Alison Page wrote:
Jenny said -
what the writer says goes.
It doesn't correspond to the reality of the production process either.
Yes it does.
The 'writer' is in many ways the lowliest member of the production team,
and
the one most likely to be over-ruled.
We are talking about B7 here. During that period the writer was king. Terry Nation created the series, he wrote the entire first season. It was script edited by Chris Boucher. If you take an original script and compare it to the episode you will see that the changes are insignificant.
There is a joke to this effect in
'Shakespeare in Love' for example (I know a joke isn't proof, but the
joke
was written by Harold Pinter, and he obviously felt it would have
resonance
with people watching the film).
That was a film made in the 1990's, you quite clearly know very little about British television production during the 1970's. And Shakespeare in Love, however entertaining a film, is not a Shakespearian play either.
There is going to be a screen-writers
strike (well, actually I think it has been called off) in Hollywood, this summer, specifically about this very issue.
So I've heard. Good for them.
So literally millions of
dollars are resting on the fact that no definitive answer has ever been provided
to
this issue.
THIS IS FILM IN AMERICA 20 YEARS AFTER BLAKE'S 7 WAS MADE.
In the realm of TV the situation is slightly different,
IT WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
but if anything in
a multi-authored production like B7
Season 1 was not multi-authored.
we can be even less confident that the
product represents a single unified vision, where all ends have been
tied,
and no ambiguity remains.
Oh there are some ambiguities, but there are good reasons for that. If we manage to go through the entire four seasons together I'll point them out to everyone exactly what was happening.
I think the relationship between script and finished product is a complicated one, whether we are talking about theatre, TV or film.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. The three are very different.
The
relationship between such finished product (play, TV show or whatever)
and
'truth' is also a very complex one.
No, truth is very simple.
These are my opinions. IMO if you like.
No I don't like.
You may disagree with my opinions,
I disagree with them because you are wrong.
but it is an objective fact that many
informed people have over the years put forward a *range* of opinions.
Yes, but using your criteria these books just contain a collection of letters on a page.
There are hundreds of books on the subject.
How many have you read? And how many were on British television of the 1970s, not American films?
That is what I am emphasising, not my
own particular opinion,
That is not true, and it contradicts your "IMO" above.
but that many different opinions exist, and have
intellectual credence even among people who disagree with them.
This is just waffle.
So we are dealing with a situation where the very premises of debate: who is the auteur, who has control over the finished product, where does meaning rest (with the author or the viewer or elsewhere) are themselves far from being decided.
More psycho conditioning. People avoid dealing with issues by pretending that the issues cannot be resolved.
We don't have to dredge up all these heavy issues, every
time we discuss Blake's 7 (thank god)
By using IMO that's exactly what you are doing. By talking about B7 that is exactly what you are doing.
we just have to be a bit tolerant of
differences of opinion, because we have each of us built our case on shifting sands.
That is simply not true, and all I have to do is look in my mail box (28 on this issue) to see that differences of opinion are frowned upon here.
By hiding behind "IMO" and "my version" and saying that every version is valid, people are avoiding the real issue, which is how much reference these "versions" have to what is onscreen.
Jenny
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Jenny Kaye