Get Ready to Match the Fannish Stars!

Friday evening at Norwescon, fans will get an opportunity to compete for prizes by answering simple fill-in-the-blank questions. But this isn't a trivia contest, and the "right" answer isn't necessarily "correct." It's Match Game SF, the game where you fill in the ____ and can win prizes worth more than $100! This is the third year that Match Game SF host Kevin Standlee has presented this simple, silly, fun game at Norwescon. He answered a few questions about the game for us. 

Norwescon: What is Match Game SF? 

Kevin: Match Game is a pretty simple game show, where the contestants simply have to figure out how our six panelists have completed a fill-in-the-blank question. A typical question might read, "The Starfleet admiral said, 'Captain Kirk has the biggest ___ in Starfleet!'" Contestants get one point for every panelist they match, and after two rounds, the contestant with the most matches wins the game and goes on to compete for a bonus round prize. 

Norwescon: What are the prizes? 

Kevin: We're still lining up all of our sponsors, but the bonus round prizes will include a membership to the 2011 Westercon in San Jose, and a collection of the complete Hammer's Slammers books from Night Shade Books. We hope to also have a 2011 Norwescon membership and gift certificates from Norwescon dealers, subject to sponsorship arrangements that we're still discussing. 

Norwescon: How did you think up this game? 

Kevin: I can't claim credit for the original idea or even its current SF-nal incarnation. Match Game was a popular game show in the 1970s and into the early 1980s. Reruns still show regularly on GSN. It was a staple of the afternoon shows where I grew up, and many people of my age (I was born in 1965) remember host Gene Rayburn and regular panelists like Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, and Richard Dawson. In fact, Family Feud, hosted by Dawson, is a spin-off of Match Game. 

As far as the SF-themed version goes, I encountered it at Westercon in Phoenix in 1992. A local group, The Arizona Regional Doctor Who Interest Society (TARDIS; http://members.cox.net/tardisaz/tardis.html) was running this game, and I got involved as a contestant and later as a panelist. Having been a regular viewer of the original game show, I was enthusiastic about it, and the host gave me the group's question cards. 

Norwescon: How did you end up hosting the games? 

Kevin: The cards I picked up in Phoenix sat around for a while as I had commitments to other conventions, such as the 1993 and 1994 Worldcons, but a few years later, I got the idea to start running the games, and several conventions, including BayCon and the 2001 Worldcon in Philadelphia, agreed to let me do so. Tom Galloway, active fan and real-world game-show contestant (he was a contestant on the short-lived Fox series Greed) ran the game show track at the Millennium Philcon (2001 Worldcon), and that was probably our biggest show to that time. The show at MilPhil was funny because half of our panelists were from the UK and hadn't heard of the show until I told them its British name, Blankety Blank, at which point they started making jokes about Terry Wogan (the host for many years) and Lilly Savage (a drag queen who hosted the show in a late-1990s revival). My own interpretation of the host's role is closer to that of Gene Rayburn, since that who I grew up watching. 

After our initial successes at BayCon and MilPhil, I kept getting asked to host the game, and I started adding to it, making it more elaborate and more like the original show. 

Norwescon: What goes into hosting the show? 

Kevin: Over the years, we've built up more and more material to make the show a bit flashier and more like a stage version of the original show. As I first saw it, it was a bunch of hand-written index cards. Now, we have a mini-set with holders for the questions along with tent cards to manage the scores. I even bought one of the long, skinny microphones that Gene Rayburn used on the original show. Thank goodness for eBay! And thank goodness I was able to get one of the relatively rare Sony ECM-51A microphones, which were actually invented and patented by Rayburn. I have to treat it carefully, because it's something of an antique, but it does add quite a bit to the show's atmosphere to have all of the props right. Besides, the extending microphone is very useful when asking people for their answers. 

Over the years, I've accumulated the show's theme music and sound effects, and with the help of many people, most notably my wife, Lisa Hayes, we've been able to put together what I think is a fun and entertaining show. 

Norwescon: What does Lisa bring to the show? 

Kevin: Lisa enjoys game shows as I do, and she's our lead technician. She makes sure all of the sound and music happens when it should, and she also usually operates the bells and buzzers that tell you whether something is a match or not. All of that is very important. For instance, one of the signatures of Match Game is the "think" music that plays while the panelists are answering the question turns out to be very important for the flow of the show. If that music doesn't start as soon as I read the question, within seconds the audience gets nervous and sometimes they start humming the theme from "Jeopardy!" That's a different show entirely! 

Lisa and I are always looking at ways to make the show work better. Lisa even has plans to build electronic stations for the panelists that will re-create the score displays of the original show. Through her video-production business, Tsuki Systems, she's been accumulating equipment so that today we can almost put on the show in any room where we can have a small stage, some chairs and tables, power outlets, and an hour or so to do the set-up. 

Norwescon: Who else works on the show? 

Kevin: We have a number of people who volunteer in various roles depending on where we've been holding it, usually depending on whether they can make it to the convention. Our Announcer at our previous shows at Norwescon has been Jeffrey Hulten, who does an excellent job as our "Johnny Olson" (a name that will be familiar to many game show buffs of the 1970s and 80s). We also usually recruit a number of production assistants, who help us set up the game gear, make sure audience members have signed up as contestants, get prizes to the winners, and so forth. One of our PAs, Bob Hole, became so good that I eventually "promoted" him to Producer (none of us get paid for this, of course) because when he was there, I never had to think about how the show was going; I just had to host it, which to me is the fun part. 

Norwescon: Is the show "family friendly?" 

Kevin: A lot of that is subjective. The original show on which we're based was an afternoon or evening game show, but the humor is clearly due to the many double entendres. We can't "bleep" answers – it's a live show – but we do typically encourage our panelists to keep it rating no more than PG-13, at least until the mid-game break. 

Norwescon: What happens at the break? 

Kevin: Assuming we have a long block of time, we'll usually take a break after the third game and then come back with the "Late Night" version of the show, where the panelists are encouraged to answer questions without holding anything back. This simulates how the original show was produced. Typically they would shoot five episodes a day: three before lunch, and two in the afternoon. Because it was not uncommon for liberal amounts of adult beverages to be consumed in those long Hollywood lunches, the panelists were thought to be a bit more free-wheeling in their answers in the Thursday and Friday games. 

Norwescon: How do people become contestants? 

Kevin: Audience members sign up and we draw two contestants for each game from among those who sign up. So if you want to "come on down" (to mix game shows for a minute) you have to "sign on up." 

Norwescon: Why should people come to Match Game? 

Kevin: Besides the chance to win a fabulous prize, you mean? *laughs* Actually, our prizes are only semi-fabulous, but I guarantee that nobody is a loser on Match Game SF, and that everyone who appears on the show will receive, at the minimum, a Lovely Parting Gift. But there's more than just the prizes. Match Game SF is usually a very funny game, which is funny in itself because I'm not a very funny person; however, my whole job is to act as straight man for a gang of lunatics – our panelists, who are the ones who make things a riot. For Norwescon, I anticipate we'll see some of our "regulars" who have been on past shows along with other panelists from the many guests of Norwescon. It's a ton of fun and a great way to spend the evening, and you might come away with a bunch of prizes as well.  I hope many people will join us and take their shot at winning. 

Norwescon: How can people find out more about Match Game SF? 

Kevin: They can e-mail me at kastandlee@gmail.com or contact me via my LiveJournal, http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/ -- I typically start talking about Match Game around a month before any of our shows, and I'm always looking for more people to help, including contributing questions and helping as production assistants to make the show run smoothly.