The 20th anniversary of Jon Bon Nebula at Jay Chipman's wedding

Jon at Jay's wedding

Today is the 20th wedding anniversary of Dramedy Productions alumnus Jay Chipman.  But what made the day TRULY special for Jay two decades ago was that he had a run-in with a certain Dramedy Productions character: a character that he would eventually go on to play in a movie, even though he didn't know it at the time!

At the time of Jay's wedding, we were in the planning stages for our first Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Quest for Vengeance.  The main characters in the movie were going to be the same characters that some of us created & played years earlier in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game by West End Games.  We created those characters by picking a character template in the Roleplaying Game book and then giving the character a name.  One of us, Jeremy Howard, picked the "Laconic Scout" template and named his character Jon Bon Nebula.

So Jon Bon Nebula was going to be one of the main characters in our Star Wars movie.  However, by the time we had decided to make the movie, we had lost touch with Jeremy, so someone else was going to have to play him.  Jeremy wouldn't have played him anyway, since he didn't want to participate in the awesome hobby of amateur filmmaking like most of the rest of us did.

The only two things Jeremy contributed to the creation of Bon Nebula was choosing a character template and naming him, so that left a wide open canvas for us to paint the character with.  And with a name like Jon Bon Nebula, we figured he'd be a rock star (or jizz-wailer, in Star Wars speak).  So we wound up casting Mitch Trotter as Bon Nebula.  Mitch was a funny guy in real life, and he was going to play Bon Nebula as a crazy rock star.  Since Bon Nebula was supposed to be a "laconic scout," we would just say that he was laconic earlier in his life, but had started to talk more by the time of the movie.  😉

After casting Mitch as Bon Nebula, it was time for Jay's wedding.  There were a few Dramedy Productions members in the wedding party besides Jay: Mitch, who was a groomsman; Tracy Walters, who was the usher for the groom; and Brad Blaylock, who was the usher for the bride.  While at the wedding, Mitch, Tracy, and Brad signed the wedding guest book.  While signing the book, it was decided that Bon Nebula's name should be signed in there, too!  So Mitch decided that he would sign the book as Jon Bon Nebula.  However, he didn't want Jay & his wife to know that he was the one who did it.  He wanted to sign Jon's name far away from his real name, but there was no way to do that without signing it in the middle of nowhere.  So he just signed it underneath Brad's name and said that he would disguise his handwriting.  🤣  We never told Jay about the signature, and he never said anything to us about it, either.  If he's ever looked at his wedding guest book in the last 20 years, he saw it, and probably thought that it was pretty awesome that Jon Bon Nebula himself signed it.  We're not sure how his wife handled it, though!  😄

Jon Bon Nebula's signature, written by Mitch Trotter, in Jay Chipman's wedding guest book.  Above it is Brad Blaylock's signature, below it is some other dude's signature, and below that dude someone signed some initials, or random letters, or something.  (Yeah, we've always been confused by that one.)

A few months later, we began shooting Quest for Vengeance.  On our first day of shooting, Mitch played Darth Vader.  At a later date, it was time for him to film one more scene as Vader and to film his scenes as Jon Bon Nebula.  However, Mitch wound up dropping off the face of the earth!  🤯  No one could get in touch with him, and we never saw him again.  🤷  So anyway, Tracy Walters wound up finishing the role of Darth Vader.  (Which wasn't hard to do, since Vader wears a helmet.)  As for recasting Bon Nebula, guess who wound up getting the part?  Why, it was Jay Chipman himself!  Jon Bon Nebula's name being in Jay's wedding guest book turned out to be a premonition, which means that Jon's signature in his guest book should hold an extra-special place in Jay's heart.  💗

Captain Ben on the Mississippi River in a Batman comic book

The Vintage Batman 2019 Calendar by Asgard Press features a different vintage Batman comic book cover every month.  This month's cover (the cover for June) is Detective Comics #90 from August 1944.  The title of the issue's Batman story is "Crime Between the Acts!"  It tells the story of a showboat called the Mississippi Mermaid that travels down the Mississippi River.  The troupe aboard the ship entertains the river folk at the little towns along the river, and during the intermissions of their shows, the troupe sneaks off the ship and robs the towns blind.  That is, until they're stopped by Batman and Robin!  But the funny thing is that the captain of the ship (and leader of the criminals) is named Captain Ben!

Captain Ben, of course, was also the name of a character in our Star Trek series of movies.  Our Captain Ben was Captain Cobalt Ben of the Starship U.S.S. Excalibur, played by Tracy Walters.

Does this Captain Ben look like our Captain Ben?

There's another funny thing in this issue.  In this story, the boat travels the Mississippi River and stops at little towns along the way.  The city where most of the cast & crew of Dramedy Productions' various productions is from is a city called Osceola, Arkansas...which just happens to be a small town along the Mississippi River!  As a matter of fact, the climactic lightsaber duels at the end of our movie Star Wars: Quest for Vengeance were filmed at the Mississippi River at Osceola!  Freaky...

Filming lightsaber duels at the Mississippi River close to Osceola, AR

Vision Man beats out Shazam as most popular superhero struck by lightning

A recent poll asked, "What is your favorite superhero that received his powers through lightning?"  Coming in first place, of course, was Dramedy Productions very own metahuman Vision Man.  Shazam was a close second, probably because of all the publicity of his movie coming out Friday.  At third place was the Flash.  To see the rest of the list, click here.