Rob’s Finds
Today is sci-fi day for Rob’s Finds, the weekly anthology of interesting stuff GITS reader Rob Fuller discovers on his meanderings through the Web.
First, one movie fan put together an homage to his favorite sci-fi film Star Wars… er, Star Trek… um, well… just check it out:
Then Rob finds this at SciFiCool.com:
I thought that I would never again see my beloved “Predator” return to the silver screen in the manner that it deserved. I think that, maybe, hopefully, I may have been wrong.
Robert Rodriquez and Director Nimród Antal, along with a sweet, sweet cast including Adrien Brody and Lawrence Fishburne, are bringing back hope to the faithful that have grown tired of the ridiculous and cheesy attempts to bring a decent “Predator” movie back to the theatres.
Here’s a couple of crazy looking international posters for you to chew on. Fear Is Reborn it says. Let’s hope so.
Interesting story about the original Predator. Its creators, screenwriting brothers Jim Thomas & John Thomas, had gone all around Hwood with their spec script. Every studio passed. As the story goes, producer Lawrence Gordon(48 Hrs., Die Hard, K-9) used to have an assistant collect all the loglines of all the scripts that had gone into the studios for the weekend read so he could peruse them to see if any story concepts caught his fancy. When he saw the logline for Predator — “A team of commandos, on a mission in a Central American jungle, find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial warrior” — he said, “That’s a movie.” Brought in the Thomas brothers, reworked the script a bit, and eventually made the movie which, as you know, was a big success. Once again underscoring the value of a strong story concept.
Finally I still miss the TV series “Firefly.” So when Rob found this, it made me very happy. From io9.com:
Jose Molina wrote two of the best episodes of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, “Ariel” and “Trash.” Now he’s written a new original story, in the book Firefly: Still Flying. He talked to us about Jayne’s betrayal, and returning to the ‘verse.
How did you get involved with Firefly? How did your previous experience on Dark Angel prepare you for the Whedonite creative process?
I’d known Tim [Minear] and Joss for a while from my assistant days, and was obviously eager to work with them as a writer. When they were looking to staff Firefly, I threw my hat in the ring and luckily came away with the job.
I don’t know that my time on Dark Angel necessarily prepared me specifically for the Whedonite creative process, but it certainly taught me some important lessons about surviving life on a staff. I’d say the most important thing I learned was how to write fast. When you’re writing on your own, you have no deadline and you can take your sweet time. Which, of course, is the stupidest thing you can do when you’re trying to learn a craft and get a job! When you’re on a staff, the creative train doesn’t stop moving. From the moment the season starts, you have to crank out a script every 8 days until the season is over. On Dark Angel, I learned that — when push came to shove — I could produce a solid draft in four days. I wrote “Ariel” in four and a half.
Reading your essay in the book reminds me that during the time Firefly was coming together, Joss Whedon was also hard at work on Angel and Buffy. How involved was he in Firefly on a day-to-day basis? Was it mostly left up to Tim Minear to keep the ship sailing? Did the bustle of having three shows going at once mean you had more freedom to take risks?
Joss was very involved, but he was spread wicked thin. (He wrote and directed episodes of all three shows that year.) There was a smoking patio in the courtyard at Stewart Street, and the Buffy and Angel writers would wander out at given times and ask us Firefly guys “did you get any time with Joss today?” We’d be like, “yeah we got half an hour,” and they’d shake their heads and go “lucky bastards, he loves you more than he loves us.”
We got more time with Tim than we did with Joss, but he was pretty swamped himself. He was providing a bit of a net for Jeff Bell — who had just taken over showrunning duties on Angel — and was busy directing Firefly as well as spending a fair amount of time covering the set and rotating through post production. Running ONE show is a massive endeavor; running three is madness.
Did I mention Joss was having his first child and remodeling his house at the same time? No joke. Just thinking about it right now makes me want to take a nap.
I don’t think the bustle gave us any more freedom at all. Firefly was Joss’ baby, and he was very protective and nurturing of it. It wasn’t like he birthed it, handed it off and walked away from it. On the contrary — I think we got more attention than Buffy and Angel during our brief run just because we were the shiny new toy.
For the rest of the interview, go here.
Who else misses “Firefly?”
As usual, thanks to Rob Fuller!