The Festival

The William S. Paley festival (CBS creator) shows CBS series from 2006. The reviewed shows were: Grey's Anatomy, Entourage, Everybody hates Chris, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Medium, My Name is Earl, House, Family Guy, The Golden Girls, How I net your Mother, An Evening with Sally Field, Weeds.

How I met your Mother was shown the on Mars, 13th 2006.

Luckily I was in California that day. I had my ticket. I had just to present myself to the Director's Guild of America Theatre before 7PM.

How to get there?

This question had worried me for a long time. I was at a work meeting more than 30 miles to the East of West Hollywood, which was expected to finish at about 5:30pm.

I had already tried driving in LA a few times and I knew that even the 5-lane freeways may be very slow especially around downtown. And I had to go through downtown to go from Orange County to West Hollywood!

Having asked an American colleague at the meeting how long it could take to go to Hollywood. He told me it would take 2h. So I asked him about my alternative plan to take the Metro green line then the blue and finally the red that should take a maximum of 1h30. He did not encourage this idea. I understood that I should avoid taking the blue line at night.

I preferred not to check out the night-time clientele of the Metro and took my car, leaving the meeting at 5:15pm, shortly before it ended.

I took I-5 North, then I-10 West and finally Fairfax North, leaving I-5 before a traffic jam. But 3 miles further on I got stuck in another traffic jam that covered several miles! I will probably never know if I should have stayed on I-5 to reach I-101 and Sunset Bld. Though the positive thing about this route was that it ended in a right turn to the parking lot, which gave me a significant advantage over all those who came from Sunset and had to turn left. It was 18:50 and there was a lot of confusion at the entry to the parking lot!

Arrival

When I reached the theatre lobby, I saw the place where the official photographers where snapping the actors. Alyson was there but I had only walked half the distance toward her, taking my camera out of his pocket, when she started to leave. It was 18:58 and the show was about to start.

I went back to the Will Call desk to collect my ticket. The woman there was not able to find it. She had only 20 tickets left in her hands and after checking 3 times was still not able to find my name. Fortunately her computer confirmed I had a reservation and so at the fourth try she succeeded in finding the ticket! I really did not need this additional delay.

I went straight to the auditorium to find a place. It was two thirds full and of course the free seats were at the rear and on the sides. That was not what I wanted so I searched at the front for an empty place and I found one at the sixth row beside a big guy who was using a little more than his own seat. I narrowed myself and I got a rather good position.

The Showing

It started with a film advertising the Television and Radio Museum and the Festival. Then all the series celebrated by the festival were presented by short extracts and comments. Of course when How I met your Mother appeared on the screen the audience started clapping. At the end of the credits, the film thanked the festival's sponsors. Among them I noticed American Airlines, the carrier I had flown with to California the day before. And indeed during that flight I had seen a screening of an early episode of How I met your Mother.

Then the lights went up and our host came to introduce the guests: the 2 authors, the director and the 5 main actors. For each, she started with a short biography and then the cast member came on stage. Each guest received applause but Alyson also received some cheers when her name was announced and she appeared on stage.

At the end of this part, an incident occurred: the host missed the last guest on the list who was Cobbie Smulders. So she had to come on without having been announced. This made the audience laugh and embarrassed the host who tried to recover from her mistake by reading the biography late.

After their short appearance on stage, the guests went down to sit at the right end of the first row. This puzzled me because there was a row of chairs on the stage. That was soon explained: 2 episodes of How I met your Mother were to follow. To present them the host called back the 2 authors to the stage. The episodes were the pilot and the Pineapple incident (my preferred episode until that date). The authors did detain us long and the show began.

Question Time

After the screening, the host called her guests back on stage to take the seats that were waiting for them since the beginning. From left to right: the director Pamela Fryman, Neil, Jason, Alyson, Cobbie, Josh, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays. Then she ended by calling a chairman (she said a moderator) I did not know and I did not memorize his name.

Working from right to left, this chairman started by asking each guest a question. After this very structured part that allowed everybody to speak, the debate became less organized. Neil, but also Alyson made jokes. Unfortunately I didn't get most of them and have forgotten those I did.

After the chairman's questions, it was the audience's turn. He sent the mic to a selected member of the audience and designated the next questioner. But when the first question was answered, he named another person forgetting the previously chosen questioner. He did that every time. One audience member twice became this unfortunate challenger (the green shirted guy as he was designated and who was just 2 rows in front of me) and this made the audience laugh. So finally he got his question.

I had my own question but I didn't dare ask it, the standard of most of the questions was so high, often starting with a joke. And there were no shortage of candidates. One of them was quite unlike the others. He started by saying that he did not know the show though he loved the 2 screened episodes. But he added that it was his girl friend who was a huge fan of Alyson's. And he forced the girl beside him to stand up. She was very embarrassed but I supposed she was pleased to have been identified in front of Alyson as a fan.

During the discussion the question about the issuing of show's DVDs has been raised. The authors answered that they would like them to be released and searched the audience for 20th Century Fox (who are the show producers) representatives. They confirmed that the DVDs were likely to be released.

A question about guest stars at the end of the season was asked. It was Alyson who answered because Alexis will be in the season final.

The discussion was filmed by 2 cameras at the rear of the auditorium. So it is likely that the film will soon be available in one way or another. For example as one of the DVD extras...

Autograph time

Once the chairman had closed the debate with the audience, everybody stood up. Some left the auditorium, but most went up to the stage to get autographs signed. All the guests stayed and, more or less, mixed with the crowd. Alyson had some people around her who were taking care she would not be flooded by the fans requesting autographs. So she mainly stayed on the stage when the audience handed their documents to sign from below. The other guests came more readily down the stage to mingle with the audience but they were less sought after.

As I did not planned to have an autograph this time but to make pictures, the high position of Alyson was an advantage.

Finally Alyson, ushered by her body guards, left the place suddenly few minutes before it was announced that the performance was over. My hypothesis is that they wanted to avoid those who had not got all what they wanted, being too brutal with her or other people because they would know that it was their last chance before the end.