Jeremiah, JMS's Worst Experience? Mentioned in Interview.

[Truth66]

Understandably so, most of the attention on JMS's Interview that was released is focussed on Babylon 5.
However, there's another part of the interview that I found quite interesting. JMS had indicated something like Jeremiah being, "the worst experience of my career. It was so aweful that I actually got out of television for 5 years".
Now I'm also a huge fan of Jeremiah and was obviously upset that it barely went two season's and didn't go any further. Then of course there was the long wait for MGM to finally release season two on DVD.
Now hearing that Jeremiah was one of JMS's worst experiences, really has me wondering.
Does anyone have any speculation as to why JMS commented the way he did about Jeremiah?

[Jan]

Does anyone have any speculation as to why JMS commented the way he did about Jeremiah?

From what JMS has said, MGM wanted one kind of show and Showtime wanted something different. He got caught in the middle and apparently it was MGM that was the problem, including bypassing JMS to try to get his staff to do as MGM wanted.

Emblematic of some of the studio's notions is a call made by the studio to my casting director, stating -- of the paucity of babes -- "I don't care if she can act, I want her cute."

That's a major no-no in the protocol of making a show - they should *never* have approached anybody but JMS with what they wanted.

Here's another post pertaining to MGM.

At another time at one of his spotlights, JMS mentioned being sent certain starletts who couldn't act worth a darn. He had to have words with the exec sending them to the effect that he (JMS) didn't intend to fulfill his casting couch promises.

On top of that, it was a hugely difficult show to shoot with so much done on location in all types of weather.

I hate that it was so difficult because I just love Jeremiah a whole lot and would have loved for it to have continued.

Jan

[Truth66]

Thanks for providing those links Jan. I heard rumours about MGM's interference with Jeremiah which was somewhat similar to TNT's interference with Crusade. Yet, I somehow missed those postings by JMS. Then again I didn't join this site until 2006.
Is it my imagination, but it seems that JMS has had a lot of bad luck when it comes to dealing with Studios/Networks? TNT with Crusade, MGM with Jeremiah and The Sci Fi channel with Legend of the Rangers. No wonder he got out of television for 5 years.

[Jan]

JMS held one of his Twitter-based '15-minute press conferences' last night and the subject of Jeremiah came up:

cameron mulder
what project did you work on were you most disappointed by and why?

JMichael Straczynski
Jeremiah, for reasons that would take a book to describe and a lawyer to vet.

Stephen Kiskamp
Any chance we would ever see that Jeremiah book with scripts?

JMichael Straczynski It would be hard to write a book consisting entirely of profanities.

Jan

[Truth66]

Thanks for sharing Jan. I defintely got a laugh out of it. One could only imagine what was going through his head when he was answering those questions.