Over the last week, I took a bit of a break from blogging in order to take time to rest and celebrate my birthday. But of course, that doesn’t mean I took a break from mysteries. Here’s a bit of a roundup of mystery-related things I’ve done:
- I’ve been diversifying the TV shows I’ve been watching. In addition to MSW, Miami Vice, and Diagnosis Murder (which have been my staples over the last few months), I’ve also:
- Gone back to watch a few episodes of Columbo, Morse, and Midsomer Murders that I hadn’t seen yet.
- Watched the first episode of Lucifer and Jessica Jones (which I didn’t know were mystery shows when I started watching them).
- Watched the movie Murder Mystery on Netflix. (I recommend it! If you don’t normally like Adam Sandler, he’s not super Adam Sandler-y in it.)
- I attended a Nancy Drew Sleuths event at the Toronto Reference Library while they were hosting their annual convention in Toronto.
- Here’s the website for the organization: http://www.ndsleuths.com/
- And here’s a fan/scholarly website about Nancy Drew: http://nancydrewsleuth.com/
- Although I missed writing my Stephanie Plum novel summary post last week, I did update some of my Stephanie Plum pages.
- Most notably the page about Stephanie Plum’s cars and car deaths and the page about Stephanie Plum’s family.
- I began a series of daily tweets about Murder, She Wrote.
- This was after I noticed that there are 261 weekdays (Mon-Fri) in a year, and there are an equal number of MSW stories (if you count two-parters only once, and don’t count the movies).
My future plans for this blog are to step back a bit from my Monday blog posts. I’m trying to prioritize catching up on the Thursday MSW episode summaries (I’m still several weeks behind). So for the next little while, I expect to only be posting additional content twice a month rather than weekly. This also means no more Stephanie Plum novel summaries as I want to prioritize cleaning up the trivia pages about the characters and I also want to prioritize reading new books for my reading challenge this year.
J. Michael Straczynski’s Becoming Superman
I will end this blog post by highlighting one of the more notable Twitter-based events that I participated in: an AMA (ask-me-anything) hosted by J. Michael Straczynski, who was involved with Murder, She Wrote during its 8th and 9th season. Straczynski’s autobiography Becoming Superman will be coming out next month, and he’s been doing several of these events to promote it. One such event was focused on answering fan questions about his time as writer/producer on Murder, She Wrote.
Below is a round-up of twitter threads that formed part of the event. Note that my question was the first that he answered :D. Click on each embedded tweet to see the full thread on Twitter.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSome background to get the #MurderSheWrote Ask Me Anything rolling: I was a writer/producer on the show for seasons 8 and 9 (leaving 9 about midway through to do Babylon 5), working with EP David Moessinger who was brought in to run the show when the ratings sagged —
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWe didn't want to up-end the show and make it something it wasn't, so we came in respectfully, mindful of precedent. We all watched virtually every single episode of the series to see what topics, methods and stories had been done (or over-done) in order to avoid repetition — https://t.co/Zz0KWPsy4u
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsI'd worked for David Moessinger (and his wife/co-showrunner Jeri Taylor, who would later go on to producer ST:TNG) on Jake and the Fatman. They remain two of the nicest people I've ever known, and when certain actors began messing with their scripts (a serious no-no when it — https://t.co/VmTdb6S9JY
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsDavid and Jeri were a huge influence on me as a showrunner because where many EPs can be shouters, they were gentle and supportive and went way the hell out of their way to teach me techniques and tricks that I'd never even *heard* of before, which I was able to do with others — https://t.co/lbxwxQNpUk
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsLike the network, Angela felt that the show had fallen into a rut from a storytelling perspective, and welcomed the changes. She particularly liked that I wrote her as a writer first and foremost. Meaning that in most previous episodes, her work as a writer was only there — https://t.co/K99Suh9GLV
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThere were some discussions that took place above my pay grade, but in the end we didn't do any crossovers because we felt it was more important to focus on getting this show right than bringing in other shows as a promotional device. https://t.co/09zagtYtN7
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsShe liked to see Jessica in high-society environments in part because she felt it was wish fulfillment but she also believed that it also sent a message to older women that glamour was not beyond their reach. https://t.co/JRaL9sq5jR
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOne of the prior tendencies of M,SW was to do parodies or episodes loosely based (just enough to avoid litigation) of movies and other series, so we opted against doing that. We wanted to make the show stand on its own and tell its own stories rather than reaching out to — https://t.co/xfvXZgojlF
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMainly hitting deadlines and, as per the just-posted tweet, battling studio execs who have no idea what makes her work successful. https://t.co/x68h0lD2Fp
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsTalking about murder is more dynamic than talking about writing, we could use it for counterpoint to the story, and it put her into contact with people most likely to be involved in an actual case, and when doing a murder franchise the #1 question is "How does our character — https://t.co/20iZcWkrbL
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIt's the obvious theory, which is also one reason we could never posit that in the show. So many writers had pitched that idea that if we ever did an episode about it, we'd get into all kinds of trouble. So that whole notion was a non-starter for the run of the series. https://t.co/UR9EqmZJZ0
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsA number of folks were initially upset at moving her to NY, but once they saw that we weren't sacrificing Cabot Cove as her true home base, and that we were using the opportunity to deal with a wider range of issues than could happen there, they signed off on it. https://t.co/5ha8QFioLG
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsJessica could never be seen as "attracting" murder. It was always either happenstance or proximity to potential victims/perpetrators. https://t.co/HNrFeLiBEU
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsI met Angela frequently, both in the office and on-set, where I'd kind of lurk in the shadows until she would call me forward. Because she liked my scripts a lot, she sometimes called me her good luck charm. One interesting sidelight is that her husband Peter Shaw was also — https://t.co/wG3xHQRlk8
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThere's not a lot of sex and violence in sitcoms, and those seem to do just fine. Yes, I think a reboot of Murder, She Wrote is absolutely do-able, it would just take the right lead actress and the right story. (I actually know exactly how to do it but nobody at CBS has asked.) https://t.co/VCaN0w99BU
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsYeah…I wrote an episode where Jessica goes with a friend to a science fiction convention (this is totally true) so I could have cameos from a bunch of SF writers including Harlan Ellison, but David felt the environment was a bit too weird even for Jessica Fletcher. https://t.co/UgZ3IIJHrt
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsGenerally M,SW was shot in LA on the Universal soundstages (I think it was mainly stages 18 and 23), though we did go on location around town when needed. Every so often the show was shot in Ireland because that was important to Angela, who had/has a house in Cork, I believe — https://t.co/baHaTI30xH
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOne of the problems faced by M,SW and other crime/detective shows is that there were some writers who would basically just recycle stories/premises from one show to another. Which was one of the reasons why M,SW had become rather formulaic. Some writers came in with the — https://t.co/5p0VXJWQdY
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWell-known actors were pursued for the show, but rarely came to us because that's not generally how these things work. The role needs to be there first. As to the main cast, everyone got along really well. William Windom (who played Seth, a doctor and Jessica's friend) was… https://t.co/eknfK9jKeh
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAt one point we talked about a story where Jessica hears threats but they're never realized…hears about a murder but the person is found alive…where her spidey sense keeps going off but there's never a murder but it felt contrived/awkward and Waiting for Godot already exists https://t.co/LuFWLGU2Qz
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsNot really…there was a pretty clear delineation between the writers and the cast in the sense that they trusted us to get it right, and their job was to perform the words. This changed in S9 when Angela took in the role of Executive Producer, but even then she didn't directly– https://t.co/5uSPxIKIgD
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) June 4, 2019
And that was the end.
Murder, She Watched 