Hey Janet, did old Guthrie DIE ... BY ... FIRE?

love, Gothick

Amanda, that documentary sounds fascinating.  Thanks.

I was (and still am) a fan of a 1990s series called Poltergeist: the Legacy.  It had very little to do with the Poltergeist films; it was one of those psychic investigation team series.  Anyhow, there was this one writer whose email got out to the fan community.  He wrote the best scripts for the series, with layered characterizations, intriguing nuances, witty dialogue, etc.  I wrote to him a few times over the years and he was always gracious enough to respond.

I'll never forget our exchange about the last script he wrote for the series.  I wrote to congratulate him (they had pretty much stopped using him at that point) and he told me that in the final filming script, there were only two words, or maybe it was two sentences, left from his original script!  But he got paid and got the onscreen byline anyway!  As dear Grayson used to say, Who can figure anything, especially in "Hollywood" (technically Poltergeist was produced in Vancouver).

G.

Darren, congratulations on being given the opportunity to revise and improve that chapter!  I will look forward to the book now for your contribution alone.

Really?  There are omissions and equivocations in the chapter on the 2004 pilot?  I'm shocked.  Simply shocked.  Why, I always thought of Miss Scott and Mister Pierson as authors of the most unsullied candor.

am I winking or do I have something in my eye,

G.

Such coolness, and the writer (yourself?) has a delicious command of something dear to my heart that used to be known as the English language... "icy carapace" has a marvelous ring to it.  FAAAAABulous!

Penny Dreadful in the comics is quite the Goddess, but she just doesn't have quite the distinctive charm that you yourself radiate in the flesh.

Hoping the comic is a huge success!  I need to order it!

hugs, Gothick

Love the set design for Julia's lab.  It's so lusciously theatrical as are so many of the key sets in this opus.

Funny that Angelique doesn't appear at all in this one.  Haven't a clue why not since she is so important to what we've been told about this story.

Thanks so much for the captures, MB.  The images whizz by far too quickly otherwise. 

BarnaDepp looks as if he is wondering "what sort of claret cup is that?" as he watches the people (in the Blue Whale?) eating ice cream sundaes.

G.

sigh.

G.

Great essay, Zahir!  I'm far, far from being an authority, or even a fan, of the 1991 DS, but as I understand it wasn't just the heavy hand of Dan Curtis that sabotaged the show; there were other factors at play:

(1) The Gulf War, and the cupidity of NBC programmers, meant that the series episodes were shunted all over the place in the schedule, to the point where you'd have needed David's crystal ball to know when the next installment was going to air.  As well, the initial Friday night slot was a notorious "death slot" in the NBC schedule so the series was already being given short shrift by programmers.

(2)  NBC suits (Brandon Tartikoff, perhaps?) apparently insisted that the 1790 flashback and scenes set in the present interweave in the latter weeks of the series, resulting in a hodgepodge effect in some of the episodes and an unnecessarily speeded-up retelling of the original 1795 story.  (I still wince whenever I think of that last episode.)

I personally found the art direction to be very erratic--sometimes great, othertimes unwatchable--and the same for the writing--Curtis needed to hire someone of the calibre of Sam Hall to be a script editor.  My impression is that DC himself was the script editor.  This in general never proved to be a scenario resulting in greatness (yeah, I know the Curtis worshippers out there will disagree--just giving *my* opinion here).

I'm sure I've already written more than anyone cares to read, but the final thing I have to say about this show is even though everyone always talks about the lavish production values, something about it just looks somehow tawdry to me.  I don't know whether it is that clashy color palette they kept reverting to (see note above about art direction) and the network trying to cut corners on post production (I have no idea about the technical side of things, but the series always looks so grainy and poorly-developed in the film stock sense of the word). 

I still think that if the network had supported it more, it would have lasted at least one more season.  I have the impression that there was backstory and personality conflicts behind the abrupt pulling of the plug.

cheers, G.