58 lines
2.7 KiB
HTML
58 lines
2.7 KiB
HTML
From: Jms at B5
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<TITLE>Frankly, You Amaze Me (96-02-29 20:31:19)</TITLE>
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[America Online postings by JMS]
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<A HREF="/cgi-bin/lurkfind">Search</A>
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<H2>Frankly, You Amaze Me</H2>
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96-02-29 20:31:19
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<PRE>Cristine: thanks. You're right, in many ways it is personal to me. I tend
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to get passionate about the job because I never taken on any job unless I
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feel passionately about it, if that makes any syntactical sense whatsoever.
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Life's too short. B5 is a particular case in that this is something that
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everyone involved -- from the cast, through to the crew, directors, others --
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is absolutely dedicated to. They believe that we're creating something
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rather extraordinary here, something that'll be talked about for a long time
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after we're gone.
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It took me five years to sell this show, after everyone else told me to
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forget it, that it'd never happen, that it was too ambitious...said that I
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*could* sell it if I made it sexier, less aimed at the "smart" viewers and
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more accessible to folks who just want plain action and a smattering of sex.
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I could've sold a more mainstream series with far less hassle, to any of the
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networks. But I have to tell *this* story.
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So when you're obsessed with something, it's easier to spend 24.9 hours a day
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working on it. (I cobble up the extra 9/10ths of an hour from a
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fourth-dimensional gate in my office.) As for the online time...that ties
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into the obsession part, in some ways, but beyond that, it's a chance to keep
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working at my #1 bugaboo, demystifying TV, being responsive (and answerable)
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to fans when it works or doesn't work...actually, it works out for me because
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when I have to stop writing and think through a story point, I don't just get
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up and walk into the living room to watch TV, where you can lose a couple
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hours at a time. I stay at the keyboard, do a quick pass through one of the
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nets, kill 15 minutes...by which time I've worked out the story point, and I
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get back to work. It keeps me at the computer.
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But yeah...in every conceivable sense, the work comes first in my life. This
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is the single biggest thing I've ever attempted in my life, in terms of sheer
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scale and scope and hours. It has a finite lifespan. So during that time,
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it owns me. I can give it nothing less. When it's finally done, then I can
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rest. Selling and running the show is like being yoked to a train; you pull
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real hard for a long time, for five years, until it finally moves. Then it
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picks up speed. And then you spend the next five years of your life running
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as fast as you can in front of it, because if you slow down, it'll run over
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you.
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jms
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</PRE>
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