By LanaRus

Last weekend I attended the first ever RizzlesCon, a convention organized by the fans of a TNT network’s show “Rizzoli & Isles.” Liv Moreno, one of the event’s organizers, said, “We came up with the idea during season 1 actually. A lot of people were really interested and these conventions are very common with the fans of such shows as “Star Trek”, “Xena”, and so on. Joy (Thomas) is a professional convention organizer and I help to run a somewhat popular Rizzlesgirls Blog and so she asked me to help and this is how we ended up doing the convention.”

In order to do everything by the book and make it a successful convention the organizers went to Warner Bros., which is a subsidiary of Time Warner that owns TNT. Liv Moreno clarified, “Originally, we went to Warner Bros. and asked if they were interested in helping us run it or at least given us permission to use “Rizzoli & Isles” in an official capacity because we didn’t want any copyright or trademark infringement. Unfortunately, they were not interested. They did offer us to buy a merchandising agreement but we said, ‘We can’t. We are just fans and we can’t afford a $50,000 merchandising agreement’. So we asked them what the rules were and what we could and couldn’t use. They gave us a very long list and we followed it to a t. We were very adamant about making sure that we gave them information every step of the way. Who we are contacting, what they’ve said, who said yes, who said no, all of the details. They were in on it and they knew. Several people did agree to come originally, Sasha Alexander, Lorraine Bracco, Janet Tamaro, the executive producer of the show, Michael Massee (Charles Hoyt), Brian Goodman (Sean Cavanaugh).”