Crusade DVD set

[Mariel]

Santa brought this to me for Christmas. It has comentary on 2 episodes and a "Making of.." special feature. I read somewhere that WB edited some of the comentary by JMS. I haven't watched the episode he comented on but I guess I'll find out. I guess he said some things that WB didn't like
:blpaw:

 

[Jax]

Originally posted by Mariel
I read somewhere that WB edited some of the comentary by JMS. I haven't watched the episode he comented on but I guess I'll find out. I guess he said some things that WB didn't like
:blpaw:

Actually it's worse than that. They tricked, lied, and manipulated JMS into doing the commentary, with the promise that he was allowed to speak his mind and tell the truth to why Crusade was cancelled.

On the Crusade DVDs, there's one commentary I did on the original pilot (once
WB and I came to a meeting of minds, to wit, "I'm gonna say what happened to
the show, what *really* happened...you got a problem with that?"). There's a
second commentary track with Fiona, Janet, Peter Woodward and Carrie Dobro.
..........snip.............................

I sat down to watch the DVD set yesterday, having picked it up at the local
store, and went to the commentary. I'd put that information at the very start
of my commentary.

Now, understand: what I'd told WB was this....if you want me to do the
commentary, my requirement is that you let me tell what really happened. If
you want to use the commentary, you have to leve that in. If you don't want to
have that in, then don't use the commentary at all. Everybody agreed.

So I started it up...listened...and it was gone.

In its place is a segment taken from the on-camera interview.

This was the one tape they didn't send me for approval, which being busy I
didn't track back, but I was always told there wasn't a problem. At no time
did ANYONE from WB or New Wave Entertainment tell me that this was being done.

Doing these DVDs was the only way I had to date to get the bad taste of that
experience out of my mouth, the sheer dishonesty and rudeness of it all.

So much for that goal.

The term "furious" doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm normally a very quiet,
soft spoken kind of guy.

But last night I broke the sound barrier and the dictionary all at the same
time.

Furious.

You have no idea.


jms

And his attempts to find out why:

My latest email reads as follows:

"Scott --

Since you have not replied to my email asking why the bait-and-switch was done
in regards to my commentary, I have no idea why this was done or how you plan
to rectify the situation.

Many fans are asking the same questions of me, but since I don't have this
information, I though the simplest and most efficient solution would be to give
them your email address so they can inquire of you directly. If I don't hear
back in a couple of days, I'll assume you don't mind."


jms

And what has been the result? It ruined the following release which was Legend of the Rangers. Which had no commentary. And if there was ever a piece of the B5 universe we needed a commentary on, it was Rangers.

I told them that I would only be willing to do a commentary if they
went back and revised the Crusade commentary to restore the material
they deleted without telling me.

And I'll finish by filling in the blanks that he would have spoken about in the commentary. Mainly the unreasonable demands made to him durin production, which came as a series of small notes saying:

Some of their
suggestions included:

"Can we lose the makeup on Dureena (our resident alien character) and make her
an alien by her attitude?"

"We'd like to have one of the characters include a sexual explorer, so when
they make contact with a new race, his or her job is to go and have sex with
them."

"We want to see more fist-fights on the bridge."

"We'd like to see an episode worked around a wrestler, since wrestling is hot
right now."

"We think you should give the captain a dog for a pet."

"Rather than have the characters work their way out of the problem as depicted,
we think it would be better if Captain Gideon arranges to have Dureena
compromised so the antagonist will rape her, and Gideon will catch him in the
act, and use this as blackmail to get the character to back off his demands."

Minor tweaks? ................

Further, the
decision to cancel Crusade had nothing to do with the content of the show, but
rather, as we learned later, the fact that TNT's market research had found that
the B5 audience came in for B5 and didn't stay for any of TNT's other
programming, and they decided they wanted out, in favor of shows that would
bring in a sustained audience increase.

jms

 

[Mariel]

It's a shame about the comentary and I read somewhere that JMS wanted the comentary pulled from all later releases of the DVD set. I love listening to him explain what he was thinking when he was writing.
I like the comment about the captain having a pet... like Archer in Enterprise...?... :rolly2:
:blpaw: