Ah, but you've always been such a seductress....

Some nifty stuff going on, boys and girls, some of which I can't talk
about yet, but hope to soon. See, at this stage of the game, the magic box
opens, and suddenly all SORTS of people are let into the process...agents,
casting associates on both coasts and in the midwest, licensing guys,
marketing guys, advertisers...and usually the response to a new show is,
"Okay, yeah, sure, come back to us after you've been on for a while." I can't
betray anything just yet, but let's just say that that has NOT been the case
here...the phone is practically ringing off the hook.

People are Getting It. Some of them are even coming to us, having heard
about the show on the grapevine.

There's a point when a show begins to hit critical mass, when you've
spent four years trying to get people excited, and suddenly there are excited
people coming out of the woodwork at you, and now everyone begins to get some
sense of what we've got here.

(God, I'm *dying* to tell you what one of those calls was...this is so
spiffy, so neat, so BIG...wait, Joe, be patient, wait until the ink dries,
keep your mouth SHUT for once, fer chrissakes....)

Tomorrow I go On Camera. Warners _ which is really supporting us in a
big way _ is sending over some of their people to do an on-camera interview
with me, Ron Thornton, possibly a couple of others, and include some of the
EFX we've developed. The film is to be shown at a large gathering of execs,
advertisers, marketing guys, the whole bit. I'll probably nab a copy to slip
into the reel I've been making that shows the progress of B5, from early
artwork to the first EFX reel, the new stuff, now this...eventually I'll add
on new EFX, then maybe some actor stuff, and as we get into shooting, some
snippets here and there, so that the reel is always absolutely current for
conventions.

What you get the sense of, finally, when something like this really gets
going, is of an army of people, and you have to play Patton, getting everyone
where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there. (Or maybe
army ants would be a better comparison.) There's silence for a very long time
at the beginning, then gradually it gets louder,and louder, and after a
while...yikes!

For years, nobody knows you...you start to look for your face on milk
cartons...then suddenly everybody wants to talk to you.

Y'know what? It's fun.

By the middle of next week, I should start getting video of actors
auditioning in NY, and the 3-dimensional renderings of the set. Today I had
to pick out the "audition sides," meaning those pages (sides of pages) of the
script that an actor goes through in a session with the casting director to
see if s/he's right...so you have to pick what amount to mini-scenes, and they
have to be separate enough so that the actor can get a grip on it, but
important enough to the plot to see how they handle exposition, and emotional
enough to see how they project feelings of anger or joy or fear...all in 2-3
pages a shot.

It's tough being a writer, but I gotta tell you, it's a walk in the park
compared to being an actor. It's rough work, and I have an endless respect
for those who do it well.

Gotta crash now...have to look good on camera tomorrow. If that doesn't
qualify for a miracle, I don't know what does....

jms