THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS.... TWXN 69 02/14/97 Brought to you by Xena: Media Review (XMR): http://xenafan.com/xmr TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR. XMR is a periodic annotated world press review of reports regarding the internationally syndicated television show XENA: Warrior Princess (1995 - ) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor. For a free e-mail subscription send "subscribe XMR" to ktaborn@lightspeed.net. Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future issues of XMR. From the Editor: 1. Yeah, I am kind of, sort of thinking about XMR #22. It's fuzzy but it's there. Am I making myself clear? 2. E-mail WHOOSH #05 was just cheerfully sent out to all IAXS members. 3. I am still MEGA behind in TWXN, but I plod on...for XENA! 4. There's a real depressing news story coming up in TWXN #70. I am going to run it because I run ALL the stories. 5. No commentaries today because I am a tired pup. But luckily everything is self-explanatory. I think. 6. Happy Valentine's Day!!!! [ ] 01-15-97 USA TODAY. Wednesday. Page 3D. 424 words. "the Fall and Rise of Xena Horse Spill Behind Her, Lucy Lawless Charges Ahead" By Jefferson Graham REPRINT: The last time Lucy Lawless was in Los Angeles, she was recovering from a nasty fall. The star of the syndicated Xena: Warrior Princess fell off a horse while taping a skit for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in October and suffered four fractures. Lawless spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, then went on The Tonight Show to laugh with Leno about it. Xena, set in a mythical barbaric world, is filmed in Lawless' native New Zealand, but Sunday she was at the Burbank (Calif.) Airport Hilton for the first Hercules/Xena convention, a sold-out gathering that attracted 400 fans who dressed for the occasion in medieval costumes. "I can't believe all the fuss," said Lawless, 28, who signed autographs and posed for pictures with fans, both young and old. Although Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is TV's top syndicated drama, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena aren't far behind, easily outrating Baywatch, Highlander and Babylon 5. "There are very few women like Xena on TV," said fan Laura Drane of Los Angeles. "She's funny and powerful." Adds fan Minerva Adams of Redondo Beach, Calif., "She's a strong role model." Besides affording fans the opportunity to dress up, the convention also sold the usual assortment of goodies, from T-shirts ("Xenaites Forever!") to newsletters (Whoosh! The International Association of Xena Studies). Lawless flew in from New Zealand to appear at the convention, do a guest spot for NBC's Something So Right (as herself) and meet and greet station managers this week in New Orleans at the National Association of Television Program Executives convention. Lawless has been back at work a month, with doubles handling her stunts. She hasn't gotten back on a horse, and "I'm not going to be pushed into it. I want to recover fully." She looks back at her accident as a "bad dream -- I don't care to remember it." But it was big news back in New Zealand, where one headline read, "Go Where No Kiwi Has Gone Before." It even brought Lawless and her 8-year-old daughter, Daisy, closer together. "She's more proud of her mom now that the show is such a success," Lawless said. "Originally, she hated it. She blamed Xena for the breakup of my marriage. But not anymore." Lawless' take on Xena's popularity: "There are a lot of people out there who have suffered from some kind of abuse -- women, gays, kids -- and they all relate to Xena. "She's always fighting the good fight." GRAPHIC: Two. [ ] 01-15-97 THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC. Wednesday. Page C5. 708 words. "Herculean Triumph: Spinoff 'Xena' Beats Rival in Fan-club Duel" By Dave Walker COMMENTARY: REPRINT: Forget the Packers vs. the Patriots. The relevant rivalry of the moment is Hercules vs. Xena. Thousands of devoted acolytes of both mythological heroes turned out over the weekend for the first official fan convention devoted to the popular syndicated TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Held in the convention center of a chain hotel near the Burbank airport, the two-day gathering attracted nearly 4,000 attendees, who paid daily admission fees ranging from $15 to $50 to shop for souvenirs, participate in trivia competitions and cheer lustily for Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless, who portray Hercules and Xena. Produced in New Zealand, the action-adventure series mix swords and sorcery with witty, wildly out-of-period dialogue and have become genuine phenomena. The fan convention, the first officially sanctioned event of its kind, proves it. Hercules, which airs at 9 p.m. Saturday on Channel 10 (KSAZ), came first, in January 1995. Xena, which airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channel 10, is a spinoff that followed several months later. (Actually, both shows air more than once each week in the Valley - up to four times if you get cable superstation WGN - and are generally among the five best-rated syndicated shows nationally.) Based on the Burbank event, you'd never know that Hercules had a Hellenic head start: Xena's $8 posters sold out not long after the doors opened Sunday, the convention's second day. Meanwhile, plenty of Hercules product remained. According to a spokeswoman for Creation Entertainment, the event's licensed promoter, about 1,800 tickets were sold for Saturday's show, Sorbo's day. Lawless' Sunday appearance sold all 2,000 seats. And a charity auction of series-related scripts, props and other junk netted $1,500 for Hercules-related items, according to Debra Sterner, a Valley resident who attended the convention. The next day, assorted Xenabilia netted $11,000. (Xena gets better ratings than Hercules, too, at least in Phoenix.) Sterner paid top dollar for her "Golden Circle" tickets to the event and landed front-row-center reserved seats. A computer-systems administrator for Motorola, Sterner is a "Xenite" - a member of the official Lucy Lawless Fan Club - who shared a hotel room with another Xena fan she met on the Internet. Needless to say, both shows have an avid fan base in cyberspace. After Saturday night's appearance by Sorbo, several Xena fans who had previously known one another only by their online screen names convened for dinner and Xena talk at a nearby rib house. By happy accident, Xena airs in Los Angeles on Saturday night, and the group was able to watch the show together on the restaurant's big-screen TV. Sterner said that Lawless' Sunday appearance was everything she had hoped it would be, noting that the star appeared to be fully recovered from injuries recently suffered when she fell from a horse while shooting a stunt for The Tonight Show. "The whole place went ballistic as soon as they dimmed the lights," Sterner said. "She was pretty overwhelmed by it, but it was in a good way. She was obviously nervous, but she handled herself very, very well. She really worked the crowd, hamming it up." Afterward, Sterner, who was taking photos for the Xena fan club's newsletter, positioned herself near the table where Lawless would sign autographs. Three hours later - Lawless signed for all 2,000 present - Sterner got a special treat. Just after Lawless ducked backstage, "Someone came out and said, 'You, you, you, and you - come with me,' " Sterner said. "I was one of the yous." The small group, which included a couple of the winners of an earlier costume contest, were ushered in for a personal audience with Lawless. Sterner took more photos there and had her own photo snapped with the star. The $100 Sterner paid for two-day admission, not to mention the hotel costs and souvenir budget and travel expenses, suddenly seemed like a pretty good investment. "It was worth every penny, just to be able to meet the person behind the character and to be able to meet (Xena fans) from all parts of the United States," Sterner said. "And it was really an opportunity to build up a nice network of kindred spirits." GRAPHIC: 1) Lucy Lawless' Xena apparently has overtaken Hercules in popularity after being spun off the latter syndicated TV series. 2) Kevin Sorbo's Hercules trailed Xena in popularity at the West Coast convention, as he does in Phoenix TV ratings. [ ] 01-16-97 LOS ANGELES TIMES. Thursday. Page B1. 1011 words. "Officer Gets an 'A+' on Idea to Aid Students" By Jerry Hicks tojerry.hicks@latimes.com COMMENTARY: EXCERPT: ...Little Xena: We enjoyed our family outing to the Xena festival in Burbank last weekend, despite a mishap or two. I was waiting to interview Lucy Lawless, who plays TV's "Xena: Warrior Princess," while she was doing a TV sound bite. Suddenly we all heard a crash from the back of the room. My 4-year-old daughter had accidentally sent a heavy piece of lighting equipment falling to the ground, turning my wife red-faced. My daughter also swiped a publicist's orange soda, assuming it was there for her. Thousands of enthusiastic Xena fans of all ages showed up. But who could have had more fun than 8-year-old Mahdice Fazeli of Irvine? Her mother, Wendy Fazeli, had taken along the Xena costume she'd made her daughter for Halloween, in case there was a chance for a picture of the girl with Lucy Lawless. When they got there, they discovered there was a Xena look-alike contest. So how does this little fairy tale end? You betcha! Mahdice not only won the contest (she was terrific), she got that picture with Lawless too. Wendy Fazeli laughed when she told me later: "Meeting Lucy Lawless meant more to my daughter than winning the contest. When she went to bed that night, she said, 'This day has been a dream come true.'"... [ ] 01-17-97 USA TODAY. Friday. Page 4D. 319 words. "a Romantic 'World' Beyond Pulp Fiction" By Susan Wloszczyna EXCERPT: Vincent D'Onofrio is the ostensible star (and co-producer) of The Whole Wide World (# # #), a true account of unrequited love between two writers in 1930s Texas. How could an actor, especially one this hulking, not create an impression as Robert E. Howard, the prolific and eccentric creator of such pulp-magazine heroes as Conan the Barbarian? A lumbering lug who didn't cotton much to niceties, Howard would feverishly type and bellow aloud his exotic fiction -- or "yarns" -- full of brawny he-men, big-chested women and fantastic foes. Rightfully predicting that "sex will infect everything," he's the perfect pop-culture icon for our Xena-adoring nation....