JMS on Usenet

Message

Subject: Re: ATTN JMS Re: S2 commentary comment
Date: 25 May 2003 08:52:00 GMT
From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

>I think it's very important that everything you wrote regarding the series --
>notes, index cards, napkin scribbles, the odd graffiti spray-painted on Sun
>Valley brick walls -- needs not only to be preserved but also released for
>public access at some time.

Not possible.  It's gone.  Nearly all of it.

My notes: gone once I used them.

Early drafts of scripts: gone.  I'd write the script, make my notations in
hand, get the revised one in hand, toss out the one with my notations and put
out the final draft.  There are no surviving scripts from B5 with my
handwritten notes or edits on them.

B5 correspondence and memos: unless they're in the hands of other people: gone.

I have, to all intents and purposes, erased my footprints in the sand.  Only
the finished work remains.  It was a deliberate decision from day one.  I don't
want people poking in to find where "I" am in this, where my brain was at this
point or that point.  I ain't the issue.  The story, as told, is the issue.

The only things that remain in my possession are the script books with the
final draft of each script, shooting schedules, and in some cases, art or
prosthetics designs.  Some blueprints.  The rest I threw out.

The only real document about the making of Babylon 5, from stem to stern, is
the one I wanted to leave behind: this conversation, on line, with the folks
who stayed with us for five plus years.

It's the only thing that really means anything to me.

 jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd., 
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine 
and don't send me story ideas)