In LA again for B5 and Oblivion

Originally published February 24, 1995, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1110

Went out to the Left Coast again last week. I wasn’t out there long enough to do one of my journals, but there was some interesting and curious stuff that went on, so I’ll tell you about it after the fact.

Two things occurred at roughly the same time, which prompted me to head out. First, I’d sold a second episode of Babylon 5, (titled “There All the Honor Lies”), which as it turned out, was shooting the week of the 23rd. Second, as noted in an earlier column, my SF western Oblivion was debuting in a West Hollywood Theater as a midnight show that weekend.

If it had been only the episode filming, I doubt I’d have gone out just for that. After hanging out for a solid week the first time, I was strongly concerned that I’d quickly wear out my welcome. Or if it had been only the movie screening, well, I’ve seen it in theaters a few times, so that wouldn’t have been enough for me to blow the money to go out. But the timing of the two was too much for me to resist. So out I flew.

Following are random thoughts and events that went on—some of which (particularly at the screening of Oblivion) are somewhat… odd.

* * *

The power that a TV writer wields never fails to astonish me. Six weeks ago, I was sitting at my computer writing the following:

 

In pursuit of the thief, Sheridan charges around the corridor and runs straight into a Minbari warrior.

SHERIDAN

Sorry! Excuse me—!

With a roar, the Minbari warrior grabs Sheridan by the front of his uniform jacket. He slams him against the wall, knocking the wind out of the startled captain. He pivots, smashes him against the other wall, then turns and throws Sheridan to the floor with bone-jarring force.

 

And six weeks later, Bruce Boxleitner was getting clobbered, all because I said so.

For the breakneck run down the corridor, director Mike Vejar (who directed the excellent episode titled “Geometry of Shadows”) opted for using Bruce’s stunt double. But for the actual fight, Bruce wanted in on the action. “I love doing this kind of stuff. Let’s do more of it,” he said as he was outfitted with pads on his back, his elbows and knees to protect him from the fall.

“Action!” yelled Mike. And there went Bruce, running head-on into the Minbari warrior (cast with a stunt man since it’s primarily a stunt role). Because my script said to do it, the Minbari started banging Bruce this way and that. The walls of the set shook, he hit so hard against them. Then he threw him down like a sack of rocks.

“Let’s do that again please!” called Mike. And Bruce bounded to his feet, ready to get chucked around some more.

Hard to keep a good man down, I guess.

* * *

Gift ideas, kids:

New in the Warner Bros. Studio Stores (and elsewhere, I presume): Plush toys of Pinky and the Brain. You will get them. You will get them. The Brain has commanded it.

Also, Paul Dini got me a spiffy CD set, The Music Behind the Magic. It’s a four-disc (plus booklet) set of CDs focusing on the music of Alan Menken, Tim Rice, and the late Howard Ashman, responsible (in total) for the music and songs of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. It contains simply gobs of stuff, including work tapes, demos (Ashman and Menken singing the vocals, which sometimes are at variance with what was finally produced), and songs that were cut entirely. One disc is almost solely tunes that never made it into Aladdin after the film underwent extensive reworking. (Probably the biggest howler is Menken’s rendition of “Call Me a Princess,” a song that became moot once Jasmine’s character moved away from being a spoiled, snobby brat of a princess. It’s still funny as hëll, though.)

I know we’ve missed Christmas, but hey, that’s why God invented birthdays, right?

* * *

In the first season of B5, an actress named Caitlin Brown played “Na’Toth,” a member of the Narn race. For those unfamiliar with the show, the Narn is a warrior race with a faintly reptilian look to them. Very heavy make-up part. After a season of being buried under make-up, Caitlin asked out of the series. She was replaced in the part by Mary Kaye Adams.

But now Caitlin’s returned. Not as Na’Toth, however. You see, when Sheridan shoots and kills the Minbari, it puts him into legal trouble. As I was developing the script, I got in touch with creator J. Michael Straczynski and said, “Y’know, I really think that, plotwise, Sheridan’s gonna need a lawyer. Are there still lawyers, and can I create one for the show?”

“There will always be lawyers,” said Joe. “Sure, go ahead.”

So I developed the character of “Guinevere Corey,” certain to be a favorite of my middle daughter, Guinevere Corey. Then they turned around and cast Caitlin in the role. Caitlin will be credited in the show as Julie Caitlin Brown, her full and real name. (When she embarked on her acting career, she didn’t go by “Julie Brown” for obvious reasons.)

As soon as I met her, I could see why she didn’t like being hidden under make-up. The woman was a knock-out. Tall and gorgeous, with long black hair. It worked out nicely since Bruce is tall as well, so in their scenes together they were able to glare at each other eye to eye and no one had to get up on an apple box or anything. Show creator Joe Straczynski liked what he saw, and was already making noises about bringing the character back. I just begged him that, if he did so, he made sure nothing especially hideous happened to her. I wouldn’t want to have to say to my daughter, “Honey, you know your namesake on B5? Well—uh—she gets raped and murdered next week…”

I also met Jeff Conaway, returning in his recurring role as Security Chief Zack Allan. Jeff’s had a rough few years career-wise, and it was nice to see him back out in the saddle. In addition to his work on Taxi, I fondly remember a short-lived series called Wizards and Warriors, a delightful sword-and-sorcery spoof that got zero support from the network and died a fairly quick death. Anyone got it on tape?

* * *

For reasons I won’t go into, the plot calls for there to be a 12-inch fashion doll of Ambassador Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik), the presence of which greatly annoys him. The head was specially sculpted, and looks uncannily like him. The body was taken from an Elvis doll. This would explain my occasionally having seen the doll sitting around holding a microphone and guitar. Weird image of Londo, I’ll tell you.

* * *

Paul Dini accompanied me to the midnight screening of Oblivion. We arrived to find a lengthy line. This theater has an ongoing midnight show program, and there were five shows at midnight that night. But most of the people in line were there for us.

I was surprised and pleased to see that other cast members had shown up besides those announced, including Richard Joseph Paul (the heroic young deputy), Frank Roman, Irwin “88” Keyes, and Musetta Vander, who comprised three fifths of the bad guys in the film (I guess evil is more dedicated than good), and our director of photography, Adolfo Bartoli.

I walked up to Sam Irvin, the director, who had not known I would be in town. He was thrilled and surprised to see me. Immediately he brought me over to the theater manager and said, “This is our writer, Peter David!”

The manager, a heavyset fellow who reminded me a little of “Roy” on the TV series Wings, looked at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “This is Peter David?” he said. “But—we’ve already got Peter David here.”

Sam and I looked at each other. “There’s another me running around?” I asked, hoping that maybe he’d be willing to pick up my Amex bill.

“He came to the box office and made all this noise and complaint about how he was the writer of the film, and how he hadn’t even been notified about the showing. He was making such a fuss about being badly treated we gave him two free passes.”

“Geez. I bought two tickets,” I said. I had decided going in that I wasn’t going to make a fuss or anything, and just pay like all the other good folks. Besides, I figured the object was to sell as many tickets as possible, right?

So later on, Paul and I were in our seats towards the back, and I was wondering where my alter ego was hiding out. And then I heard a guy standing directly behind me complaining to someone, “I was a writer on this film. I wasn’t even invited to this. No one told me a thing. They weren’t even going to let me in for free until I complained.”

I turned around and looked up at a guy with black curly hair and an annoyed expression. I said with interest, “You wrote this movie?”

“I wrote one of the early drafts of it,” he said after a moment. “But they didn’t film mine.”

Aha.

There had indeed been a previous script for Oblivion. The folks at Full Moon had pronounced it to be abysmal, and when I’d been hired, they made sure that I never saw a copy of it so that I wouldn’t be at all influenced. The wisdom of this decision served me well.

This guy was, apparently, the writer (or co-writer, I wasn’t sure) of that early draft. When he’d made a nuisance of himself at the box office, the manager had apparently just assumed this yutz was me.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I wrote the one they did film.”

He gaped at me. “You’re Peter?” he said quickly.

“Yeah.” I resisted the impulse to add, And you’re not. “I heard about your script. They told me it wasn’t what they were looking for.” Again I refrained from adding, They wanted something filmable instead. “As a matter of fact, I never even read it.”

“You didn’t?” he said, surprised. “Not at all?”

“Nope,” I said, thinking Thank you, Full Moon.

He proceeded to outline the script for me in broad strokes. Aside from the fact that it had a “Marshall Stone” and an alien madame (both elements given me when I started work), it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the script I wrote. It sounded, in point of fact, godawful. It was some sort of bizarre alien sex farce. Not that such a film would be beneath Full Moon to produce. (It did give us such epics as Beach Babes From Beyond and Turbo Teens from the Year 2000.) But that’s not what they wanted in the case of Oblivion—which was fortunate, since I wouldn’t have written that anyway. Full Moon had given the guy a screen credit, but as near as I could tell, they were generous in doing so since his story was nothing like mine.

So then the guy went to find a seat in the fairly full house. Sam Irvin went to the front of the theater, and started introducing folks in the audience who had been involved in the making of the film. Myself, the actors, Adolfo. And then Sam made the mistake of saying, “Did I miss anyone?”

And from the other side of the theater, the guy jumps up and shouts, “There’s me!” he said, shouting his name. Sam was clearly startled. “Oh, hi—I didn’t know you were here.”

“That’s because no one informed me of it!” he said cheerfully.

This caused a certain degree of befuddlement on the part of audience members.

It seemed kind of pathetic to me. If the situation were reversed, I might go to the screening, just to see what the final product looked like. But I sure wouldn’t jump up and loudly announce my presence.

Everything else went fine. I don’t know how long it’ll run at the theater, but if you’re in the L.A. area, and are an insomniac, check it out.

* * *

I wrote a sequence into the B5 script in which the character of Vir (played by Stephen Furst of Animal House and St. Elsewhere fame) has a dream in which he’s falling. I just figured he’d stand there against a blue screen, wave his arms and yell, and they’d spin a background around him.

Uh-uh. They want it to look good. So they mounted a camera on a track, giving them the ability to roll it back quickly. And then they hoisted poor Stephen into the air on wires.

He has a lot to do in this script, and he’d told me how grateful he was—but I bet he’s not so grateful now. They had a harness on him that made him walk as if he’d just had a prostate exam. I felt really badly for him, being trussed up and dangled like that. When the director finally yells, “Cut! OK, lower him down!” there is applause from the crew due to Stephen’s professionalism and stoic resolve throughout the entire ordeal.

Although I wonder how stoic he would have remained if Joe Straczynski had gone through with the practical joke Joe had been mulling over. Joe had toyed with the notion of bringing Peter Jurasik out (still in Londo make-up) with a blindfold and bat, and filming Stephen being treated like a human piñata. But Peter had wrapped work hours earlier and was already long gone.

And besides—Joe was just thinking out loud. He wouldn’t really had done that to Stephen.

Me, maybe. But not Stephen.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, wants to clear up a misconception by announcing that he did not write the Voyager novel being advertised with his name on it. He was considering it, but eventually turned down the offer, unaware that it was being solicited with him as the writer. He hopes people won’t be too put off by it.)