Getting covered
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November 3, 1993
