From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/9/1999 10:08:00 AM
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Message 1 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
My take on #1 is that this is the weakest of the bunch, because
this is the only one written at the behest of TNT; it's exposition
heavy, too much swaggering macho stuff, no real depth, just stuff
blowing up. The ones that follow are much better.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/9/1999 5:15:00 PM
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Message 2 in thread
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{original post unavailable}
"The mutiny was clumsy, but I like Gideon, Galen, Dureena and Trace.
(And from the way it opened, my first thought was, "this must be some
of the extra violence TNT wanted. Ugh.")
Ding.
"Will we find out why Gideon wouldn't have his exec scan the Drakh?"
The rules about unauthorized scans still apply. Matheson has to
operate even under stricter rules re: privacy now than before. You'll
see more on this later.
"The only really weak spots, to me were the " Earth in a panic"
scenes, which looked an awful lot like newsreel footage"
TNT note: we need to SEE Earth in turmoil, if we just hear about
it nobody's going to get it. They had us insert that.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/9/1999 5:15:00 PM
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Message 3 in thread
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SysOp Deonaha M. Conlin <102531.2627@compuserve.com> asks:
> And the passing reference to SOMETHING happening with the teeps -
> Will we ever find out what that something was? That Drakh - Wayne
> Alexander? That new twist - "Who do you trust?"
All that exposition is what TNT wanted...and one of the reasons
was that they weren't going to rerun ACtA before it...then they were,
which made it all unnecessary...then they ran ACtA AFTER the ep...which
makes NO kind of sense.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/9/1999 5:19:00 PM
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Message 4 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
"The opening scene cracked me up. Look there's a fight, as close to
wrestling as you can get on a starship."
Yep. That's one of the mandates they put on the first ep...they
wanted to start with a fist-fight.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/10/1999 2:54:00 PM
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Message 5 in thread
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(blocked) asks:
> Was this scene editted back together from separate filmings?
"In the scenes with the Senator on Mars I wasn't sure Cole was in the
same room with the other two during the dialogue. Too many cuts back
and forth and his eyes seemed to move around oddly. Was this scene
editted back together from separate filmings?"
At one point in editing we needed some close-ups, and there
weren't any in that part, so we kind of borrowed some from earlier in
the sequence. We do this a lot, when there isn't coverage of some parts
of scenes, rarely does anyone notice the eyeline difference.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/10/1999 2:54:00 PM
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Message 6 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
"And the differences were SO transparent (the fist fight, the earth
scenes, the posturing, etc.) I sure wish I could have seen a JMS
script as opposed to a "JMS with TNT" script."
The other 12 fit the bill.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/10/1999 2:54:00 PM
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Message 7 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
"Somehow I get the feeling that the reason the Detroit Free Press
reviewer said that Crusade looked "like it came from the planet Cheez-
Whiz" can be summed up in 3 letters.... TNT. Unfortunately, if the
first episode were all I had to go by I'd have to agree with him."
And I would as well.
That's the thing about all this...in the negative comments about
War Zone -- and actually there have been far fewer than I'd anticipated
-- there ain't much that I'd disagree with. If anything, they've
tickled me because they reflect EXACTLY what I'd said when these things
were asked for. It's been a massive validation.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/10/1999 2:54:00 PM
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Message 8 in thread
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(blocked) asks:
> I do have one question; how much of the riot scenes were real new
> footage?
It was all real footage.
As for the exposition...one reason they asked for so much was
because they said it was going to air months after ACTA, and nobody'd
remember, and it wouldn't get rerun...then after we shot WZ they
decided they *would* rerun ACTA before WZ...then a few weeks ago they
decided to run ACTA -- which has all the info needed for WZ -- AFTER
WZ.
Now perhaps you get a small sense of what we've been up against.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/10/1999 2:55:00 PM
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Message 9 in thread
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{original post unavailable}
Thanks....
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/11/1999 2:04:00 PM
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Message 10 in thread
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Dan Deckert <74156.1432@compuserve.com> asks:
> Have you set the bar too high?
"She had trouble understanding Crusade ep 1, and she's smarter than I
am.. Have you set the bar too high?"
Nope. Check out next week's for proof.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/11/1999 2:10:00 PM
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Message 11 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
I've seen it, thanks.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/11/1999 2:10:00 PM
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Message 12 in thread
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(blocked) asks:
> "Or, WHERE is ship security?!"
> Did they at least give you a blindfold and a cigarette?
"Did they at least give you a blindfold and a cigarette? <wry>"
Not orally, no.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/11/1999 2:10:00 PM
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Message 13 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
"And yet I don't recall a scene in B5 in which you fragged the head of
ITN or any other network."
No, but there were occasional little hidden messages in the
episode, as when a character says, "We've had to make some compromises
to get this show on the road." No one noticed that one, despite being
rather literal.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/12/1999 9:32:00 AM
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Message 14 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
Thanks for the info.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/13/1999 9:38:00 AM
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Message 15 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
Exactly...check my note to Zapnudo elsewhere in this thread.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/13/1999 9:38:00 AM
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Message 16 in thread
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{original post had no questions}
Yeah, those are also applicable.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/13/1999 9:38:00 AM
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Message 17 in thread
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{original post unavailable}
"Did you agree with this?"
Nope.
"I admit, I'm one of the folks who didn't particularly warm to the
footage. It seemed not to fit."
It didn't. Moreover, the order for that stuff came in about two
days before we were supposed to begin shooting, so we had to hurriedly
redesign the set to include the wall monitor, and change other aspects
of the filming, then hurriedly find some footage that would work
(sorta).
"I suppose there were few options."
None. What you have to understand is that we were at this
point, in the writing of this episode, on hiatus...awaiting the okay to
go back into filming. And though it was never said overtly, there was
always the undercurrent of "If TNT doesn't get this one script the way
they want it, they may not give the OK. So give them what they want
just this one time."
I did what I could with what they demanded, and tried to fight
as much as I could. For instance, in one scene, where Gideon tells the
others to meet him in the conference room, the TNT note was, "How does
Gideon know where the conference room is? We should have a scene where
he's shown the conference room."
My reply: "He knows where the conference room is because when
he's escorted to the bridge by Matheson, *HE CAN SEE IT FROM HIS
CHAIR*."
(It was one of those bang-your-head-against-the-wall moments.)
The overall problem, which many folks don't understand, is that
in a script you have a finite number of minutes and pages. Let's say
42 pages. Now, the script is written the way you want, kinda, with some
nice character moments and stuff. Then they want more exposition. You
can't just append it to the page count, you have to stay at 42 pages.
So you have to cut stuff *out* to make room for the stuff they want put
*in*. The first thing out the door is character, followed quickly by
humor.
There was, for instance, a nice clash with the senator and the
intelligence guy over Gideon's background, why he's the wrong person
for the job, why Sheridan picked him specifically for the job...which
had to go in order to put in more exposition (and lengthen the opening
fight scene in the teaser by about a third, another TNT request).
For me, a lot of what makes an episode fun are the character
moments, but there was no longer room for them...they had to go out to
make room for dry expositional stuff or stuff blowing up.
Which is why I picked "The Long Road" as the one to follow in
the broadcast order...it's one big character piece, with a fair amount
of humor, and just fun. A little expository in the second act, but
nothing unreasonable.
Stil, I'm proud of what we did with "War Zone," because it was a
little like someone handing you an inner tube and a tree branch and
telling you to make a radio telescope out of it. It ain't pretty, but
it does the job we had put in front of us.
(One aside...some folks on the net picked up my comments about
War Zone made here earlier and said I was apologizing after the fact
for the episode, once the reactions came in...but the date stamp on the
message, here and on the nets, clearly indicate that I made those
statements BEFORE the episode aired. I know *exactly* where the faults
are in the eps, where they work and where they don't work, and have
always tried to be the first one on record about them because that
seems right to me. This is, after all, about the process of educating
people about how TV works, the decisions that get made and how you deal
with them.)
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/13/1999 2:33:00 PM
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Message 18 in thread
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JudyL <72520.216@compuserve.com> asks:
> Ummm, ok....why?
" There was, for instance, a nice clash with the senator and the
intelligence guy over Gideon's background, why he's the wrong person
for the job, why Sheridan picked him specifically for the job...which
had to go <
Ummm, ok....why?"
Because something had to go time-wise to make room for other
stuff. If we'd kept *that*, then something ELSE of similar time would
have to go, such as Dureena's scene in the cell with Gideon, or the
like. The amount of air time we have per episode does not change.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/13/1999 2:37:00 PM
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Message 19 in thread
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JudyL <72520.216@compuserve.com> asks:
> Ummm, ok....why?
Also...they said the senator scene was too long (which it
*wasn't* before the big montage/video/the senator explains it all for
you sequence was added in), and to cut stuff out of that scene and add
it to the fight in the beginning.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/14/1999 3:08:00 PM
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Message 20 in thread
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Carl Cantarella <105030.3700@compuserve.com> asks:
> And if you don't mind my asking, have there been any promising or
> potentially promising developments regarding getting "Crusade"
> back into production again for another network?
The word "limited" was their choice to try and put a positive
spin on things from their side, "Oh, we meant to do it this way."
And we probably won't have any clearer ideas on the future of
the show until the very last minute, around the second week of July.
That's typical TV business stuff these days.
jms |
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From: J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com>
Subject: CRUSADE
To: CIS
Date: 6/14/1999 3:08:00 PM
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Message 21 in thread
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JudyL <72520.216@compuserve.com> asks:
> Actually, I meant why is he the wrong person for the job and why
> did Sheridan specifically pick him for the job, but I imagine
> (hope) we'll be filled in on that little story along the way?
Sheridan picked him for the qualities that made him exactly the
*wrong* person from their point of view...obstinate, difficult,
independent, not prone to following orders from home, not politically
astute...but he'll get the job done.
jms |
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