The impression I have always got from JMS' responses to these issues is that his goal is to write the stories he wants to write, the way his characters dictate.
If someone comes in and wants to change all that and insist that certain things are done in certain ways, or the story takes a certain direction, he will defend his position "to the death", as it were.
And I can relate to that.
I am a singer and songwriter, and being unpublished and without a record deal I have enormous freedom to write the songs that I want to write and have the band play them the way I want them played (subject to their musical input of course).
I (and the band) have total creative control of the CD we are recording at the moment, so it will stand or fall by the quality of
our input.
If some record dompany wanted to step in and release the CD to a wider market, that would be great.
But if same record company was to step in, change the way it sounded or alter some of the lyrics to remove the heart and soul of my original songs, frankly I would rather walk away and not see it released at all.
And I am nothing like the pain-in-the-ass that JMS acknowledges himself to be.
The point is, if he is such a pain in the ass, why do studios hire him? Presumably because he is good at what he does, and they want him to bring that to their show.
From my limited magagerial experience, I know that if you have someone on your staff who is good at what they do, the best thing is to let them get on with it and not interfere all the time. (If only I could convince the MD of that!) As soon as you start looking over their shoulder and making suggestions as to how they should do things, they will start looking for another job.
Why should JMS (or televsion for that matter) be any different.
I'll shut up now. Thanks for listening.
