Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  It wasn’t my intention to write every episode of year three, but when I finally looked up from my keyboard I’d done exactly that. I didn’t realize at the time that no American writer/producer had single-handedly written an entire twenty-two episode season of an hour-long dramatic series. Some had written collaboratively on twenty-two, but doing so alone was considered impossible or at least damned improbable. Warners was happy with the results and asked if I could do it again. I said yes. Since no one had told me it was impossible, I just went ahead and did it.

  Writing that much that fast began taking a heavy toll, especially since I was still overseeing every aspect of physical production, responsibilities that on other shows are divided up between as many as a dozen people. Working eighteen to twenty hours a day, every day, led to carpal tunnel syndrome and I could only work by icing down my wrists twenty minutes for every hour spent writing. My brain was so full of story and production dilemmas that most nights I only slept an hour or two, sometimes not at all. I didn’t want to take sleeping pills because I was afraid they might mess with the writing, so night after night I found myself staring at the ceiling as dawn filtered through the curtains. My immune system was so stressed out that I was constantly sick with one bug or another. Pat Tallman and Jeff Conaway began leaving jars of vitamins on my desk, and John Copeland had me undergo a physical exam normally reserved for actors so the show could be insured in case I collapsed from exhaustion or fell over dead. My hair, brown when we started B5, turned almost entirely white by season four.

  Rather than admit that I was drowning, I pushed my feelings down and tried to pretend that everything was fine. The kid in me who was incapable of asking for help was still very much in charge. I couldn’t admit, even to myself, that I was in pain. The marathon was so costly and so unusual that Newsweek published an article describing my situation as “Master and Slave of Babylon 5.”

  Those conditions would have tested even the strongest marriage, and ours had never been terribly deep. Tapped out, strapped to the wheel of my own creation, I lacked the bandwidth to do what needed to be done for the show and sustain a healthy relationship. I had to choose between them, and unfortunately the only coping mechanism I understood was isolation.

  Kathryn wasn’t surprised when I told her I wanted a separation. In many ways we’d been living separate lives for some time. I’d come home from work having grabbed a bite at the stage or on my way in, say hello, then go into my office to write, coming out again long after she was asleep. So she was very calm about the entire thing, in part because it wasn’t I’m leaving and want a divorce, it was I need to get out so I can finish this show or I’m going to lose my mind.

  Ever since I broke off contact with my family, my father had continued trying to shoehorn himself back into my life. Too cowardly to confront me directly, he hoped to provoke me into responding through a series of angry letters that he forced my mother to copy in her own handwriting, as though they were from her. The pretense was obvious because the letters reflected the word choices and grammar of someone who still thought in Russian. Even more telling, she would change pens or take a break, then begin writing again in the middle of a word, which no one does unless they’re simply copying what’s in front of them.

  He only came at me directly once, when I began to speak publicly about my life in the hope that my story might help people from difficult families or limited means understand that success wasn’t contingent upon having access to the best schools or a family with influence. I talked about coming from a blue-collar family that often lived in squalid conditions, constantly moving to stay ahead of creditors, and that my father had “a unique economic philosophy: blow into town, run up a lot of bills, and split.”

  At some point these comments ended up in a press release from Warners, which Charles saw online. Still obsessed with projecting an image of himself as the perfect father, he went batshit when I committed the unthinkable crime of breaking the Straczynski code of silence. In the past, whenever anyone in our family offered a less-than-flattering opinion of my father, he would threaten a lawsuit to shut them up, drawing upon a library of boilerplate legal forms he kept for just such occasions. These bullying tactics usually proved successful because none of his targets could afford to fight it out; the threat alone was enough to intimidate them into silence without him ever having to walk into a courtroom.

  So naturally he sent an email threatening to sue me for my comments.

  His email is reproduced below, edited for length as the demands go on for several pages.* I include this because it marks the only direct communication from my father since 1986, and represents the sole opportunity in this book to let him speak in his own voice without being characterized subjectively by me. Though the “offense” took place months earlier, he waited to send the email until December 23, giving me forty-eight hours to respond when he knew no attorneys would be working.

  Item 4328103 12/23/96 20:52

  From: PLASTIC@PRODIGY.NET@INET02#

  To: STRACZYNSKI J. Michael Straczynski

  Subject: Defamation of character

  From: Charles Straczynski

  On Sat April 6 1996 you and others including Babylon 5 have slandered the Straczynski family in public, to the whole world on the internet.

  I am going to ask you to remove from the internet these out and out lies that were in the news release on the April, 6 date.

  I want you to issue an apology for these lies. Apparently you are not intelligent enough to realize that you are jeopardizing Warner Bros. Productions, Babylon 5, as well as your partner Douglas Netter and yourself.

  If you do not remove these lies with a retraction and an apology directly on the internet and by regular mail. I will file suit against all the above Parties.

  I witnessed such underhanded and heartless actions when I was stuck in Russia during the war where children turned in their parents to the KGB who were then imprisoned and some shot due to this type of action. It seems that you developed into that type of character. I am glad that I am living in this country. You also said that you have available all these bills that you refer to.

  Unless you remove this with an apology on the internet from you and Babylon 5 by Friday the 27th December 1996, this letter will appear on the internet under the following “GREAT MAKER ALSO GREAT LIAR.”‡ Don’t forget that Warner Bros. Babylon 5, and others might be liable. If I do decide to sue.

  I want you to answer the following questions:

  When was I a blue collar worker and for how long?

  When was I as you remember, no longer a blue collar worker?

  Can you recollect that I was in business of my own for over 21 years?

  Can you remember where and what was the first and last business?

  When, and name the states and towns where I used the unique economic philosophy, of running up a lot of bills and splitting? (send me copies of these bills).

  Did you, in your entire life, go to bed hungry or abused?

  Name the states and towns where we moved to every six months to a year as you claim.

  Name the different schools you attended every year of your life.

  Explain truthfully how bad was your existence?

  How many college diplomas do you have and what for?

  Name all the various colleges you attended, that you worked your way thru, and name every job you held to do this, as well as the amount of money you earned for that purpose.

  Is all of your chronology of accomplished events in the news release on the internet from Babylon 5 the honest truth, or is it seeded with lies?

  Who wrote that news release?

  What did your mother do to you, that you heartlessly refused to speak to her for years?

  I will wait until the 27th Dec. for you to do right. You know yourself that all that was a pack of lies and you are being misled by your aunt. If she has all these bills tell her to give them to you.

  If you can’t say anything good about a person then don’t s
ay anything at all. In the meantime go over these questions in your own mind, and see if you did the right thing.

  Don’t think for one minute that I won’t sue the whole bunch of you, just two years ago I sued a Company in Portland Oregon called Modcom and it cost me $20,000 to do that. Just keep in mind that I will protect my family and my reputation.

  Do the right thing.

  Charles Straczynski

  Since this tactic had proved successful in the past, he assumed his email would have its intended effect. But this time he’d picked the wrong target.

  I fired back a note stating that my talks had only skimmed the surface of his past actions, and that I would happily elucidate more of them online, putting our family’s whole sordid history out there with plenty of references for verification.

  His reply, sent Christmas Day:

  Item 6954720 12/25/96 17:40

  From: PLASTIC6@JUNO.COM@INET01#

  To: STRACZYNSKI

  Subject: Threat to put more lies on the internet, a web letter on 12/25/96

  Please go ahead with your threat to put your letter full of lies and imaginations on the web. I am anxious to see it there, we will also see how the lawyers for Warner Bros. as well as Doug Netter and others have this vetted.

  That news release full of lies, was posted by Babylon five which is a part of Warner Bros and you have now twenty four hours to remove it after that a suit will be filed without any further warnings.

  You now will be able to bring your evidence to court and prove all these accusations.

  From now on I will deal directly with Warner Bros. I personally think that you have a screw loose and you don’t realize what you are doing.

  You think you know everything but let me disappoint you, you don’t, so therefore it is worthless to try to convince you of anything different

  I think you are a sick person.

  See all of you in court

  ps; I would like to see the receipts of the $20,000.00 you paid in student loans or did you skip out on them.

  I’d had enough. The day he slugged me in Bourbonnais and I threatened him to his face I learned that the only way to deal with him was to come at him fists swinging.

  Herewith my reply:

  You want to go ahead and try and sue me, that’s your choice.

  But be prepared for a massive counter-suit from me for harassment, and defamation of my own character if you proceed. I can match you dollar for dollar, and I’m prepared to spend every dollar I have if it means proving my case. And I will. I will background every charge I’ve made, and then some; I will find, contact, subpoena and depose everyone you have known, everyone you have worked with, find every criminal charge and I will present them all in court to prove my point should you decide to sue. My character is not the issue here; you have chosen to make yours the point of your defense. If you want to walk into a courtroom and defend that, that’s your decision.

  Meanwhile, this is the last I want to hear from you. You do not frighten me. You can intimidate Mom and Theresa all you want, but you do not scare me. Next time you want to contact me, go through a lawyer, and I will do the same. But don’t even think of threatening me any further in email, or I will have to take measures to stop you.

  Twelve hours later, came the coward’s reply.

  Item 0755646 12/27/96 15:33

  From: PLASTIC6@JUNO.COM@INET# Internet Gateway

  To: STRACZYNSKI

  Sub: . . . no subject . . .

  Joe

  Do you think I would sue you. I would never do anything to embarrass you.

  I got upset when I saw that on the news release.

  I got on the internet to keep up with your accomplishments and the first thing that popped up was that part where the news release is. In fact mom was going to join your fan club. This is the only way we could keep up with you since you have not ever called your mother for such a long time. Her heart was broken when Mary and Eddie Skibicki were here in Calif 2 weeks ago and told her that Theresa had an autographed picture from you.

  Listen to me. She is a vindictive person. She misled me at a cost of $8000 for the trip that I took to Siberia. I tried to find my cousins address because she told me she would get it for me. When she did it was false. He and his other brother and father mama’s brother were taken to Siberia during the war. The father was hung and his brother died of TB. He is the only one to survive and could not return all the way to Poland due to lack of money.

  So when she had enough guts to call me and ask if I found him I called her a fool and a liar, and I know that she was feeding you a bunch of crap. She wanted for me to buy her a rascal scooter.* Why? When my mother died she grabbed all the money and didn’t bother to offer me a penny. I would not take it if she offered anyway but it proves that she has greed.

  What any of that had to do with the matter at hand, I have no idea. The email exchange ends there. Confronted by someone willing to fight back, he retired from the battlefield, backing and filling the whole time. I almost deleted the email, but one sentence caught my attention: She misled me at a cost of $8000 for the trip that I took to Siberia.

  Siberia? Si-fucking-beria? What was that all about?

  For six years my aunt Theresa was the only member of my family with whom I’d remained in contact, so during her next call I asked about the Siberia thing. She explained that he’d gone to visit relatives, stopping along the way to visit some of the places they’d lived in during the war, including the train station at Bogdanova.

  “Did he go anyplace else?” I asked, losing interest but looking for the end of the story. I’m a writer, it’s what I do.

  There was a long pause, as if she were deciding whether or not to answer, then said, “Vishnevo.”

  According to the bio my father had forced me to ghostwrite for him, Vishnevo was where he had seen a Jewish massacre take place, the victims herded into a cemetery before being machine-gunned to death. It seemed an odd choice for a vacation.

  “Where in Vishnevo did he go?”

  “The Jewish cemetery,” she said. I could feel a strain in her voice. I didn’t know what was causing it, but somewhere a finger was pushing down on an exposed nerve, and she dived off the phone before I could press for more information.

  Vishnevo. For as long as I could remember that name had lingered at the edge of my family’s history. I couldn’t understand why it kept coming back into the picture. And why would my father, an avowed anti-Semite, go to a Jewish cemetery?

  I might’ve come near an answer if I’d connected that conversation with my father’s disinclination to get anywhere near a courtroom where his personal history could be dredged up. I assumed he’d backed off because he knew I could outspend him in a court of law. And that may have been the main reason.

  But as matters turned out, it wasn’t the only reason.

  When Michael O’Hare felt stable enough to work again, I wrote a two-part episode to give his character closure and provide a chance for him to shine as an actor. He came through the experience exhausted but exhilarated. There was no way he could handle the stress of working full-time on a TV series, but this would allow him to end his role honorably and remind the town that he was available for guest roles, a prospect that helped lift his spirits. He also appreciated that his situation had been treated with discretion. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I’ll take this secret to my grave.”

  He considered this for a moment, then said, “I have a better idea: take it to my grave. If anything happens to me, I want you to talk about it publicly. If people know this can happen to a lead actor in a TV show, the commander of a space station, they’ll know it can happen to anybody. Maybe that knowledge can help somebody else down the road.”

  And with that we parted.

  As Babylon 5 approached the end of its fourth season, the question of whether or not we would be picked up for our fifth and final season became more complicated when PTEN, bleeding money and resources, was shut down. We were the only show still
standing, trying to finish our story. The cable network TNT was interested in picking us up, but at a much lower price point. The only way to make the budget work would be to eliminate one day of filming, going from a seven-day shoot to six days. Many on our crew thought this was impossible on a show as technically ambitious as B5.

  So I made a deal with our director of photography, John Flinn, who was the heart and soul of the shooting company. We had already decided to shoot our series finale during season four, so it would be available whichever way our run concluded. We hadn’t yet chosen a director, so I volunteered to do it and said if I, as a neophyte director, could get it done within the required six days, then anybody could do it; if I failed then we would make other adjustments to the budget, including letting go of some cast members and cutting back on extras, stunts, and CGI. I had no desire to be a director, but I needed to make a point if I was going to save my show.

  Everyone on the crew knew this would be our final episode, regardless of airdate, so emotions ran high during the filming of “Sleeping in Light,” which was already an emotional episode. From my position behind the monitors I could frequently hear the crew sobbing. It was six days of tears. As the director I didn’t have that luxury; I had to keep everyone together and moving forward.

  To Flinn’s credit he didn’t sandbag me during shooting, which he could have easily done to a first-time director. I suspect he was genuinely curious to see if I could pull this off or if I’d fall on my face unassisted. Everyone was an emotional wreck by the time we were done, but we still managed to wrap ahead of our six-day schedule and under budget. We’d proven the point, both to the crew and TNT.

  Three weeks later, I stood on a stage in Blackpool, England, in front of thousands of fans at the biggest Babylon 5 convention to date and announced that we would be producing our fifth season and four original B5 TV movies for TNT. The crowd erupted in a roar loud enough to shake the platform beneath my feet, and the sound took me back to the moment when I stood before the assembled students of Chula Vista High School decades earlier. The seventeen-year-old version of me would never have believed where that first effort would eventually take us.