Interesting JMS Facebook Posts & Tweets

[Jan]

Any leaks on what the new project is yet?

The way JMS phrased it, I would expect the news to come by way of a studio announcement or press release.

Jan

[sftv]

Before Watchmen: Moloch

That should probably count as a new announcement, since it is a separate miniseries, although part of the overall Before Watchmen series, for Aug 25th.

[Jan]

Or tweets. Interesting tweets count, too. And JMS went to town last night!

Lost Tweets From History: Golgotha, 33 AD. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, OW, ow, ow, ow, OW, ow, ow, ow HEY!"

Lost Tweets From History: Ford's Theater, April 14, 1865, 10:15 PM. "Play is terribly boring. Could anything be worse than sitting here?"

Lost Tweets From History: Berlin, 1939 "Sorry, meant to say we must deal with problem of the NEWS. Stupid auto-correct."

Lost Tweets from History: October 16, 1793, Paris "I'm not worried, peasants are too stupid to know how to operate the lever that drops the

Lost Tweets From History: 30 AD, Galilee "Told hubby idea for Mad Prophet Collector Plates starting with John the B. Not sure he understood"

Lost Tweets From History: 64 AD, Rome. "Having another of those silly days when I can't remember whether or not I turned off the stove"

Lost Tweets From History 32 AD, the Mount. Meant to say weak will inherit the dearth. Stupid auto-correct. In future they'll surely fix this

Lost Tweets From History: AD 33 Gethsemane After big deal over dinner we get same shitty food. Last of these I come to pic.twitter.com/6vtyTj6I

Lost Tweets From History: India 483 BCE: Meant to type if you see Buddha on the road KISS him. Stupid auto-correct. Does everyone get this?

Lost Tweets From History: Mecca, 631 "To the guy mock-tweeting in the future: Knock it off or there's going to be trouble."

Lost Tweets From History: 4923 BC Atlantis "Global climate change my ass."

Lost Tweets From History: 1712 BCE Intersection of Sodom and Gomorrah. "One last look back, what could it hurt?"

Lost Tweets From History: 1006 BC Jerusalem. "Played King Saul's Courts today. Score: 30-love. I rule!"

Lost Tweets From History: date unknown "Let there be light. Crap, okay, let there FIRST be air to CARRY the sound, THEN language THEN light"

Lost Tweets From History: Georgia 11/16/64Tweeted joke to Gen. Lee. He tweeted it was lame. Furious. Going to get drunk and fuck up Atlanta

Lost Tweets From History: 2004, Manhattan "Suggested he make Norman Osborn the father of Gwen's kids. The fans will love it!"

With that, adieu and good night.

[babylonlurker]

Or tweets. Interesting tweets count, too. And JMS went to town last night!

Yes - that was quite a lot of fun . . .

[Jan]

Before I post these, let's be clear that there's not to be any discussion about these posts here. Any discussion needs to go to off-topic, okay? This thread is here because JMS' Facebook posts can't be archived and I (and others) want to be able to look from time to time and see what was said.

There were three political discussion threads last night, all interesting for various reasons. In the order they were first posted:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=367497943331181&id=139652459402959

https://www.facebook.com/#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=476284529073082&id=139652459402959

https://www.facebook.com/#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=476305149071020&id=139652459402959

All three have interesting discussion with at least a slightly better signal-to-noise ratio that is usually seen these days.

Remember, responses to off-topic. Thanks.

Jan

[Jan]

This came over both on Facebook and Twitter:

I can only assume from all this that someone in the afterlife has begun pre-production on a Babylon 5 movie. I wonder who's writing the scri

Jan

[Jan]

A few posts regarding JMS's Spidey work being challenged (It's Banned Books Week):

Huzzah, I finally wrote a banned book, I...wait, it's because it showed a bikini and a skirt? That's no fun! http://cbldf.org/banned-comic/banned...n-revelations/

Because this is the volume with the 9/11 issue, by banning the book they're helping the terrorists win.

Well, if they're gonna do this, there's another book they need to pull out that has things no child should be exposed to...murder, torture, genocide, rape, incest...what the hell was it called again? Oh, right. The Bible.

Unfortunately, the item on CBLDF doesn't tell what they outcome was.

Jan

[Jan]

JMS posted a link to an article on B5:

Really lovely article about the legacy of Babylon 5, both as an online phenomenon and a story. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/all...century-fandom

And further down in the thread:

I had a meeting not that long ago with a network bigwig, and talked about a project I wanted to do that had a five year arc. Apparently not knowing my background, he sighed and said, "we have writers come in here all the time talking about wanting to do a five year arc for us, we've hired some of them, and it never seems to work out, they don't seem to know how to really pull it off. What makes you think you can do it?"

I sat back in my chair, folded my hands and said, "Because I INVENTED the motherfucker."

[Joe Nazzaro]

That story brings up a lot of significant elements that a lot of people tend to forget. The notion of writing a complete season let alone three was virtually unprecedented. I remember Joe pointing out at one point that it hadn't really been done since Terry Nation wrote the entire 13-episode first season of Blake's 7, but I was happy to point out that while Terry was the writer of record, many of his scripts were little more than outlines that then had to be padded out and/or rewritten by story editor Chris Boucher. And what was even more amazing about Straczynski's B5 run was that not only did the production not lose a day of shooting while they were waited for the next script, most of them were turned in early enough that the various departments had the time to do their jobs properly.

The other element that deserves repeating was Joe's relationship with the fans. Sure, he was coy with some of the information he was sharing in real time, but when you look back at some of the things he said, it turns out he was actually telling us an awful lot; we just didn't know it at the time. The only time the production got a bit annoyed was when big chunks of information were revealed too early. I remember getting invited to a screening of 'In the Beginning' while in LA spending several days covering the show. The next day, I got called into producer John Copeland's office- Ain't it Cool News had just posted a spoiler-free story about ITB, and the producers- perfectly reasonably i thought- wanted to know if I had anything to do with the story. I told them the absolute truth, which is I had nothing to do with it, nor did I even know anybody at AICN at that time. My word was good enough; nobody ever asked me a second time. And these were not people who kept a curtain of security around their show; name me one other genre series that would allow a journalist on set for the entire shoot of their final episode and then accept a promise and a handshake that the journalist in question would keep it to himself for an entire year. And because the TOR piece brings up Steven Moffat and Doctor Who, I'm reminded of the day that my wife and I just happened to bump in Steven as he was coming back from his local Starbucks in London. We couldn't understand why he seemed so nervous; after all, I had interviewed him before, and Sheelagh won a Welsh Bafta award for her work on his episode The Girl in the Fireplace, so there was no reason he should have been diffident in talking to us. It turns out that it was the day that Matt Smith was being announced as the new Doctor, so I guess he thought we were going to beat the information out of him.

I think what that TOR piece apty demonstrates is that Babylon 5 was the ultimate example of a genre series in which its creator knows how his story is going to play out right up to the end. Not only that, he actually makes the time to communicate directly with his fans, thus building up a loyal fan base. Other shows have tried to do it with varying degrees of success- Joss Whedon and Buffy being one of the best examples, but nobody has done it better.

[JoeD80]

Yes it was a half-hour sitcom, but Sidney Sheldon wrote the entire 30-episode second season of I Dream of Jeannie.

[Ubik]

That story brings up a lot of significant elements that a lot of people tend to forget. The notion of writing a complete season let alone three was virtually unprecedented.

Absolutely. I think the strength of B5 lies in its consistency of vision. Sure, there's the occasional down side too, for example some the dialogue can get a bit ropey here and there... BUT these are tiny considerations. Taken as a whole B5 is one hell of a feat and I doubt there are many creators out there who could do much better.

It really makes me hope that Joe will get another shot at a similarly epic arc with one of the many new TV shows that may be going into production.

[Dan Dassow]

That story brings up a lot of significant elements that a lot of people tend to forget. The notion of writing a complete season let alone three was virtually unprecedented. ...
The other element that deserves repeating was Joe's relationship with the fans. ...
I think what that TOR piece apty demonstrates is that Babylon 5 was the ultimate example of a genre series in which its creator knows how his story is going to play out right up to the end. Not only that, he actually makes the time to communicate directly with his fans, thus building up a loyal fan base.

As someone who had the pleasure of interacting with Joe Straczynski online from “The Gathering” through “Crusade”, I cannot overstate how amazed I still am that JMS treats us as fellow fans. Frankly, I got spoiled from the experience. JMS has spent and continues to spend a significant amount of time and effort to demystifying developing and producing films and television shows. This was particularly evident in the making of Changeling.

JMS seriously endangered his health by writing 92 of the 110 episodes, as well as the pilot and five television movies. He was frequently sick during production of Babylon 5, due in large part from lack of sleep.

[Jan]

Just found:

Expect a nice little annoucement to come out of New York Comic Con later today or first thing tomorrow....

[Jan]

A poster put up a poem called "Babylon 5 - The Great War"

https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=488153334552868&id=139652459402959

JMS' reply:

Very nice. Well done.

This is about as far as I can ever go into poetry:

There once was a fighter from Narn
Who seemed as though raised in a barn
With singular grace
He saved all his race
And later wound up in a yarn.

Thankyew...thankyewverymuch....

[Jan]

Found this on YouTube. Don't know when it was filmed...possibly at the LosCon convention yesterday?

JMS on Writing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WNbAeRZR10

Jan