<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>bakana, have you seen how many projects JMS is doing right now? I must confess, I wonder if he isn't repeating an old cycle.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I really don't think it's as bad as it looks.
B5 seems to have aged JMS about 20 years, but look at what it involved:
It was his first-ever series as show-runner. In addition to writing most of the episodes, even in the first two seasons, he did some polishing or rewriting on most of the others. He wrote all but one script for the next three years straight.
He had to learn editing, music spotting and other jobs he hadn't really been involved in before.
He was establishing an entirely new SF universe, and had to personally approve the design of pretty much
everything in it, from spacecraft, to planets, to eating utensils, to the sign outside the mens' room.
He was directly involved in every aspect of the show's production as well as pre- and post-production. He was writing mostly at night so that he could be on the set when necessary.
He
also wrote a novel, comic books, short stories, spec scripts, outlined 3 complete trilogies of novels
and went straight into production on an additional TV movie and a sequel series while
B5 was winding down.
On
Crusade, in addition to all the
normal problems of a new series, he was dealing with a level of network interference, stupidity and incompetance that he had never encountered before on any show in his career. (Including at least one that was so bad he quit.
)
He's had two years "off" now, or at least away from the daily grind of producing a one-hour TV show.
Neither of his current or potential TV series require the kind of total commitment that
B5 did.
Rangers because it is set in an established universe where much of the design work and backstory are already in place, "TWCBN" (which I'm 90% sure is
Jeremiah) because it takes place on a post apocalyptic Earth in the near future. Not a whole lot has to be created from scratch. He's overseeing both shows, but not writing all of them. (He's already hired writers and has a half-dozen scripts in the works for "TWCBN"/
Jeremiah)
Writing the comics is not that time consuming, and he's already said he'll limit himself to two or three monthly titles - meaning if he picks something up, he'll drop something else.
The
Rising Stars film won't absorb that much of his time. He isn't producing it, just writing it. He's already turned in his second draft. Anything from this point on is going to be tinkering and refining it. He's not going to have to sit down and rewrite the thing from scratch. And he won't have to be on the set or locations when they're shooting. (In fact, the director probably won't
want the writer within a hundred miles of where he is, if he's the typical Hollywood egomaniac.
)
If I'm right, the "Surprise Third Project" which JMS has recently mentioned picking up again is
World on Fire, the series he and Chris Carter almost sold to CBS right after
Crusade folded. (And which was only killed by Fox's sudden cancellation of
Harsh Realm.)
WoF is another "you don't have to invent the whole world" show. JMS has described it as "95% mainstream and 5% speculative fiction." That means you can shoot it anywhere, buy or rent your props off the shelf and that there are tons of writers who can handle the format.
I don't know if Carter would still be involved in the project (the rights reverted to JMS after the CBS deal fell through), but he has to be looking ahead to the time when
X-Files winds down, and they've just had to lay off all the
Lone Gunmen people. I think he'd be interested. JMS said that he was going back to "TSTP" because he had "cleared the decks" of some other work - which tells me he's probably finished the current cycles of
Rising Star and
Midnight Nation (comics are written months ahead of time) and that he's probably done the bulk of the prep work on "TWCBN"
If "TSTP"
is World on Fire, and Ten Thirteen is involved, Frank Sponitz could be shooting the existing pilot in with the old
Lone Gunmen crew almost as soon as the ink is dry on the contracts. Certainly JMS would have no trouble staying on top of
WoF and
Rangers if both were shooting in the same city and he had experienced producers from Ten Thirteen to rely on for some of the heavy lifting.
A heavy
writing workload is not what wiped JMS out during
B5. He can't
not write, and, like most writers, he is usually working on multiple projects because sometimes putting "A" aside and working on "B" for awhile helps you get past a sticking point in "A" What nearly did him in was the one man band aspect of trying to control every aspect of
B5 himself, while inventing a whole universe as he went along.
With a few old Babylonian hands in key positions - the kind of people who know what he wants before he does - and without the strain of starting from scratch, I suspect he'll have no more trouble with his workload than people like David E. Kelly, Dick Wolf, and Steven Bocchco, all of whom had multiple
high profile, network series running at the same time. (And most of whom were probably writing feature film scripts and The Great American Novel in their spare time.)
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
