Re: JMS retire????

 Posted on 6/15/1995 by jmsatb5@aol.com to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated


Certainly George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass are looking to do
more producing; Morgan and Wong from X-Files are off doing Space; so
there's hope.

jms


[Dates unknown, but sometime in June]

Interestingly enough...yes, Warners does seem to take an interest in
where the series is going. The one comment I hear most often is that they
enjoy seeing where the stories are going, and that they're not really like
the stories being done elsewhere. This is the only one of the PTEN shows
to pick up even one Emmy, let alone the two we've received. There were a
number of folks at WB who initially really weren't sure about us, who have
subsequently come around and have been very supportive. Two of the main
folks who've taken an active interest and supported us are Dick
Robertson and Evan Thompson, between them the two Main Men of PTEN.
Without them, there wouldn't BE a Babylon 5 series.

jms

If you still have a copy of that article, and write-up, could you
send it along to me for my files at the following address:
14431 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 260, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423? The line
"most Trek-like" is hysterical; well, I think THEY think in terms of,
ST is successful. Thus another show in space that succeeds is most ST
like.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Jesse Helms is human.

jms

Haven't had the time to watch ANY of the Outer Limits, I'm afraid.

jms

IF it's an established and well-attributed quote, then it's okay to
mention it, yes, as "the long, twilight struggle" is a partial quote.

jms


Yes, the Centauri/Narn war is a very handy distraction, which the
shadows could use. That's one of the two reasons they helped set the
whole shebang going.

jms

The Narns believe the Centauri are perfectly capable of doing this
on their own; they've done it before, after all.

jms

I hope the reaction would be both; what a ride, and that's deep
(though I probably wouldn't use that exact wording). It should also
create the sense that you've gone off and lived somewhere else, and
somewhen else, for five years. When I got finished reading the Lensman
books, my sense wasn't really either of those expressed above, but a sense
that I had visited a real place, and lived through massive changes,
empires that rose and fell, and seen a genuine saga with massive
repercussions. It should really have the sense of finishing a good book,
one which one would like to go back and reread again later.

There are a number of philsophical undercurrents to the story, of
course, some of which are apparent now, some which will become clearer
later, and certainly a lot of action...but I'm shooting for something I
can't really define for you, except to say that it should somehow be more
than the sum of its parts.

jms

[Vir to die before season end?]
Now, what kind of storyteller would I be if I actually answered
that question? Hrmmmmm?

jms

Sure, I can tell you what happens in the last four eps.

Really Awful Stuff.

jms

[What kind of jazz do you like?]
Jeez, I like a lot of it...Cout Basie, and Glen Miller, and Arty
Shaw (though some of his later stuff got a bit derivitive of the earlier
material), Tommy Dorsey, Gershwin...there's a CD came out a few years
ago, a reconstruction of a number of performances debuting new material
for the first time, and there's Gershwin playing (for lack of a better
term) the beta version of "Rhapsody in Blue," with *riffs he later
discarded*, and you can hear the differences, and understand why he made
them. Cab Calloway...dynamite.

jms

Yes, the theory is to show the last 4 eps in October, and go right
into year three eps the next week in November, no break, so you'd get
about 8-9 eps in a row, rather than the usual 5 or so.

jms

Never said the shadow war would be over in one year. Only that it
wouldn't last three.

The long cuts exist only in the computer; there was never a fully
extended, on-film ep cut down for time. Once we make our cuts on the
computer, the film is assembled only once, for the final product. We'd
have to go in and re-edit EVERYthing to make it work.

jms

: "Now the trumpet summons us again: not as a call to bear arms, though arms we
: need; not as a call to battle, though in battle we are; but as a call to bear
: the burdens of a long, twilight struggle--year in and year out, rejoicing in
: hope, patient in tribulation--a struggle against the common enemies of
: man--tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
: John Fitzgerald Kennedy
: Mike Daniels

Bingo. As I mentioned before, the "long twilight struggle" title
is a quote; you correctly identified the source in the JFK quote.

jm(wish I had a toaster to award)s