Return to Artwork Credits List
J. Michael Straczynski
John Copeland "Is there any stricture against kicking them in the nuts?"
— E-mail from Joe Straczynski to John Copeland, 12/21/87
4:30 p.m. May 5, 1997—The last da of shooting on the fourth season of Babylon 5. I walk onto Stage B where we are going to gather the cast and crew for a photo; standing off to one side by himself is Joe. He's just completing directing this episode; his mood appears reflective. I join him, we stand there a moment watching the group shot start to be organized. I turn to him and ask, "Who would have thought we would have wound up here?" Joe takes in the milling chaos of cast and crew members starting to take their places for the shot and he shake his head. For a moment my mind races back to the start of that road.
It's been a little over eleven
years since I first met Joe Straczynski. Back then I had darker hair and
Joe just had more hair. Doug Netter and I, along with our associates at Landmark
Entertainment Group were just beginning preproduction on a children's science
fiction television series entitled Captain Power and the Soldier of the
Future. We were looking for a story editor for the series. In walked
this tall, lanky fellow by the name of J. Michael Straczynski.
You see, by his own admission, Joe is a writer—that's what he does. That's what he is driven to do. He is nearl always writing something—a concept for a television series, a novel, a script—his capacity is absolutely amazing.
I think one of the first things that occurred to me about Joe was that he is a tireless worker. He is the fastest, most prolific writer I have ever worked with. Over the next several months I communicated with Joe via modem from Toronto. We exchanged nearly all o the scripts for the series via a BBS and corresponded back and forth with script comments and other production materials. This was the start of a interesting relationship. People tend to express themselves differently via the written word as opposed to conversation. We exchanged some pretty interesting missives over the months (I still have all of them). I feel like we got to know each other on a different level than if we'd spent this time talking over the phone or in meetings in some office somewhere.
Then there was the time that Joe saved my life. Actually he saved his own in the process, so I guess you would say that he saved our lives. He came up to Toronto so he could become familiar with the sets and locations we were using on Captain Power. We'd gone out to dinner and I'd had probably one more drink than I really needed. Now, you may or may not know this, but Joe doesn't drive. So here we are sailing down Bay Street in Toronto and I'm talking in a very animated fashion, when suddenly Joe grabs the wheel, jerks it to the side, and prevents us from hurtling headlong into an oncoming car. Had it not been for his quick reflexes we might have become just a couple of Canadian highway accident statistics Just to show what a good guy he is, I was able to convince him that I was actually still okay to drive.
Which brings me to the story regarding the quote above. Many of you readers may not be familiar with Captain Power, but it was heralded as an interactive television show which allowed viewers at home, using the Mattel toy line, to shoot the bad guys and to also b shot by the bad guys. It was actually reactive television because the viewe couldn't change the direction or outcome of the story. However, this elemen of the show called for lots of battle sequences, and battles tend to be violent. We were crucified by those watchdogs of children's television for this very thing. So we had to come up with new and unique ways of dealing with the bad guys. I had written Joe, "We are trying to discover additional ways of neutralizing the bad guys without knocking their heads off." Joe's suggeste response is quoted above.
Joe wrote eleven episodes for Captain Power and edited all of the freelancer's scripts, which was pretty impressive His sense of story was great. What Joe brought out in the scripts was far beyond what most television programs for younger audiences deal with. They were something that the younger viewer could enjoy along with older viewers. However, Mattel, the financiers behind the series, were more interested in selling toys than making good television. This rankled Joe, not to mentio many of the rest of us working on Captain Power, to the point he lef the show near the end of the season. Joe is the kind of person who will staunchly defend the creative side of a show, whether it be in the script or production This is a trait that is not always found within our industry.
When Joe throws down the gauntlet, look out He is a force and an intellect to be reckoned with. And he won't back dow on his principles. He has my utmost respect for that. His resolve doesn't necessarily manifest itself in confrontation; it is usually witty, subversive, and nearly always gets the other party's attention.
Even after Joe left Captain Power for Twilight Zone, we stayed in touch. It was great to see him continue to grow as a writer. It was during this time that he came to see Doug and me with this idea for a character driven science fiction television series called Babylon 5. The amount of work he had already done on the projec was amazing. He had an impressive presentation of color artwork he had commissioned from Peter Ledger, a complete character breakdown and series outline, and a script, The Gathering, which several years later became the pilot movie for the television series.
There have been many interviews and magazine articles devoted to how long it took to bring Babylon 5 to television so I won't rehash all of that. What I think is more important and unique about our experience with Babylon 5 is the ongoing dedication to th show by its viewers. Joe sought the comments and reactions of science fiction aficionados during the development of Babylon 5 and this has continued up to the present. In newsgroups and discussion areas on the Internet, Joe has canvassed folks about what they liked about science fiction they have seen on screen and in books and what they haven't liked. He took these thoughts into consideration as he developed the Babylon 5 saga.
Joe, Doug, John Iacovelli (our production designer), and I made a pact that we would make the pilot of Babylon 5 as good as we possibly could. When we received the order for the first season o Babylon 5, we resolved to make it better than the pilot. I can now look back over the 88 episodes we have completed so far and look ahead to the two cable films we are producing for TNT and say that I think we have excelled at improving Babylon 5 with each successive episode and season. Joe, and others on the show, regularly responds to e-mail from the fans and viewers of the show. (Joe has told me that he presently receives over 500 e-mail messages a day.) Joe has mentioned this more than once, but the reaction and comments of the fans hold our collective feet to the fire in striving to maintain a show with the quality they have come to expect.Just as the show has improved, Joe has improved and grown as a writer, producer, and creative visionary. In my opinion, the series prequel, Babylon 5—In The Beginning, which bega shooting for TNT this summer, is the best thing Joe has written. I look forward to seeing how much further Joe is going to grow and excel in the next eleve years.
Return to Top o Page
Return to Tabl of Contents
Return to Artwork Credits List