We attended United Fan Con in Springfield, MA, this past weekend. A very smoothly run, very “personable” (if that word applies) convention. In attendance were old friends Jewel Staite and her husband, Matt Anderson, Claudia Christian, Peter Tork and Davey Jones of “The Monkees,” two of “The Lone Gunmen,” and Grace Park of BSG. The most high-profile guest, however, was William Shatner. When I was fifteen years old, Shatner was in a play at a theater in New Jersey. My father, a reporter, pulled some strings so that I could interview Shatner for my school newspaper. Now, with Ariel the same age as I was, I managed to do the same thing so that she could interview him for her school newspaper. Worked out great. One has to admire UFC’s efficiency in siphoning a huge number of people through both for autographings and picture taking. Credit Shatner for handling it all: Having just flown in to Boston Airport and limoed out, he was clearly running on fumes, but still managed to fulfill all his obligations.
Met a lot of fans, many of whom were pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t charging for autographs.
PAD
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Bill: 1. “Firefly” was cancelled because few people “cared” to watch it.
2. “Firefly” was thus unable to develop much of a fanbase.
3. This lack of a fanbase resulted in “Serenity” bombing at the box office.
As I’ve pointed out, premise number one is incorrect. I am a huge Joss Whedon fan, but I didn’t even know “Firefly” EXISTED until AFTER it was cancelled. Fox didn’t promote the show. It’s not that people didn’t “care” to watch it — Fox didn’t promote it. And by airing eps out of order and pre-empting the show left and right, they almost guaranteed that all but the most hard-core fans would lose interest.
Which means that very few people cared enough to watch it. Is the problem simply a matter of semantics? Maybe I should have phrased it as “very few people watched the show.” But the fact remains that the show clearly didn’t have enough people that cared about it, whether it’s because they genuinely didn’t like it, or they didn’t care for sci-fi, or they were mad at Fox for their treatment of the show, or simply because they weren’t aware of it (after all, how do you care about a show you’ve never heard of?).
And anyway, I never offered my opinions as any kind of scientific analysis. My statements were always couched in terms of “it’s not surprising” or “it’s understandable” that Serenity bombed, not “this is why it bombed.”
Bill: On a personal note, it’s hard to gauge tone in an Internet posting. But I get the sense you’re taking this personally.
No, not at all.
Bill: I didn’t see any harm in painting a fuller picture of what actually happened — and I still don’t.
No, no harm done.
Micha: I stil don’t think your argument is essentially correct, as demonstrated by the cases of Star Trek and Fallen Angel. In both cases do the show/comic got cancelled, somebody else thought it was worthwhile to give it another chance on the merit of the story and cult following.
I’m not really sure what you’re saying here. My argument has nothing to do with the reasons for the movie being made, it has to do with the reasons it failed. But for the sake of discussion, Star Trek lasted for (I believe) three seasons on TV, and by the time the movie came out, it had developed a much larger following than Firefly. It was more or less a household name. Firefly STILL isn’t a household name. And Fallen Angel doesn’t sell any better with IDW than it did with DC, so that doesn’t really apply.
Micha: Haven’t you ever seen a series you liked but was cancelled, and thought that if only it was given another chance it could succeed?
Yes. It doesn’t mean it would, though. You seem to think that I think that Serenity should never have been made in the first place, but I never said anything of the sort. This whole discussion came about because Luke said the failure of Serenity was baffling, and I simply offered reasons why it wasn’t so baffling.
Micha: I don’t like Kevin Costner (spl?) very much, but I’ve seen more than one movie in which he was the star.
I don’t see how viewing The Grudge or The Return or some other movie in which Gellar is the star is a prerequisite for forming an opinion of her. You might as well be saying that it’s impossible to form a valid opinion of an actor who has never had a lead role. I’ve seen her in three movies, in two of which she had the second biggest female role. I’ve also seen parts of Scooby-Doo. I don’t like her. She was so patently terrible in I Know What You Did Last Summer that she made me dislike her intensely right off the bat, and she hasn’t shown me anything since then to improve my opinion. So forgive me if I don’t run out and rent a TV series (which is something I rarely do anyway) in which she was the star.
Luke: Personally, I would qualify statements like “and it just wasn’t a good movie” and your characterizations of the dialogue and the end of the film with “IMHO” or “I felt” (or even “I really felt”); I’m sure I’ll be even more likely to now (even if discussing Paulie Shore).
I always just assume the “I felt” is implied, unless the person blatantly states his opinion as though it were an unquestionable truth (forgive me if it seemed like that’s what I was doing).
Luke: One thing about “Serenity” – if many people had never heard of the TV show, how would they know that the movie was a follow-up to anything?
This is a valid point. I mean, I knew it was a follow-up to a show I’d never heard of, but then, I pay attention to these sorts of things. I can’t speak for anyone else. But while watching the movie, I did feel like I had jumped into the middle of a TV series (the movie even had a kind of “televisiony” feel to it), and with an awful trailer that made it look like an updated version of Ice Pirates or something, plus the fact that space opera (Stars Wars and Trek notwithstanding) is still something of a niche genre, AND with a cast of mostly unknowns (most of whom, in my opinion, were rather wooden actors, Adam Baldwin and Chiwetel Ejiofor being the notable exceptions), I never expected the movie to do well.
Again, Robert Fuller, I am sorry for flying off the handle a bit and misattributing something to you which you didn’t say, and anything else which may’ve seemed a little rude in my first post.
No worries.
“Exactly my point. It didn’t immediately catch on, and it didn’t get enough time to develop a following, so the failure of the movie should come as no surprise.”
It comes as “no surprise” in the same way that the failure of tons of movies recently, despite their quality, comes as no surprise: More and more people are simply bypassing theatrical release because they know the film will be out on DVD. Most SF films garner their success from repeat business: “Firefly” fans saw it once (many of them saw it for free in the advance screenings; Kath and I are the only ones in our circle of friends I know of who hadn’t seen it pre-release) and then didn’t go again because they figured they’d see it on DVD several months later. As for “Firefly’s” “failure to catch on,” Fox’s abomindable handling of it has been well detailed in other postings. In fact, Fox’s handling of SF overall has been historically abysmal. The number of smart SF series that have been treated like crap on Fox is staggering. Why do you think Chris Carter kept claiming “X-Files” wasn’t SF when it clearly was? Because if he admitted to it, Fox would instantly have canceled it just on principle. If “Heroes” had been sold to Fox, they’d have aired it on Friday at 8 PM and canceled it by now.
“Nobody would go see The Book of Daniel: The Movie, either.”
Well then I guess I’m Nobody. That show was absolutely brilliant and the fact that it was hounded into oblivion by religious activists who actively mischaracterized it (when they bothered to watch it at all; many didn’t) remains a shameful episode in the history of quality TV series.
PAD
“So forgive me if I don’t run out and rent a TV series (which is something I rarely do anyway) in which she was the star.”
I forgive you.
Seriously, I never recommend TV shows to people without knowing if the style of the show in question fits their taste. I thought Buffy was a great show, but I’ll never recommend it to my grandmother, for example. However, in your case the (rather violent) dislike seems to be not to a genre or a style but to an actress in the show, which is something new to me. I usually don’t erase the complete work of an actor from my watch list even if I dislike him or her. Nor has my dislike for any actor ever reached the degree where I’ve felt the need to punch them. But even more strangely, I usually become pretty familiar with more than two movies by an actor before I develop even the milder form of dislike I’m accustomed to, and even then I doubt I’ll avoid seeing anything by that actor the way you seem to do, especially if he or she appear in a genre I’m interested in. I find it hard to judge the whole career of an actor or at least the quality of the shows he might be in based on so little. But then, that’s me. I’m kind of weird in that respect. to each his own.
To sum up. If I knew that Buffy was a show that fits with your taste, and I didn’t knew that your dislike of her was to the degree that it is, I would tell you that Joss Wheadon had created a really good show worth watching, and that you shouldn’t let one silly performance in a campy horror movie, and another campy performance in another silly movie, prevent you from trying that show. However, since I don’t the first, and I do know the second, I suggest you don’t see the show, since your dislike of Sarah Michelle Geller would prevent you from enjoying it, even if it was your style, which I suspect it isn’t.
It’s not so much that I’m “erasing” Buffy from my watch list because of Sarah Michelle Gellar (my exact words were: “I probably never will [watch it]). But it’s a TV show that A. stars someone I know I don’t like, B. is no longer on the air, which means I’d have to rent it, C. was on for a long time, which means I’d have to take up a large portion of my Netflix queue to watch it, not to mention a large portion of my life, D. has a premise that doesn’t interest me, and E. is created by a writer I don’t really care for. I just don’t see myself ever going out of my way to watch it.
But I also don’t see the problem with dismissing a movie or TV show because of the lead actor. With every single movie or TV show we don’t see (which, considering the sheer numbers of them, constitutes the vast majority of them) there’s always a reason why we don’t see them, and disliking the lead actor is just as good a reason as any. I don’t want to see Stranger Than Fiction, for example, because I can’t stand Will Ferrell. Even in Melinda and Melinda, a movie I really liked, I thought he was awful, and he almost ruined the movie. So I’d rather see a movie that has a lead actor whom I enjoy watching, and who most likely won’t ruin the movie, than take my chances on one that doesn’t.
D and E were probably enough.
By where they’ve traditonally been placed in a TV lineup, it seems that the SF/fantasy shows are always on the chopping block of pre-emptive moves. Now, it could just be the Philly stations, but whenever there’s been a Sixers/Flyers/Eagles game or something big and noteworthy happening around here, it seems that these are the shows that get bumped. Now, whether this is done intentionally or not isn’t something I want to get into right now, because ANY show in that time slot would get bumped, just seems to happen more often to these shows. When was the last time you saw Law and Order:Traffic Court or Animal ER bumped for something? Also, it seems that programming executives are under a lot more pressure to sell their soap, so appeal to the LCD just to get butts in the seats, regardless of the intelligence of the viewing audience. (Remind me sometime to tell you guys about all the people I work with that hang on every wrestling show and discuss them ad nauseum all week. Oh, wait, I just did.)
Now, an admission. I’ve only ever seen a few apisodes of Buffy and Firefly combined, and I never saw Angel. I’m sure they were good shows, actually, I have a friend that swore Firefly was the best thing since B5, but between working and my son, I just don’t have time for TV. Which is ironic, considering I WORK in TV. I just can’t seem to watch anything but the first season of anything lately. Doctor Who, BSG, Supernatural, Lost, other stuff, I saw the first seasons, remembered they were on, but I just don’t seem to have the time anymore. And everyone I hang out with is ASTONISHED that I don’t watch Medium and Ghost Whisperer. (I was reading Holzer’s GHOSTS, a thousand page compilation of his experiences, for about three months.) I NEED MORE TIME!
“I was reading Holzer’s GHOSTS, a thousand page compilation of his experiences, for about three months.”
Heh, I have that book. I read quite a bit of it (though, considering how thick it is, it was really only a small fraction of it), but I gave it up after realizing that reading one of his stories is pretty much the same as reading any other of his stories.
And I don’t watch Medium or Ghost Whisperer, either.
“Now, an admission. I’ve only ever seen a few apisodes of Buffy and Firefly combined.”
I doubt anybody ever felt embarassed because he was wathing too little TV.
“have a friend that swore Firefly was the best thing since B5.”
The shows have different styles. I’ve like both. But, like anything, it depends on your taste.
“And everyone I hang out with is ASTONISHED that I don’t watch Medium and Ghost Whisperer.”
Are you a fan of the genre? I’ve seen Medium. I thought the idea that the psychic in the show is a mother, and some senses a housewife, was clever. Feminists might say that because the hero is a female psychic, the feel of the show is more intuitive. But I wouldn’t consider this a must see, even if you are a fan of psychic crimefighting. But again, it is a matter of taste.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of Firefly and that was “in the middle.” While it didn’t “grab me” as the show “House” did when I saw THAT show “in the middle,” I was willing to believe that if I saw the entire series, I might have liked it if not loved it.
I saw “Serenity” and liked it because of the story and the characters. While some people would have dismissed the performances of The Regulars as “wooden,” I interpreted it as Frontier Stoicism that resembled the portrayals of characters in western films like “The Searchers” and “High Noon.”
Just because Chiwetel Ejiofor had an interesting character, and did an exceptional performance, didn’t make The Familiar Faces any less watchable IMHO. It only made “Serenity” a potentially BETTER film than most SF films that end up on the $5 shelf when they come out on DVD.
Peter made an excellent point when he said that “Serenity’s” potential DVD marketability might have hurt its chances to make big money at the box office. As has been stated by several people, “Firefly’s” high DVD sales made the movie a reality. Is the “show it in the theatres for a few weeks then flood the DVD market” strategy that more movie/TV studios are implementing going to hurt the visual SF market in the future, do you think?
Micha, yes, I’m a fan of the genre. Main reason I don’t watch Ghost Whisperer, other than timing, is I really don’t like James Van Praagh, the medium that produces it. I did give it a chance, once. Medium I would watch all the time if I HAD the time.
As for Firefly–I think, I could be wrong, but I think, that had that film been shown as a TV movie or mini-series it would have KILLED in the ratings, but as a theatrical release, where the rules are different, everyone thinks it tanked.
“While some people would have dismissed the performances of The Regulars as “wooden,” I interpreted it as Frontier Stoicism that resembled the portrayals of characters in western films like “The Searchers” and “High Noon.””
I just interpreted it as them not being good actors. Adam Baldwin was a regular and he was good (and he’s much more experienced than the others). The others all seemed amateurish to me.
Well, with the announcement of possibly some DTD B5 movies, I’m still holding out hope for more Farscape and Firefly.
Speaking of which…
PAD, what do you think of the announcement about the possible return of Babylon 5?
The potential is obviously there, but it seems like it’s going to be harder to recapture the dynamics and all. Unfortunately, two principals have passed in Biggs and Katsulas, we know the eventual fates of 3 characters, and Crusade ended before it really got started.
Various thoughts:
As someone who enjoyed both _Buffy_ and _Angel_, I figured I’d probably also enjoy _Firefly_. But I chose not to watch it, because I didn’t want to add more TV viewing time to my schedule. So I made the conscious decision to _not_ add another show to the list of those I watched.
_Firefly_ came and went, and life continued. It came out on DVD and I told myself I’d probably buy it one day- having never seen a single frame of the show- based solely on my enjoyment of Joss Whedon’s work in _Buffy_ and _Angel_. Before that “one day” came along, the movie _Serenity_ came out. I saw a trailer for it in the theater, and knew it was connected with _Firefly_; which, I also knew, had both science fiction and western trappings. But that was pretty much _all_ I knew about _Firefly_ at that time.
When _Serenity_ came out, and I went to see it. And I liked it. Even though I hadn’t seen _Firefly_, I had no trouble following the storyline in _Serenity_. Yes, it began in media res, but many stories do.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that since I knew _Serenity_ was based on a TV series currently available on DVD, I might not have been as critical of unanswered questions as I might have otherwise. Perhaps on some level, part of me was saying I’d just buy or rent the DVD to fill in some blanks. I’m not sure. I was too busy enjoying the movie to pay attention to what my “inner voice” might’ve been saying.
Soon after I saw the film, I decided that “one day” had come, and I bought the Firefly _DVD_. I liked the series a lot. I later bought the _Serenity_ DVD.
PAD, I saw _Serenity_ just once in the theater, but that’s because I see _every_ film just once in the theater. Even when I intend to go back again, I don’t, because I have so many other things competing for my time. One thing leads to another, and next thing you know, the film in question is no longer in theaters.
When I was a kid, it was a different matter. I saw films multiple times- especially the big summer blockbusters.
On the other hand, I will watch movies I have on DVD or video multiple times. Not several times in a row, mind you, but I do enjoy repeat viewings of films in my home library (The other day, for example, I enjoyed a repeat viewing of _Fourteen Hours_ with Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Grace Kelly, Agnes Moorehead, Jeff Corey and Jeffrey Hunter). And watching one of them takes up almost as much time as it would to see a film in the theater (since I usually watch a film straight through, rather than pause it and come back later).
Of course, when I’m playing a movie on video or DVD, I can, if I choose, work on other projects- like writing or editing a story- at the same time. Though, in those cases, I usually soon turn most of my attention to the writing, and the movie becomes so much background noise.
But I still have the ability to combine movie watching with some other project, if I so choose. Even if that “project” is something as mundane as having dinner. For some reason the theater people don’t like it when I try to carry my kitchen table in with me. Curious, that.
Rick
Hello Mr. David,
I attended United Fan Con on Saturday and was able to speak to you for a while which was really cool.
I also dropped off a comic book for you titled The Necropolis Chronicles. I was just wondering if you had had a chance to peek through it.
Thanks!
Jim
A possibly ridiculous — and certainly late — question: have Da Vinci’s Inquest fans started flocking to Ms. Staite’s convention appearances as fervently as the Browncoat crowds?