"You won't get too many more Hollywood people here," said Gordon, who wrote the screenplay with David Howard. "The presenters are so smart and articulate -- It's too intimidating. I'll take this over the Academy Awards any day."

"This audience above any other gets this movie," Parisot said, adding, "It's so easy to mock and so hard to embrace eccentricity. And I don't think people that are normal are very interesting anyway."

Gordon agreed, saying that his love for the hardcore fan's faith in the fantastic inspired him while writing the script.

While shooting the film, Parisot and Gordon asked a group of fan extras to help them make a believable sci-fi convention. The fans delivered with total commitment and not just one but six T-shirts about the fictitious crew.

"It was the weirdest experience," Gordon said. "We were sitting on the convention floor for a TV show that didn't exist."

But despite their respect for the fans, Gordon and Parisot acknowledged the old-fashioned thrill of getting a cool trophy.

"[Gordon] said we were up for an award. We've got egos," Parisot said. "And this is not the kind of movie that usually wins awards. We're fans."

Wait a minute. They're fans? How far undercover did they go to research Galaxy Quest before shooting?

"I've been a science fiction fan as a kid and as an adult," Parisot said. "We did go to a Star Trek convention in L.A. But a lot of the research we didn't have to do."

Gordon also confessed to an SF background.

"I'm a pure fan in the sense that as a kid I watched anything with a monster or a spaceship," he said. "Pretty much anything in space."

Parisot said he hadn't even heard of the Hugos a few weeks ago, but an excited phone call from Gordon got them to Chicago.

"He said, 'Do you realize this audience will be the most well-educated and well-read people we could meet?'" Parisot said. "And DreamWorks paid for it. We thought it'd be fun."

And thanks to the fans, it was.