Also in the Sci-Fi great news dept. Firefly is coming out on DVD with three not shown episodes. They are also making a Firefly movie! [img]smile.gif[/img]
Printable View
Also in the Sci-Fi great news dept. Firefly is coming out on DVD with three not shown episodes. They are also making a Firefly movie! [img]smile.gif[/img]
<font face="georgia"><font color="red">What a weekend! Does all movies include B5LR by the way?</font>
Not in the big set, no...that will be a separate DVD since it's really not a part of what comprised the original B5 movies.
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">What about "A Call to Arms"? Will that go with the movies, or with the Crusade set?</font>
That will be in the set.
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">Assuming they don't need a fluffer, I can do rights and clearances...</font>
And suddenly the conversation, which had been going along quite nicely, took a dark and ominous turn....
jms
([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 07, 2003 08:08 PM: Message edited by: Wizz ]</font>
OK ... "Assuming they don't need a fluffer, I can do rights and clearances...
What does that mean?
Nommy, I can only answer the first part. A "Fluffer" is used primarily on sets where XXX rated movies are being made. They have the needed "skills" to get the actor/actress physically prepared visually for subsequent takes such that the action looks spontaneous. It's hard to make a XXX movie like that when things are flacid.
<font face="georgia"><font color="red">So, just wondering what your opinion is on the trilogy taken as a whole? If seen as the one picture it sorta is, do the first and third parts make up for the middle, or does Two Towers drag the whole package down?</font>
There's a story about an old woman who's walking her five year old grandson along the beach one day, and a huge wave comes up out of nowhere and just sweeps the kid out to sea, disappearing.
The grandmother is frantic, pleads with god to give her back her grandson, just bring him back and she'll never ask for anything again.
Suddenly there's another huge wave, and bang, the kid is deposited at her feet, safe and sound.
She embraces the boy, hugs and kisses him, then looks up at the sky and says, "He had a hat."
To overly criticize the second part is pretty much along the lines of, "He had a hat."
That the LoTR adaptation has been done this well, or even half this well, is a boon to everyone who's ever been a fan of the books. Is the middle perfect? No, there are some bits I'll always kind of fast forward through...but where was it written that it had to be perfect? Perfect, to be honet, is the enemy of good.
Part two is quite good. Parts one and three are wildly sensational. And, to be honest again, if you're watching 10 hours of a story, you or the story are inevitably going to fade a bit toward the middle.
No, on balance, I think that the LoTR films will stand the test of time as a true classic, whose importance will only grow as years pass. It really represents, more than the Star Wars films -- which have sadly fallen by the wayside creatively -- the Everest of films in this genre, and it's certainly to be considered one of the major edifices outside the genre as well.
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">When a showrunner leaves, I assume that said shows owners hold all the rights to any outlines/arcs/etc.. you may have provided to them or written during your employment with them. </font>
Yes and no. They own what they pay for, meaning scripts and, if commissiond, a bible. Generally they don't pay for notes, memos, sketches, that sort of thing...though on the other hand, one could make the argument that it's all done during the term of employment. I don't know if this has ever been tested. Either way, if they were to base a story on one's notes, there would have to be separate story payments per WGA.
<font color="red">And so do they have any info in regards to where you wanted to take the show after season 2?</font>
No. Studios are remarkably short-sighted as a rule; they only want to see what's in the pipeline for that season. In the case of Jeremiah, I did not write any notes for after season 2, which is actually pretty much pro forma, B5 being the exception to the rule. You have it in your head, but that's it.
<font color="red">Regardless of what's been left behind for them to try to work with, would you have any interest or desire in letting the new showrunners in on any of your ideas? </font>
No. Nor would I think they would want them. MGM would take the show in a vastly different direction, such that any thoughts I would have had would no longer apply.
Emblematic of some of the studio's notions is a call made by the studio to my casting director, stating -- of the paucity of babes -- "I don't care if she can act, I want her cute."
<font color="red">Would you consider being hired on as a consultant to the show if asked?</font>
If there were a third season, the studio would have to pay me a consultancy fee but there would be no requirement to actually consult.
jms
<hr width="50%">
<font color="red">Another Charlie Brown moment: Oh Good Grief! Isn't there some kind of protocol, though, who the studio should be making calls to/giving notes? I'd've thought that sort of direction should only be given to the Producer level at the lowest?</font>
Yup. Therein lay the silhouette of the problem.
...fee but there would be no requirement to actually consult.
<font color="red">Ignorant question here: Why? </font>
A very well written contract.
<font color="red">Must say, Joe, that this second season is just wonderful.
</font>
Thanks, I think it came out really well.
jms
([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)
<font face="georgia"><font color="red">Makes a lot of sense if you've got any intelligence at all: Selling 10 books at $4.95 is $49.50 as opposed to 2 books at $4.95 is only $9.90. Simple math. Stretch the story out and you'll make more money, unless you screw over the audience and put out crap. Which is the whole point. If Joemovie doesn't like the way Marvel takes a 2 issue arc and makes it into 10, then simply don't buy the books.</font>
I'm sorry, but as everyone else here has pointed out, your math simply doesn't work.
On ASM, they collect together about every six issues for graphic novels. Doesn't matter if I do one, two, three, four, five or six issue arcs, the size of the GN is the same. More to the point, the people who buy ASM are the people who buy ASM. Every month it sells about the same number of books, give or take. We're pretty consistent. Writing big arcs doesn't make Marvel any more money than small arcs. Or no arcs.
And, in truth, I get yelled at no matter *what* I do on arc stuff. If I do a three-issue arc, I get yelled at for padding...if I do a one-issue stand-alone, I get yelled at for writing "filler."
But understand, straight from the horse's mouth (or the opposite end if you're so inclined)... there is no pressure to do any length in my story arcs, they let me tell the stories at the pace I feel works best for the structure. And there is no more money made by Marvel if I do a long arc as opposed to a short one. Zip. The sales are the sales, the GNs are the GNs.
<font color="red">DC and Marvel are both guilty of this practice. Granted, some writers take longer to get the story out, JMS being one of them, but the publishers have a great deal of say in this sort of thing.</font>
Again, they haven't said boo to me on this thing. Not once.
Finally, as for Supreme Power...I gave everybody fair warning in every interview I did on this book: it's not going to be a conventional book, it's not going to be plot driven, its going to be a strong character story and it's going to develop over time into something extremely intense. There's some serious action coming up very soon, but it's not aimed at stopping Doctor Destructo before he can unleash his Whammo ray and turn Chicago into gold so he can clean up. It ain't that kind of book. It's kind of an experiment, which is why it's under the Max label. Some dig it, some don't, no harm, no foul.
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">Supreme Power is great too. The problem with Amazing Spider-man, possibly due to the nature of the book, is it's so often unambitious.</font>
I always try to break up criticism into fair and unfair, productive and counter-productive, and I think that's a fair criticism. When I came onto the book, it had been angst ridden and kind of a downer for so long that one of the things I wanted to do was make it a fun book, the kind of book you feel good about reading.
Of course, the trouble with this is that it necessitates less ambitious stories because you only get the big stories by putting your character up a tree and throwing really big rocks at him.
Having said that, though, I think I'm nearing the limit of what I can handle on primarily fun stories...I think it's about time to start throwing rocks at him again.
We all come up snake-eyes sooner or later, y'know....
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">Also, a friend of mine has refused to read comics for years. I convinced her to read the first issue by appealling to her "Babylon 5" fandom, and she's hooked. (In fact, she's debating whether to buy the trade paperbacks, or hold out for the hardcovers.)</font>
....there's gonna be hardcovers?
One other thing on Supreme Power...if you remember the original miniseries that Mark did, he had Hyperion undertaking a fairly massive endeavor to try and set the world to rights (as he saw it, at least, which put him at odds with others). Mark took kind of a plot oriented approach to getting him to that point.
Without tipping my hand too much...I wanted to try a different way of getting someone to a point like that. He's going to make some very bad decisions down the road, but I want that road to be absolutely plausible and understandable. If you know where Hyperion came from, and what he has gone though, you come away with full understanding of why he might do what he might do. I want readers to be able to go deeper inside Hyperion's mind than in any other book, to have an intimate familiarity with his background and how it will affect his actions.
Ironically, in so doing, I made a decision early on not to do any interior dialogue or monologue. You never hear his thoughts, ever. (The one sort-of exception I made was when he dives into the water looking for his folks, and you hear "mom? dad?" and it could be a thought or spoken.) In this way, you keep what he's really thinking a mystery...and that makes him a bit more ominous, I think. You don't really know how much he knows, or suspects, of what's going on around him, and how he's being used.
It's a challenging book to write, but I'm really quite happy with the result.
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="green">Isn't Chicago GOOD enough to be attacked by Doc Destructo to be turned into gold?</font>
<font color="red">No, of course not. What was I thinking, obviously the higher-ups at Marvel in association with the Masons, under leadership of the UN, getting their marching orders from the Illuminatti, in thrall to their Martian alien pupper masters have deem only blessed New York City is *worthy* of being stomped on by international, interplanetary, interstellar, intergalactic, or even interdimensional archvillains!</font>
(considers this for a moment)
Yeah, that's about right.
jms
<hr width="75%">
...there's gonna be hardcovers?
<font color="red">Amazon.com says the first is due in November. </font>
....it's on Amazon.com...?
I've GOT to start going to staff meetings.
jms
<hr width="50%">
...there's gonna be hardcovers?
<font color="red">Amazon.com says the first is due in November.</font>
Where? I just checked, and couldn't find anything.
jms</font>
([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)
<font face="georgia"><font color="red"><a href=http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y3CA21CE6>Hardcover</a>
I didn't have any trouble finding it. Did a search for "Supreme Power" in Books and it popped right up.</font>
Hunh...for some reason, it didn't show up when I did the same, but the link works. It's a conspiracy, I tell you, a onspiracy....
jms
([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)
<font face="georgia">For S5 I did commentaries on The Fall of Centauri Prime and Sleeping in Light. The latter was the hardest, since it was the first time I'd seen the episode since it aired. (I just couldn't, it was too hard.)
I should have done so, though, because when we got to B5's destruction, I'm ashamed to admit that my voice broke, it just hit me so hard. After we were done, i wanted to go back and do it again, to fix that, which I thought was unprofessional, but the WB boys prevailed upon me to leave it alone. I just hope it doesn't come across as dumb or something.
jms
<hr width="75%">
For those who've been inquiring about the latest on Buddy....
Well, I've finally answered one of the questions I've had about the whole of the Boo clan (named for the first cat adopted out of this group, Boo, the cat with one blue eye and one green eye). I suspected that one of the two progenitors of this group was a siamese, givens some of the markings, a suspicion recently confirmed when one came out with all the siamese recessive genes....
And now Buddy, the king of the recessive genes, has answered the other half of that question. The other progenitor was a Maine coon cat...which is what he is, in spades.
Maine coon cats are big, very funny, very predatory (in a cute way) cats that can get to be 25 pounds or better. Not only does Buddy have all the markings, inclusive of the big sweeping tail that's as long as he is...at 8 months he is already 12 pounds without an ounce of fat there anywhere. By the time he finishes growing -- and Maine coon cats can grow into their third year -- he will be big enough to have his own zip code.
I have let a furred Godzilla into my home.
They are also known as the clowns of the cat species...as evidenced pretty much every day, inclusive of the day he found the bag of plastic peanuts, rolled around in same, until static electricity had covered him nose to tail in phosphorescent green styrofoam peanuts until you couldn't see a trace of fur...and went parading around the house as proud as if he'd just discovered radium (which, given the green color, seemed about right). I scraped them off, and they kept flying back onto him drawn by the static, but finally got them all off...he ran off...I turned around...and he had done exactly the same thing again. This time the pursuit went all over the house, leaving little bits of peanut over every square inch.
He doesn't meow, he chirrups and trills, Maine coon traits. So he wanders the house, just talking to himself all day. I think he's worried about the economy, but I'm not sure.
He's also the poster child for attempted suicide. Leaving out how he was found, every day he does something to elicit a shriek of horror from me. In a ten minute span of time, for instance, he went from trying to chew through a power cord at the socket (sticking his claws into the open socket below for leverage), to wrapping the mouse cord under my desk around his neck like a noose, and finally, when chased out of my office, I looked out to find him sticking his paw into the toaster.
It's like that every day with him. Every. Day.
I don't know where he came from, but he does seem in an awful big hurry to get back there. Whether he or I survive this process only the universe knows.
If anyone sees a mushroom cloud rising from the Los Angeles area someday, you will know that Buddy finally hit the big time....
jms
<hr width="75%">
<font color="red">I wonder: do the folks that do those short teasers/trailers for B5 add their own special effects?
I'm going through the B5 series for the very first time, watching it on DVD (US version). Season 2's 7th episode ("A Race Through Dark Places") starts with Bester interrogating a prisoner. The trailer for that episode shows a bit of that scene, the difference being that in the trailer Bester's hand has this cheesy red glow meant to "illustrate" his telepathic power. That is NOT in the show itself, at least not on the DVD. I realize that the people doing the teasers take liberties, but it seems strange to me that they would try to "improve" on the program with their own effects.</font>
Seemed pretty weird to me at the time, too.
jms
([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)
I read (in Dreamwatch, I think) that JMS came to terms with Top Cow and that Rising Stars will soon be finished...
Found this on the newsgroup around Nov. 30th...Wizz
<font face="georgia"><font color="red">I was reading in another post that somebody was saying that they'd read that the Rising Stars matter with Top Cow had been resolved. Is this true?</font>
Yes. There were a number of conditions set before Top Cow in order to resolve this, and those conditions were met. So the final three scripts will be turned in by late January/early February, and the ising Stars story will be complete.
jms</font>