Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  In January 1986 the town had barely come back from Christmas hiatus when I stopped by Jim Carlson’s office to drop off my most recent script for Jayce. He shut the door, his expression grave, and said he’d just received bad news from the head of the studio.

  I was to be taken off the show, effective immediately.

  Chapter 21

  Who Ya Gonna Call?

  Jim didn’t know if I was being fired outright or if I’d simply pissed off someone higher up the food chain, but I was to report immediately to Jean Chalopin, the French owner of DIC.

  Jean’s office was strewn with concept sketches for new shows in various stages of development, including artwork for a new animated series for ABC based on the Ghostbusters movie (titled The Real Ghostbusters to distinguish it from Filmation’s 1975 Ghostbusters series about some guys and a gorilla riding around in an old jalopy chasing spooks). Ghostbusters was one of my favorite movies and I’d been hoping to write an episode or two once I was done with Jayce. The odds of an assignment were small since I’d only worked in syndication and wasn’t on the network’s list of approved writers, and now even that modest goal seemed out of reach since I’d apparently done something to annoy the studio.

  Jean finished a phone call then turned to me and asked, “Do you know Ame Simon and Jennie Trias at ABC?” Since Jean spoke with a heavy French accent, it came out more like, “Du yu gnaw Aaaame S’mon n Jennnie Triaaas at ABC?”

  The only part I actually understood was ABC, and since I didn’t know anyone there I said no, figuring that way I was safe no matter what the hell he’d just asked me.

  His reply, translated into English: “The story editors I hired to work on The Real Ghostbusters, Len Janson and Chuck Menville, did not understand that they would be working on both the network series and the syndicated series we will be producing at the same time. They decided they do not wish to do that much work and will only write their own episodes. So I need a story editor to come in on both series.

  “I have told Aaaame-n-Jennnie* that you are the funny man,” he continued. “Do not make from me the liar.”

  It happened so quickly that it wasn’t until leaving his office that I stopped to do the math. DIC was producing thirteen half-hour episodes for ABC and sixty-five for first-run syndication for a total of seventy-eight episodes that would have to be written and story-edited simultaneously. By this point I’d written thirty-two scripts—nine for He-Man, another nine for She-Ra, and fourteen for Jayce—and story-edited about two dozen scripts while at Filmation. I’d never written or edited seventy-eight episodes of anything, let alone a show that would be launched with as much visibility as The Real Ghostbusters. No one had. The only reason Jean offered me the show in the first place was because Len and Chuck, story editors with years of experience, had run screaming into the night rather than even try to tackle that number. And while there would be action and supernatural components to the show, at its core The Real Ghostbusters was a comedy series, whereas all my experience to this point was in straight-ahead action/adventure.

  I have told Aaaame-n-Jennnie that you are the funny man. Do not make from me the liar.

  The numbers and the genre were against me. What if I failed?

  What’s the worst that can happen? I thought. They can’t kill you, they can’t eat you, and they can’t put you in TV prison. Yes, it’ll be embarrassing if you fail, but risking failure is necessary. So let’s embrace the nightmare and get this goddamned thing up and on the rails.

  Though Jean had offered me the job, I still had to pass muster with Ame and Jennie, as well as executive producers Joe Medjuck and Michael Gross, who had also produced the original Ghostbusters movie. I’d never worked in comedy so the network execs were understandably dubious, but they signed off on me when they saw that I got along well with the producers, who wanted the show to have teeth, telling scary stories with humor and strong characters. The faces of the Ghostbusters were changed for contractual reasons involving actors’ likenesses, but everything else had to feel just like the movie.

  To extend a 107-minute movie into thirty-nine hours of storytelling, I brought in the best writers I could find, including Larry DiTillio. Then, with the support of a terrific cast (Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Lorenzo Music, Laura Summer, and Arsenio Hall) we produced some of the weirdest stories ever told in a network animated series. We drew upon ancient myths, forgotten gods, and supernatural creatures that ranged from Samhain to the Sandman, ghosts to goblins, Lovecraftian demons to monsters in the closet. No reference was too obscure. In one script we referred to a group of characters trying to defeat a creature plaguing an Eskimo village as “an Inuit minyan.” Only three people in the country got that joke, but it was worth it.

  The wide palette of humor, horror, and action made it the most rewarding gig I’d had to that point, and I scripted twenty-one episodes, determined to write the hell out of it. Two of the best received were “Xmas Marks the Spot,” where the Ghostbusters inadvertently save Scrooge from the three ghosts of Christmas, and “Take Two,” which suggested that the Ghostbusters movie was based on the animated series rather than the other way around. Many young viewers actually came to believe that was true, much to the annoyance of the film’s producers.

  The main difference between the network and syndicated versions of The Real Ghostbusters came down to the involvement in the former by censors, also known as Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P), whose input was often problematic. Borrowing a page from the old Warner Bros. cartoons, I wanted the show to be written on two levels: with action and humor that was simple enough for kids to follow, and sophisticated ideas behind the mythology that adults could appreciate. BS&P hated that approach, especially when it came to death and the supernatural. It was okay for us to have monsters in the show, but we couldn’t say they were dead people because that was too scary, even though the show was called Ghostbusters, not Monsterbusters. The supernatural aspects of the storytelling also led BS&P to suspect us of constantly trying to slip in references to Satanism and the occult, so they scrutinized every line of every script in case I was secretly an emissary of Ba’al out to subvert the children of America and bring about the Apocalypse.

  Which, of course, I was. They just could never prove it.

  On May 6, 1986, the Los Angeles science fiction community was rocked by the passing of Mike Hodel,* host of Hour 25. What he believed was just a sore throat turned out to be a tumor that had crawled deep into his brain. It happened so quickly that Mike was gone before most people even knew he was sick. Before his passing, he asked Harlan Ellison to take over as host. Harlan obliged and rechristened the show Mike Hodel’s Hour 25. For Harlan, Mike’s death was the latest in a series of body blows that left him stunned and reeling. Five months earlier he had walked off a recent revival of The Twilight Zone over CBS’s evisceration of one of his scripts; then he ended up on the receiving end of a $2 million libel suit based on an offhand remark made six years earlier about a comic book writer. Harlan refused to settle out of court, but the cost of prolonged litigation was eating through his savings with terrifying speed.

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna lose the house,” he confided to a mutual friend.

  I couldn’t let that happen. Harlan and I were only casual acquaintances, but I would never have had the courage to keep going without his example of a working-class writer who made good. So Kathryn and I, along with another writer, decided to throw a roast to raise funds for Harlan’s defense.

  The event took place on July 12, 1986, at the Los Angeles Press Club, and featured David Gerrold, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Twilight Zone producer Phil DeGuere, journalist Paul Krassner, comics legend Stan Lee, and comedian Robin Williams. We even convinced artist Frank Miller to create a poster based on Harlan’s famous short story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” that could be sold along with audiotapes of the event. It was a raucous, obscenity-riddled celebration of Harlan’s work that provided both the needed funds and an emotio
nal boost that would let him go on to prevail in court.

  By the end of the night Kathryn and I were relieved. We were exhausted.

  We were ditched.

  Quoting Kathryn: “After the roast, we weren’t invited to the after-event dinner, because Harlan assumed that [name withheld] had organized the whole thing, and only much later realized that I had done most of the work and apologized to both of us for leaving us standing there in the parking lot while everyone else went to dinner. But Harlan didn’t know us very well at all at that point.”

  That summer I finished my first pass at a timeline for the Christine Collins story, and while it included most of the essential pieces there were still gaps big enough to drive a starship through. I was annoyed and frustrated at the lack of available information and my own inability to corral the events into a coherent story and working on seventy-eight episodes of The Real Ghostbusters didn’t leave much time for prowling around dusty archives.

  It’s just one of a hundred true stories out there that you could be telling, I thought. Why are you so focused on this one?

  The answer, I realized, lay in Christine’s refusal to lay down to those in power. The LAPD, the chief of police, and the doctors who helped commit her to an asylum for the crime of disagreeing with the police, hit her as hard as they could, trying to break her will. In her struggle I saw echoes of my own past, getting pounded by bullies or Elders determined to make me recant what I knew to be true. She was a fighter, and her efforts deserved to be recognized.

  I swore that one day I’d finish the research that would let me tell Christine’s story in a way that honored her battle for her son’s life.

  The Real Ghostbusters debuted on September 13, 1986, as ABC’s number one animated series and the highest-rated animated series airing on any network. The series was the darling of critics and viewers, sold millions of dollars in toys, and generated a fan following that persists to this day.

  Given that reception, I decided that this was as good a time as any to try and break into live-action television. There was just one problem: before South Park and The Simpsons made animation respectable, most network executives believed that writers who worked in animation did so because they weren’t good enough for live-action. The longer one stayed in animation, the more everyone assumed that was all you could do. I’d been writing animation for only two years, so the usual prejudices had not yet calcified around me, but that grace period wouldn’t last much longer, so I had to move quickly. The hard part would be finding a live-action show that would even consider a writer with my limited credits.

  So naturally I went for the most difficult option available.

  During its first season every animation writer in town had tried to sell a script to the new Twilight Zone, but few succeeded. When the show was renewed for a second season, the word went out that you couldn’t get in the door unless you had at least some experience writing live-action. By all rights this should have left me out in the cold, but that once-in-a-lifetime meeting with Rod Serling had to portend something, right?

  My agent waved away the idea of trying to get a meeting to pitch stories. “Without prior credits the only way they might let you pitch is if you give them a spec script that gets their interest,” Candy said, “but even then the odds are pretty slim.”

  I bristled inwardly; it was the same song I’d heard my whole life. It’s impossible, there’s no point in trying, so don’t even bother.

  I tucked away my annoyance. “Fine, then I’ll write a spec.”

  She sighed, knowing there was no point in trying to talk me out of something once I’d made up my mind. “Then it had better be really good, though I can’t guarantee they’ll actually read it.”

  With the gauntlet thrown, I racked my brain for a story that would catch their attention. Since the best episodes of the original Twilight Zone were morality plays based on the writer’s background or perspective, I thought, How about a story about a kid from the mean streets of Newark? A fledgling writer who managed to get out in one piece and left his friends behind, some of whom later died in those streets. Guilt-ridden, he never returns until the night his plane is rerouted to Newark for weather. Suddenly he finds himself pursued by the literal ghosts of his past. He thinks they’re out to kill him because he ran out on them, only to discover that they’re trying to help him let go of his guilt and stop feeling bad about his past, so he can enjoy the life they never had.

  I finished the script a week later, and Candy sent it over without much hope. So we were both astonished when the writing staff called to say that while they didn’t want to do this story, they liked the writing well enough for me to come in and pitch some more ideas.

  When I arrived at The Twilight Zone offices in Studio City, the first person I ran into was science fiction/fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin, who had been brought on as story editor after Harlan’s fiery departure. Though he would later write the books that became Game of Thrones, George’s only prior television credit at the time was a single episode of the Hitchhiker series based on one of his stories. In transitioning to story editor on the Zone, some writers in town felt that he zealously guarded his status as resident up-and-comer by discouraging any other up-and-comers who might displace him. I’d seen George a few times at Dangerous Visions autograph parties and though we’d never spoken he seemed a nice enough fellow, so I didn’t put much stock in the stories.

  He was sitting by the door as I came in, and offered a tight flicker of a smile at my greeting before glancing away. Then I noticed he had a copy of my spec on his lap. “Yeah, I just now got it,” he said, vaguely annoyed.

  “What did you think?” I asked, eager for criticism from a writer of his stature.

  He shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said and wandered away.

  Oboy, he so doesn’t want me here.

  I was then ushered into the office of Executive Producer Phil DeGuere. Once the rest of the writing staff had settled in, I began laying out the stories I wanted to tell. Phil was twitchy and distracted, covertly (and sometimes overtly) reading Daily Variety as I pitched. George kept glancing out the window in case something more interesting might flutter past. I was sweating bullets. The first two stories were shot down immediately. That left just story number three, the most personal of the bunch.

  My family’s history had amply demonstrated how the sins of a father addicted to alcohol and violence could be visited upon the son, a cycle continued across generations. The pathology is obvious: you get kicked by someone bigger than you, so you kick down at something smaller than you. I wanted to write a story that would tell people it’s possible to break that cycle by refusing to do to others what was done to them.

  “The story’s called ‘Appointment Overdue’” I said, painfully aware of the nervousness in my voice. “A divorced guy trying to figure out what to do with his life brings his ten-year-old son on vacation to the house where he grew up. After a while the son starts seeing what he thinks is a kid from the neighborhood hanging around. We discover it’s the imaginary friend his father had as a kid, only it’s not imaginary, it’s a genius loci, a spirit of the place, drawn by loneliness. Resentful at being abandoned years earlier, and determined not to be ditched again, the spirit starts pulling him into its shadowy world. As the father fights to save his son’s life he realizes that he’s been doing to his son what his father did to him: being distant, short-tempered, and dismissive, forcing him to seek affection elsewhere. By taking responsibility for his actions he’s able to release the spirit and rescue his son.”

  Phil turned another page in Daily Variety.

  George kept scanning the skies in case a UFO happened by.

  But the other staffers liked the idea and jumped in with questions about the relationship between father and son, what the spirit wanted and where it came from. Once their questions were answered, the room turned quiet as everyone looked to Phil, who finally glanced up at me. “Yeah, okay, why don’t you go ahead and we’ll figure it
out from there.”

  I wasn’t sure what go ahead meant. Had I gotten the assignment? Or was he asking me to redo it and come back with a new take on the story? My difficulty reading Phil’s expression was exacerbated by darkness, since George had sucked all the light out of the room the instant the words had been spoken.

  As we walked out the door I turned to one of the staffers. “Did he just buy my story?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re approved to outline. After that, we’ll see.”

  On the bus ride home, the knowledge that I’d made a sale to The Twilight Zone began to sink in. I allowed a brief moment of excitement then shut it down. I’d only sold the story; there was a long road (and apparently a sea of darkness) between me and a script deal, and a longer road still to seeing it produced. I’d learned by now not to get carried away about how things might work out because television is one of the few businesses where hope can kill you.

  Eager not to let their interest cool I delivered the outline quickly and was then called in for a notes meeting. I can’t remember whether or not George was in the room, but the other staffers had additional questions and suggestions. Most of them loved the story and were pushing hard to get me approved to script; others, not so much.

  A week later, the phone rang. “There’s resistance in some quarters to you going to script, but we’ve thrashed it out and you’re good to go,” the staffer said. “Everyone agrees we should at least get the script in hand. After that we can figure out what we want to do with it.”

  My agent couldn’t believe it. “This is a great opportunity,” she said. “Don’t blow it.”