Me and the MCU

Tinsel & Tine Joins Marvel (MCU) Panel at the Franklin Institute

By Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

As you’ve probably seen in several places on the blog, I became a member of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle (PFCC) in May of 2019. The Association is still new – 2 years (comparatively the NYFCC started in 1935) and most major cities have a similar film association begun at various times, but for some reason, not Philadelphia; until fellow Philly critics Rich Heimlich and Stephen Silver got together to start one here. As a writer/blogger/journalist it helps to have an affiliation around you in this business in terms of credibility, getting interviews, film festival press passes, and during awards season, your picks for best and worst films gets a farther reach. The PFCC is also at times asked to be on film panels…

Which brings me to this post – The Franklin Institute reached out to the Greater Philadelphia Film Office about holding a special night during their Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes Exhibit which started at the beginning of Summer and runs until Sept. 11, 2019. GPFO in turn reached out to PFCC, and I suppose because I make a pretty good show of being a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) on social media, and I am. And to have some diversity and inclusion on the panel … I was asked to join three other PFCC members, only one with encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel – Dan Tabor.

This seemed like the stars aligning – for almost a decade I’ve wanted to make a better relationship with GPFO, as one of the things I often put out to the Universe is to be granted access to cover the films getting made in Philly by visiting the Production sets. I’m used to doing radio and podcasts; but this panel seemed a fantastic way to raise my profile; and this new awesome website, which I LOVE (Thank you Mitch Greene) was scheduled to go live mid-July, so I thought I’d be able to do more promotion of the event on the site. (building a website is like redoing a kitchen or bathroom in your home, it takes so much longer than the original estimate, the contractor becomes a fixture in your life. I feel that way about my web designer, after 15 weeks, I’m really gonna miss our communication). Any way, and we’d just come off all the hoopla of Endgame, so taking part in this panel seemed like a super positive thing to fall into my lap…

And then the reality hit, what do I really have to say? I wholeheartedly enjoy the movies, but I’m not a total Marvel geek, I certainly know very little about the comics, which the exhibit features more of than the movies. Not to mention the film office gave pretty detailed, deep dive talking point suggestions. So I began to worried a lot about what I could bring to the table. So much so that I went back to my old habit of clenching my jaws tight when I sleep and cracked a tooth and destroyed my bridge work! I hadn’t been clenching like that since I was on unemployment.

I didn’t want to make a pest of myself to the other critics on the panel or the GPFO by trying to clarify the format. Nor did I want to keep lamenting my dilemma to my sister and my friends. But the more I started studying up on 23 movies, countless characters, directors, phases, the more overwhelmed I became!

Finally 3 things happened.

1) I finally wore Dan down until he invited me over to his house and showed me his plan to control the narrative by creating a slide deck with movie clips. He had some things he definitely wanted to talk about and he gave me the slide section on “Phase 3 Inclusion in the MCU” said I could make my talking points as personal as I wanted.

2) I remembered a friend of a friend who has been at many Marvel screenings Darryl King. I knew he knew this world backwards and forwards, so I contacted him and he imparted a lot of origin stuff, not origins of the characters, more about the transition of Marvel from a Comic Company to a Movie Studio and then Disney’s appearance on the scene.

3) The dang gone thing got CANCELLED! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I got the email that not enough tickets had been sold so both organizations were pulling the plug.

Feels like there’s a lesson in here somewhere but I’m not exactly sure what? I like to be prepared and I like it if I’m working in tandem with other people that we meet and discuss and work together, was that so wrong?

I would have liked to trust in myself and the Universe more in this process, but I just couldn’t see my way clear to do that. I kept thinking of the mean trolls on Twitter, what if some of them were in the audience and made me feel out of my element and uninformed, and I’d be sitting there on stage, in front of the other audience members, and my colleagues, crying. That would truly be devastating. I guess the only good thing that did come out of it is after listening to countless podcast, reading articles, wikis and fandom pages, not to mention having a new Avengers t-shirt made to commemorate the original team, I suppose I can now call myself a Marvel Geek!