Day: October 7, 2002

So there was board overseer Glenn Hauman, chortling to a group of cyberfriends (including myself) about the big in-joke on “Angel” regarding “Corner of the sky.” At one point, a Wolfram and Hart partner states that this (W&H) is his little corner of the sky. Glenn found this hilarious. The rest of us stared through cyberspace at each other and didn’t get it, and Glenn didn’t elaborate.

Took me almost a whole day. Dang. I felt like Toby on “West Wing” bouncing the ball off the wall.

“Corner of the Sky” is a song from the musical “Pippin.” John Rubinstein played the character on “Angel” who made the comment. John Rubinstein originated the title role of “Pippin” on Broadway and sang that song.

Double dang. I’m losing my edge.

PAD

I know that executives can run their businesses any way they want as long as they stay within confines of the law. I have no problem with that.

So it’s very simple, really: A law must be passed that forbids Fox from handling science fiction series. Lobby your congressmen. Write your senators. This whole Iraq business must take second chair to the far more pressing problem of Fox’s inability to broadcast, handle or support SF.

This is nothing new. It goes all the way back to their first SF series, “Alien Nation.” Innovative, brilliantly handled, transcending the patchy film on which it was based…and prematurely cut down by–if memory serves–the same TV exec who fingered the original “Star Trek” for cancellation when he was at NBC. Then there’s “Futurama,” a show pre-empted so routinely that there’s enough unshown episodes stockpiled for an entire season…most of which will likely be pre-empted if history is any judge. They could start releasing it on DVD and likely have all the episodes into the marketplace before they’ve ever aired.

Now there’s “Firefly.” Two whole episodes aired (the second of which I thought was quite good), and suddenly double-preempted: First out of its Friday slot by the baseball playoffs, and then stared twenty minutes late on Sunday (frustrating anyone who set their VCR for 4 to 5) because of football. Yes, I understand that football is more popular with Fox viewers than SF. But the consistent targeting of SF as sacrificial gridiron or diamond lamb is bordering on the pathological. Or they simply give it no time to build its audience whatsoever. Even tangentally related shows, such as “The Tick,” get short shrift. “Hey, let’s take this quirky, different kind of series and put it up against Must See TV. That’ll work!”

I now comprehend why Chris Carter steadfastly maintained that “X-Files” wasn’t SF when it so obviously was. He knew the moment it was labeled as such, Fox would say, “Oh my God…kill it. Slot it for Sunday at 1 AM. Pre-empt it until January. Do *something* to it.”

Am I the only one sick of execs who claim that a show never found its audience when the audience was never able to find the show?

PAD

Spent the weekend up in Boston visiting with my two elder daughters, Shana and Gwen, who are both living there now. Saturday evening we saw “Spirited Away,” the brilliant Japanese import brought here through the courtesy of Disney (who, perhaps, has gotten fed up with people pointing out similarities between their feature films and various manga and anime, and has decided to go straight to the unvarnished source.)

The film centers around the endeavors of a young girl to free her parents, transformed into pigs, from the clutches of an evil witch who runs a bath house for wayward spirits. Its episodic nature causes the narrative to bog down for a while in the middle, but the strength of the sheer visualization means the film will be with you long after the latest Hollywood drek has been flushed away into the furthest recesses of your memory. We saw the dubbed version; the subtitled version was running a bit too late at night considering we had young Ariel with us, and besides, who wants to tear their eyes away from the staggering array of visuals in order to read the subtitles?

While in the area, we also stopped by New England Comics where Gwen, currently looking for work, filled out a job application. Under “special skills” she wrote, “Can talk Peter David into doing store signing.” Which is true enough, and considering I’m cutting waaaaay back on store signings, that’s no mean feat. So if I wind up signing comics at NEC, you’ll know why.

PAD