No, not a career move; it's not widely known -- I guess mainly because I haven't ever mentioned it much -- but from time to time I've written songs. Mainly the lyrics; I know how the music should sound, but I'm incapable of reading music...I think it's the same mental glitch that hits me when I try to do certain kinds of math. "X is a numerical value." "No, X is a letter, 7 is a numerical value." I can't ever seem to make the one equal the other in my head. Similarly, a black note on a piece of paper isn't the music...anyway, it's a glitch.)

So when I write songs, and I have a specific melody I'm hearing in my head, I'm invariably placed in the humiliating position (since I can't play a musical instrument) of humming it, or somehow trying to suggest it to the music-person. Suffice to say it looks really goofy and stupid.

Anyway...despite this, I do sometimes write songs, and like to keep my hand in, as they say. I did two songs for an ABC-TV prime-time Real Ghostbusters special, did a few songs that have been recorded by small groups (you've never heard of any of them, trust me), another song that, much to my chagrin, is apparently still being used in church songbooks (and that's all I will ever say about that)...and when I decided to do a show with a singer for B5, I wrote a couple of songs for that one, with Chris Franke providing the music.

They're bluesy, Billie Holliday kinds of songs, updated slightly. I'm actually very pleased with how they came out (Erica Gimpel, one of the cast members from Fame, plays the part and sings the songs). Several folks around here want either or both songs to come out on the next B5 album, but I"m loathe to do so, on the theory that the soundtracks work better in the style we've already used, all instrumental. (There've even been some inquiries from music people who've heard the songs about releasing them commercially, but that would mean adding about 30 seconds to each song to make them airplay compatible, and I'm not sure I want to take on the extra hassle just now.)

jms

[Some mentioned seeing an add for the play, "Snow White", by J. Michael Straczynski.]

....oh, shrock....

No, don't go. It's terrible. Everyone dies. Your kid will end up traumatized. The surgeon general issued a report advising against it. Whole communities have outlawed it. I...I....

I was a much younger fellow when I wrote that. I was, I think, about 18 or 19; I'd written a number of produced one-act plays at 16 and 17, but this was my first commissioned play, and one of my first long-term produced full-length plays, running summer stock in the San Diego area for 16 weeks. You can't hold what I wrote at 18 against me now.

I don't remember anything about it. I've flensed it from memory. I can't...I....awk....

[ Summary: Comments that he didn't like the way TV Guide depicted JMS as somehow wrong or bad for being passionate about Babylon 5. ]

It's common today, in our age of cynicism, to deride anything in which the people involved feel passionately about what they do. We should all be laid back, do it for the money, just churn out sausage between commercials; if you get passionate about something, you're told to chill out, because passion is passe.

jms

To the two parts of this...yes, there's always been the undercurrent in the series that says we are our brother's keeper, that we have an obligation to look out for one another. If we're bound and determined to seek our own destruction nothing can stop that...but anything less, and a kind word in the right place, an action taken at the right time, can bend history and help others. This is part of the community sense that comes through so strongly in B5.

And yes, there are sometimes themes that come out without my knowing it; sometimes I wear my heart on my sleeve more than I intended, and stuff slips through, thematically and dialogue-wise, that later I see and wish I'd left out. Sometimes it'll be much later when I'll realize what a character was REALLY saying when s/he whispered a line or two into my brain, and I'll perceive again that the characters are smarter than I am sometimes...and take that thematic element and run with it.

And no, I won't tell you which was which....

jms

And that's good. Too much of TV is just the plot/action stuff, not much emotional content. For me, drama done well should make you feel something. That's vitally important to me.

jms

My interest in poetry is fairly eclectic, and eccentric. I go from the classics to the obscure, but I'm not *really* as informed about poetry as I should be. My favorite stuff comes from the Shelley/Byron period of English literature. Tennyson is also obviously a favorite. Coleridge. But then I jump right over into e.e. cummings and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (no, I never really recovered from beat poetry, some of it still works for me). I tend to go for the more structured poetry; free verse is okay to a point, but often gets misused or used as an excuse for sloppy writing.

jm(look upon my works ye mighty and despair)s

I don't think there's really a difference. (Also, philosophically, I think one can be experienced and still retain a certain measure of innocence, but that's another discussion for another time.) I think we all have that part of ourselves which wishes to believe, needs to believe in a cause or in other people , however many times experience slaps us in the face with the contrary position...and there is always the part which is tired and weary and burned out and refuses to trust again. We are all these things at different moments. The difference with writers is that we must be those different things on command, and articulate those feelings through the voices of our characters as they experience them in new contexts.

jms

It's definitely intentional. The purpose of any kind of art should be to make you feel something. If it's created with passion, then the work mirrors the intensity of emotion felt by the creator, passing it along to the viewer, who may not even recognize what's happening, or be able to pin it down...but it's there. I write very passionately, and the show needs to feel passionate to be what I need it to be. Otherwise what's the point?

jms

"In order to fully understand the message, you must understand the messenger."

Hrrmm...yes and no. Understanding the messenger can add a second layer of interpretation, but the primary layer must stand on its own or it's flawed. I don't need to know that Joe Orton was gay to fall out of my chair laughing at "Loot," don't need to know that Chekhov had a drinking problem to appreciate "Uncle Vanya," don't need to know that Mark Twain lost both his daughters tragically to appreciate "Letters from the Earth"....

Well, okay, I'll give you Twain, as the tragedies in his life fed right into his later work. That's the yes part in yes and no.

It's just that I already put out a lot of info on my personal life, likely more than I should, and the question "what price have you paid?" can only solicit a self-indulgent and self-serving answer.

jms

Passion, as I've noted elsewhere, has become passe. It's old fashioned; the proper attitude now seems to be detatchment and cynicism. It doesn't help that so much of TV is done by rote, recycling the same stories from place to place. Interestingly, I think we're seeing *less* of that in the last few years than in the entire decade preceding, so maybe this is a good turn.

jms

"And the funniest part of all is, JMS actively supports the party and the individual politicians who brought you the "Communications Decency Act," which would, if it hadn't been hamstrung by a court which had actually read the Constitution, have resulted in eventual restraint of such modes of expression......"

That's right, Gharlane. I supported the individuals now residing in the White House, and still do...because I'm not a one-issue person. Is the CDA a stupid, invidious, badly written, paranoid, neanderthal, repressive bill? Absolutely. And I supported the people who were actively against it, as I was actively against it. I don't have this notion that I must agree 100% with a politician, or have that politican hew to every single belief which I hold, in order to support him or her. There can be respectful (or loud) disagreements on principle on individual points.

The issue is: *on balance*, which side do I tend to support? Both parties are flawed. Candidates on both sides have eccentricities, failings, misfired notions. But on balance...you've got Bob Dole, who doesn't have any notion on the leadership of this country except the vague idea that he's *earned* his shot, and he's going to have it. It's not about providing a new vision, it's just about being the one wearing the pointy hat. He wants the ultimate promotion.

Kemp I find interesting, but saddled with Dole this is a non-starter. And from where I sit the Republican party has capitulated to the Religious Right on every issue of substance...people who've said they want to designate this a Christian nation, drag creationism into the schools (saying they want balance, but I don't see anybody offering to let folks teach Darwin from the church pulpit on Saturday nights), who've whipped up so much hatred against physicians and classes that murdering doctors is simply an unfortunate consequence....

Are there flaws to the Democratic side? Absolutely. An inability to come to grips with social programs long in need of serious reform, a soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed approach to social organization, de-emphasis on infrastructure in deference to social programming, too much concern about words and not enough concern about actions, grass-roots disorganization....

You say you're a fan of this show. Well, consider this: that if the government envisioned by Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Buchanan and Robert Dole and Bob Dornan and Alfonse D'Amato (possible spelling error there) ever took serious hold in this nation, Babylon 5 -- with its sometimes subversive nature, its open and frank discussions on religion, death, sexuality, violence, the conflict between belief and medicine -- would be the first program chucked out the door.

It was under the Reagan years that the Captain Power series -- for all its flaws, some episodes very good, some less so -- got shot out from under the producers because of the then-fashionable assault on violent TV by pressure groups (many of them on the far right), so don't tell me it can't happen...I was the one on the opposite side of the conference table when religious-right "consultants" on Satanism advised the network on another show where I was working on what they had to do to avoid sending unintentional Satanic messages, which meant leaving out references to fictional books like the Necronomicon, being unable to use the name Lovecraft, and being told that the signs of a kid succumbing to Satanism are "he's curious...he's sometimes depressed...he tries to reject authority...and he's susceptiple to peer pressure." No, I'm NOT making that up, that's verbatim.

And these are the same groups bending the Republican party to their own whims. I've seen their work up-close and personal, and I tell you frankly, that if they got in charge, this show would be deep-sixed so fast it'd make your head spin.

The present administration may be muffin-headed at times, may have its personal pecadillos and quirks...but compared to the mean, venal, anti-intellectual, anti-artist opposition, the opposition of Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan...I'll take it, and be glad of it, and when something as inherently dopey and destructive as the CDA gets passed, be absolutely open in complaining about it.

And thank you for dragging my personal politics back into this...and throwing it in my face. Anything else you'd like to drag up?

jms

"I try to write but find my work greatly influenced by outside sources such as other written works, movies and television shows. I seem to be unable to write something that hasn't already been done or write something that has been done in a different way. Does that make sense?"

There's a quote, I forget who said it: "Of course everything has already been said, but since no one was listening, we must begin again."

The problem, I see, in what you've described...and this is on the benefit of three paragraphs and ten seconds thought, so take this with a grain of salt...is that you don't actually know what it is you want to say as a writer. Or that you need to say. You're drawing sources from outside wriers, TV shows, "unable" to do otherwise, by your statement.

Let me toss another quote in here, again from a source I can't recall: "Too many people mistake a passion for reading with a desire to write." It's possibly you may fall under this category.

See, the problem with the writing biz is that everyone has access to keyboard, and we all think we can write, if we just had the time to do it. Not true. Give me a warehouse full of paintbrushes and easels, and 100 years, and I may in time become adequate, but never more than that.

Writing is a mug's game. It's heartbreak. It's pain and struggle and rejection and isolation and the only reason...the ONLY reason...to do it is if you've got something to say, something that burns in you so that you can't *NOT* write. If you're doing it on a whim, as a curiosity, as you say "trying your hand," then this may not be the field for you. This is a hardass, hard-work, lifetime job, and if you're not driven to say something, maybe you should consider something else.

On the other hand...you're 18. Sometimes it takes us a while to figure out just what the hell it is we want to say, or want to do. What it is you need to say may not have occured to you yet. On a third hand, I think all writers begin by playing around with other writer's voices, using techniques of other writers as sort of training wheels while they hone their own voice, dropping them by the wayside as new personal techniques are perfected, until the writer's voice is unique.

Decide what it is you want, and what you *need,* not what seems like itmight be kinda interesting...the rest takes care of itself.

jms

Actually, the progression of the B5 story has been almost exactly the same as the way I write my novels. I start off knowing where the story has to go, what benchmarks I need to hit en route to the end, what my repertory group of characters consists of, and then I start writing.

As someone said of a battle, an outline never survives contact with the enemy, which in this case is the actual writing. The outline, for me, is a safety net whose purpose is to keep me nominally on track while allowing me the freedom to bounce around the landscape, adding new threads, broadening out the storylines, fleshing out the characters, and reorganizing how the characters move in and out of the story. That makes the work organic. I still end up exactly where I wanted to end up, but the road there is much more interesting than if I'd just hewed to a very rigid structure.

It's like driving from LA to San Diego...you can just jump on the freeway, or knowing the freeway is there, jump off from time to time to grab lunch at Pea Soup Anderson's or a quick ride or two at Disneyland.

And yeah, sometimes I have to work to keep the characters in line. Londo's the worst. He's always going off and pulling me in one direction or the other, he's very peripatetic...and getting him talking for dialogue is never hard...getting him to shut the hell UP for two minutes so somebody else can get a word in, tha's hard. Writing is a very schizophrenic business.

jms

Thanks...and yeah, it happened again. I'm writing 405, "The Long Night," and there's something that one character was supposed to do in the script, that had been the plan all along, that was my intent even as near as 1 page from where it was going to happen...then just as I got to that scene, another character stepped up and said, "no, let me do it." I was kinda flummoxed. "You?! You're the LAST person anyone would think to do this." The character nodded. "Exactly." And the symmetry was perfect, the impact would be greater...so that's who did it.

On one level, it's always wonderful when this happens; on another, it scares the hell out of me....

It's at the bottom of act two, you'll figure it out when you get there.

jms

Oh, I didn't really do it for the money, there wasn't much involved at the time...it's not that I wrote it for money, it's that I wrote it when I was *18* and when you look back at ANYdamnthing you wrote at 18 the impulse is to shriek and run away.

jms

[ Summary: One poster comments to another about how wonderful a job JMS does writing about Christianity while not even believing in god. ]

One doesn't have to believe in the existence of something to write about it effectively...there aren't really Minbari or Vorlons, y'know...you just decide to write about it as though it were a True Thing. And that's about how I approach religious characters. As a writer, you can choose to be honest in your characterization, or you can use the medium for propaganda and the advancement of personal agendas. The latter holds no appeal for me.

jms

Disclaimer: I know nothing about this program except what I've heard casually around town, so take everything that follows with a grain of salt.

Anyone who tells you that, by following a formula, you will turn out a saleable script in 6 weeks is almost always lying. If the program here is mainly just in discipline, and that's something you need to apply butt to chair and fingers to keyboard, then that's a different issue. So beyond that, I can't give you an informed recommendation either way.

jms

At 18 I was trying to get the hang of my craft. I knew some stuff, but not a lot. I'm a little closer to that goal now, though there's still a long road ahead of me. B5 is something I'm proud of now, and will be in future.

jms

"I just saw "Passing through Gethsemane" again, and felt compelled to write, for the first time. I understand you're not religious, but I just wanted to take the time out to thank you for your respectful treatment of the issue in that episode."

Thanks...but it really isn't a big thing, it's just being honest as a writer.

And if it's helped urge on your own creative works, as you say, then all the better.

jms

"As one who has successfully accomplished both, which do you consider the most difficult: Getting a first novel published, or getting a first TV series on the air? I'm not speaking in terms of the amount of work involved, rather I mean the difficulty in overcoming the odds against you in each respective field."

This is a no-brainer. The TV series is the hardest. To write and sell a novel, you need just write the novel; once it's out there, you don't have to have written 15 prior successful novels to get it sold. The book is judged on its quality and marketability, and if it's good, somebody buys it.

My first novel, DEMON NIGHT, sat in a closet for, oh, about 2 years (having written it just for myself) until my agent got wind of it, sent it off to a NY affiliate, who sent it to an editor/publisher, who bought it on sight. This was when I didn't really have much of a name in TV (which actually works against you in literary circles), so that wasn't a factor. Now, obviously, that's an extremely fortuntate and atypical series of events, but still indicative in this sense....

People come to me and say they want to sell a TV series. I try and tell them it's impossible if you don't have a credit list an arm long. Not difficult, we're not talking here degrees of difficulty or "overwhelming odds," there ARE no odss. It's simply impossible. Can't be done. Hasn't been done.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. What a network wants is someone who's shown he or she can run a series, write for TV, and produce for TV. (Or film for those who've crossed over.) If a network is going to spend upwards of $22 million for a series in one year, not even COUNTING what's spent on advertising, marketing, publicity, overhead and the like, they need to have a certain comfort factor, they need to know that the person knows what s/he's doing, and is an experienced writer/producer or, preferably, a full-blown show runner.

You don't have to have that for novels. The odds of selling a first novel are, from what I heard somewhere once, about 1 in 6,000. The odds of selling a first TV series if you don't have credits are 0.

If you *do* have credits, the odds are still massively stacked against you. Every season, the networks put maybe 10-15 shows each into development. That refers to as little as a single pilot script order, or as much as multiple scripts, a produced pilot, or pilot plus X-number of episodes. Of those 10-15, maybe 4 or 5 will ever see the light of day. The rest simply vanish. So that's about 50 possible series per year (and that's a very generous figure). There are around 6,000 members of the Writers Guild.

Most writer/producers go through several development deals before ever getting anything on the air. And B5 wasn't my first in that sense. I developed series for CBS, ABC, syndication groups, re-developed the V series for Warner Bros., and others. It's a very, very long progression to this particular chair.

jms

"If this is the case (which I know it is), how come there is so much out there that is, in a simple word, terrible? I mean, if some of these shows are the ones that DO get through all this, I shudder to think about the ones that don't."

Because so much of TV is formulaic, and because the networks often get into the process too much, knocking off all the corners and edges that make a concept interesting. I think that's starting to change, but we'll see how far it goes.

"Also, does this set-up mean that established writer/producers can easily get something through that never would otherwise (Steven Bochco and "Cop Rock" comes to mind...)"

Yes. The networks often make long-term deals with major producers and set aside stuff sight unseen. The 10:00 timeslot is basically "owned" by a very small group of producers, with the rest of the prime-time hours a bit more up for grabs.

"On a completely different note, you've written some plays-- how much of a Producer role did you take on some of those, and how much did you enjoy that aspect of it-- how does theatre compare to TV?"

I had zip involvement as producer, and wouldn't have been qualified to do so. I enjoyed it immensely, and plan to get back into theater one of these days.

jms

"1. How do you go about finding relatively obscure records for researching a story? I have tried every resource I know of short of packing up and traveling a 500+ miles to the city in question just to go to the library. And is there a newspaper archive you know of that has all of the newspapers online? "

I don't know the online databases well enough to comment here; when I did this sort of thing, I generally just went down to City Hall Records and started there, and the local newpaper morgue.

"2. As someone who has written both science fiction and horror, do you think one is easier than the other to work in."

Horror, only nominallyl, because you don't have to be quite as rigorous about the science (though the supernatural aspect must be consistent), and because it's an easier thing for me...I like scaring people.

jms

"After season three's writing marathon, do you consider yourself a science fiction writer, at least to the extent that you won't be annoyed when our soundbyte media feels the need to pigeon-hole you into a single category?"

I don't tend to put myself into any one category, but generally don't get bugged when I'm referred to one way or another. After my first couple of horror novels, and a nomination for a Bram Stoker Award, and the Nightmare Classics gig for Showtime, I was called a horror writer...I did The Real Ghostbusters and they said I was a comedy writer...I went to conventions while I was a writer/producer on Murder She Wrote and one person with whom I shared a panel asked what somebody who just wrote TeeVee mysteries was at an SF convention and why anyone should listen...and now people call me an SF writer.

It doesn't bother me. It's actually kind of funny on one level, that people feel they have to somehow pigenhole you by whatever you've done last. But beyond that, as an SF fan, with a great respect for the genre, if somebody calls me an SF writer, I don't mind.

"I think TNT will really establish this series in the mainstream culture and wonder if you've ever had to fight the public's perception of you."

I think the mainstream public was for the most part unaware of me. Still is, I think. And that's okay too. It's about telling a story, not getting a certain kind of approbation.

"Do you think you'll be able to resist the gravitational pull of "science-fiction" fame? Before your writing has been pretty much all over the place and not giving anyone the opportunity to ensconce your name into a genre. Do you see yourself writing science fiction for a long time or being a guest at science fiction conventions every once in a while for the rest of your life? Or will you purposely zig-zag away in another direction?"

I'll probably just keep doing what I'm doing. I've been playing around with a notion for a series that could do something quite revolultionary for mainstream TV, and that'll get me described as a manstream/intrigue writer...if it goes anywhere. If not, I'll just keep going from genre to genre as the stories grab me. That's the only real criterion I can apply. I follow the story that interests me. If that happens to be a horror novel, it's a horror novel; if it's an SF story, it's SF. I go where the story takes me.

jms

[ Summary: "Your morals keep leaking out of your work, of course. ] Scary, putting so much stuff out where everybody can see."

Yeah, I kinda wear my heart on my sleeve more than I should; sometimes even I'm appalled at what I find my subsconscious has given away once I can step back and look at a script objectively.

jms

Without belaboring the point, as Yevgeny noted, yes, Serling was a huge influence on me, as a writer, and in my writing, slightly different things. I find it's useful, whenever I find myself getting too comfortable, thinking I've got it sussed, to sit down and watch anything he wrote...it humbles you *real* fast, and makes one realize that one isn't qualified to even carry his pencil case.

If there were a pantheon of influences, I'd put Rod Serling, Harlan Ellison, Norman Corwin, Ray Bradbury and HP Lovecraft at the very top of the pile.

jms

Once I start writing, it takes me about 7-10 days to finish a script. Usually scripts are done several weeks before preproduction begins. Prep then starts about 2 weeks prior to shooting. Shooting takes 7 work days. Post takes on average 52 days.

jms

Writing novels is something I do want to get back to; my next novel is already fully outlined, I have all the research stuff I need, but it's a 1,000 page story, and I need one fairly focused year to write it. So as much as I enjoy writing novels, it'll have to wait until I'm done with B5, alas.

jms

Morgan: in hearing the sorts of books you like, I have two words for you: Jonathan Carroll. Try his "Bones of the Moon," or if you can find it, "The Land of Laughs."

"Demon Night" was a decent first attempt; I never actually wrote it intending for it to ever be published; I just sorta wrote it for myself, as an exercise, then stuck it in a closet for almost 3 years until my agent one day suggested I write one someday, and I mentioned I had one. Almost didn't give it to her, figuring it was an okay start, but I needed to really learn more. She read it, loved it, gave it to her NY associate, who sold it to the first editor who looked at it, and it got a Bram Stoker Award nomination from the Horror Writers of America. So what the heck do I know...?

jms

I think I probably haven't separated out Bradbury's work for special attention mainly because it's so much "in the air," that it's part of one's environment, and one doesn't notice it sufficiently to comment on it.

Bradbury was one of the first SF authors I stumbled across, specifically "The Martian Chronicles," which just blew my brains across the wall and splattered them on the library windows. His use of language, imagery, the very human details of his work...it astonished me. Sometimes I hear Bradbury creeping into my dialogue from time to time...a turn of phrase or a word choice.

Interestingly enough, if you ask Bradbury who was one of his primary influences, prehaps the most singular influence, he'll cite Norman Corwin as well.

jms