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....

