Hi there,
Bit of an odd question, I hate to ask this one, as I have an enormous amount of respect for the man. In the past, he has helped me (and I don’t mean that I read his book for guidance, I mean he personally helped me out) so I do really like the guy.
However, the more I see, the more tweets I read, I’m noticing something very unpleasant. JMS seems to always shift the blame, if something is good, he takes credit, if something has gone wrong, he’s very fast to pin it on someone else.
I’m sure we all have that friend, the one who it’s never their fault, who is the first one to point the finger. That person is deeply unpleasant.
I first noticed this when I read an old interview about Babylon 5, where he seemed to constantly humblebrag about how his show was superior to Star Trek. In one he started nitpicking (yes Voyager’s computer did receive an infection from cheese, but Babylon 5 had its share of poor episodes).
Then I read his tweets about Sense8 where he’ll throw the other writers under the bus.
When talking about B5 in widescreen and HD, he blamed it all on the VFX department and how they didn’t do what he asked. I know there are posts from them where they have refuted this and posted their own much more detailed story, stating that he didn’t ask for what he claimed and even if he did, some of it wasn’t even possible at the time. Now maybe they are shifting the blame, but I’m more inclined to believe the technician than the writer on this.
This one is odd, most 90s shows have trouble getting into HD, why pretend B5 had some superior wisdom, which every other show lacked? Why the need to find a villain or fallguy when it was simply a technical limitation of the time? It’s boorish.
It finally all clicked for me when I read him talking about World War Z, talking about how much better his draft of the script was and how another writer screwed it up.
Am I wrong on this one, or is there a pattern? I’m not expecting him to be perfect or anything like that, but it does become hard to respect.
Or is there something I’m not getting? I have bought his autobiography but haven’t read it yet, which may shed some more light.
As I said, I do like him and I’d love to get some sort of perspective where this isn’t as bad as it feels, but you wouldn’t associate with a friend or coworker who did this.
Bit of an odd question, I hate to ask this one, as I have an enormous amount of respect for the man. In the past, he has helped me (and I don’t mean that I read his book for guidance, I mean he personally helped me out) so I do really like the guy.
However, the more I see, the more tweets I read, I’m noticing something very unpleasant. JMS seems to always shift the blame, if something is good, he takes credit, if something has gone wrong, he’s very fast to pin it on someone else.
I’m sure we all have that friend, the one who it’s never their fault, who is the first one to point the finger. That person is deeply unpleasant.
I first noticed this when I read an old interview about Babylon 5, where he seemed to constantly humblebrag about how his show was superior to Star Trek. In one he started nitpicking (yes Voyager’s computer did receive an infection from cheese, but Babylon 5 had its share of poor episodes).
Then I read his tweets about Sense8 where he’ll throw the other writers under the bus.
When talking about B5 in widescreen and HD, he blamed it all on the VFX department and how they didn’t do what he asked. I know there are posts from them where they have refuted this and posted their own much more detailed story, stating that he didn’t ask for what he claimed and even if he did, some of it wasn’t even possible at the time. Now maybe they are shifting the blame, but I’m more inclined to believe the technician than the writer on this.
This one is odd, most 90s shows have trouble getting into HD, why pretend B5 had some superior wisdom, which every other show lacked? Why the need to find a villain or fallguy when it was simply a technical limitation of the time? It’s boorish.
It finally all clicked for me when I read him talking about World War Z, talking about how much better his draft of the script was and how another writer screwed it up.
Am I wrong on this one, or is there a pattern? I’m not expecting him to be perfect or anything like that, but it does become hard to respect.
Or is there something I’m not getting? I have bought his autobiography but haven’t read it yet, which may shed some more light.
As I said, I do like him and I’d love to get some sort of perspective where this isn’t as bad as it feels, but you wouldn’t associate with a friend or coworker who did this.
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