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Jackie Estrada on Darwyn Cooke’s Eisner Experience
posted August 2, 2007
 

This is getting to be like Roshomon, since I've now heard several versions of what happened at the door of the Eisners.

First of all, I don't know who the "staff person" was who asked Darwyn how many people were in his party during the Friday panel, but whoever it was didn't pass that information along to me (I'm the one who makes the VIP lists for the door). Normally I get the lists of all the DC folks for the tables from Adam Phillips, but at the last minute he didn't make the trip to San Diego, so there was no one at DC to give me names.

Second, Darwyn and his party didn't arrive until the awards were will under way, the lights were down, and I was on the stage. At that point only two of my assistants were at the door to help seat stragglers, and all they had to go by was a printed out list of VIP names. According to both of them, they told Darwyn that no one else was listed with him, but one of them (Mimi) would go to the DC section to make sure there were enough seats before taking them all into the room. Obviously, some kind of miscommunication happened at this point, because they would never have told some one to "just go in and look around." And indeed, Mimi did check the DC tables and found plenty of space for them; but when she got back to the door they had already taken off. If they had waited 30 seconds, they would have been seated and Darwyn would have been able to accept those three awards.

I feel bad about the situation, but it seems that a combination of Adam not being able to check with Darwyn at the con and his party arriving late resulted in his being missing in action for his moment of glory.