I've always said that there's a side story that could follow the 5
year B5 storyline, which takes place in the B5 universe, and follows on
the heels of the events in B5...but who knows if that would happen?
The one thing I would hate is for B5 to become any kind of so-called
"franchise." Because as soon as that happens, you're prevented from making
any changes, from doing anything that might startle people, cutting into
the piggy-bank. Once that happens, you're dead.
I've also made no secret of my sense that, should B5 run its full
five year course (and assuming the side-story doesn't go, which I would
not exactly count on)...I plan to get out of TV. By that point, I would
have said pretty much everything I want to say in TV, and it's time to
get out, buy a small house somewhere outside London, and spend the rest
of my years writing novels, which is kinda where this all began. (I've
had 2 novels, 1 anthology, and a bunch of short stories published, as
well as 500 or so articles.)
I never got into this to make a ***FRANCHISE***, and never really
intended to become an executive producer. I just don't like being
rewritten...so I climbed higher, until finally there was nobody over me
messing with my scripts. Outside of the B5 reality, if someone came to
me and offered me *staff writer* on a show -- the lowest position in the
TV totem pole -- but with the guarantee that I wouldn't be rewritten, they
wouldn't change the words...I'd take it in a hot second. I'm here, now,
strictly out of self-defense.
Two valuable social skills are knowing when to enter a room, and when
to leave a room. At some point, you have to get out or become something
you don't want to become. I've never really been part of the Hollywood
SYSTEM, and have no desire to do so.
In "The Velvet Alley," Rod Serling wrote of a young advertising writer
who becomes a success at writing television. At one point, the character
says (paraphrased from memory): "Here's the trap...in TV they pay you lots
of money for what you do...then, slowly, your standard of living rises
until you *need* that constant flow to stay at that level. Then...they
threaten to take it away from you if you don't behave. And THAT'S when
they've got you."
jms |
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