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The Rant Shack
(Wherein We Rant)
Mike Says:
(09/15/05)
SERENITY WEEK IS HERE!
If you've been to The Nice Guy site before, then you know what big nerds we are for this. We've been backing Firefly since it was a struggling series, and doing what we can to spread the word since it became a major motion picture called Serenity. And as fans, we've waited, and waited, and waited...and now the wait is JUST about over. Serenity is coming to a theater near you on September 30th! So to celebrate, we've decided to dedicate this whole update to Serenity, giving you a Serenity strip, Serenity art, and a lot of Serenity info. So if you've missed the whole experience and are wondering what the hell we're ranting about, check out the stuff here and let us entice you into exploring it further. And if you're a fellow Browncoat? Just let this whet your appetite some (as if you needed any help in that department), because U-Day is almost here!!!
ALL I WANT IS SERENITY
There was a show called “Firefly”.
I came on late on the whole Buffy/Angel experience. Everyone was telling me I had to check out Buffy, but I put it off…mainly because it sounded like some kind of show for teenage girls. But, finally, I gave in and decided to check it out when season 3 began. Season 2, I quickly realized, ended on a major cliffhanger, so I had NO idea what was going on. I do remember Charisma Carpenter’s character, Cordelia, asking “Why do *I* always have to be the bait?” while she and the rest of the Buffy supporting cast were out vampire hunting in the graveyard while Buffy was M.I.A., and something about that line, and the way she delivered it, struck me as really funny. It was an okay episode. I wasn’t completely hooked. But I decided to keep trying it. And after that? Hooked…for…life.
I loved what Whedon was doing with the show (that’s show creator Joss Whedon, in case you thought I was talking about another Whedon), taking fantastical situations and making them metaphors for real-life emotions and situations. I adored the sharp and witty writing, and loved his penchant for the operatic, for big, multi-episode story arcs and high drama. I loved most what he did with characters. He’d created this group of very loveable and familiar people to populate his world, characters that you found yourself really caring about and cheering for. This was quality entertainment, and quickly became the one thing I looked forward to most in my TV week (and back then, I was watching a lot of TV).
And then Angel, the spinoff, came along, and it was a pleasure all its own. The same great writing and fun characters, but in a new setting, and with new themes…a very tortured hero, an almost Batmanesque tale. Before Buffy shuffled off to UPN, the best two hours of TV a week was the two-hour Buffy/Angel block on the WB. Guaranteed money’s worth every time.
Then, along the way, Joss decided either 1) two shows just weren’t enough for him, or 2) he wanted to have shows on three different networks just to say he’d done it. Joss came up with something new for Fox, not another Buffverse spinoff, nothing to do with vampires or demons. Joss decided he wanted to go into space.
I like space.
Along came Firefly.
The crew of Serenity (L to R): Jayne, Wash, Mal and Zoe
As both a Whedon fan and a sci-fi fan (a Star Wars junkie since ’77 when I first saw the original in the theater as a kid and felt my imagination had been born that day), I was understandably giddy when the news hit. Two great tastes that were sure to taste great together. I, along with the other Whedon fans I knew (most of my friends) couldn’t wait until the new fall season to see what Joss was going to do for us next.
We had no idea, at the time, what was going on behind the scenes.
The whole big damn cast of "Firefly". (Back row) Jayne (Adam Baldwin), Kaylee (Jewel Staite), Wash (Alan Tudyk), Zoe (Gina Torres) and Book (Ron Glass). (Front row) Inara (Morena Baccarin), Mal (Nathan Fillion), Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau).
Joss had created a two-hour pilot for the network. Now you’ve got to figure, this is Joss Whedon. Money in the bank. He’d proved himself twice over with his first offerings, and you’d figure that Fox would be falling all over themselves and giving the man whatever he wanted. However, they, instead, looked at his pilot, scratched their heads, and told him, after all was said and done, that they really didn’t WANT a two-hour pilot for the show. Um…JOSS hadn’t wanted a two-hour pilot. He only did one because they asked him to. Now they not only changed their minds, but told him that they wanted to see a new script for a one-hour opening for the show. Oh, and if the show was going to get picked up? They wanted to see the script by Monday. This, by the way, was on Friday. No pressure or anything.
But Joss did it. He hunkered down for the weekend, cranked out the script called “The Train Job”, and presented it to Fox. Fox went for it, one of the only good decisions they’d end up making when it came to Firefly. He had a go. Episodes started filming. The show was on track, and was ready to go for the new season.
Mal, Inara, Wash, Zoe and Jayne
Me and my San Diego crew didn’t start off watching it together. We were all at our respective homes that night. Russ watched as his place. Tony at his. Aaron, my roommate at the time, was working, and I watched it solo and saved it on the TiVo for him. Now we had read some about the show, and understood that it was going to be a “western in space”. We’ve heard this theme before. What none of us realized until “Train Job” started running that night?
It was a WESTERN. In SPACE.
That was not a metaphor.
Simon, River, Book and Kaylee
We all watched the first episode of a sci-fi space show that opened with a saloon brawl (complete with batwing doors…well, that and holographic windows), opening credits that had shots of horses, gun fights with actual six-shooters, and a good old-fashioned train robbery. All this, yet, with spaceships and an “empire” (the Alliance”) and plenty of sci-fi effects.
Much of America (well, much of the little of America that watched) looked at all this and said “Huh?”
The four of us? We cheered.
Oh Captain my Captain. It's Captain Malcolm Reynolds
There are people out there that love both westerns and space. Joss is one of them. I’m one of them. Didn’t it seem just natural that if you put the two together, it would be a wonderful thing? It was. Joss didn’t just create a western in space. He created a post-civil war western in space. He’s been quoted as saying the show came about when he was reading “The Killer Angels” and for some reason started thinking about the Millennium Falcon (this was further evidence to me, by the way, that Joss and I were separated at birth. If he’s reading this, incidentally, Christmas is coming up, and I’ve had my eye on a plasma screen). He came up with a tale of post-war drifters, trying to make a living and make sense of what they went through, and their place in the universe now that it was over (and they lost). Instead of “boldly going where no man has gone before”, they were more interested in staking their claim on some kind of future and finding a place outside of the long arm of the victorious Alliance. They weren’t looking to join a Federation. They were looking to escape it. And make proper wage. Even if the path to that wasn’t always on the legal side.
Mal and Inara. Do they, don't they? Will they, won't they?
Without the benefit of the two-hour pilot to introduce us to these characters proper, we jumped into the middle of their lives with “Train Job” and learned as we went along. And we learned plenty. You had a ship, a Firefly-class ship (in case you’re wondering where the name of the show came from) called “Serenity”, named after the battle of Serenity Valley where the Browncoats were dealt their final blow by the Alliance. The ship’s captain, Malcolm Reynolds (played brilliantly and downright OWNED by Nathan Fillion), was a Browncoat (part of the rebellion) and was at that battle, and lost his faith and many of his friends there. One he didn’t lose was Zoe (played by the magnificent Gina Torres), who was with him then and stayed with him after, and became part of his crew, a hard-as-nails fighter whom you do not wish to piss off. Another of his main crew was a mercenary (in every sense of the word) name Jayne (played by Adam Baldwin…or is it Jayne playing him? It’s hard to tell), who never fought in the war but fights for him now…if the money’s good. As every ship needs a pilot, Serenity had Wash (played by going-to-be-a-major-star-any-minute Alan Tudyk), a wise-cracking Hawaiian shirt-wearing pragmatic who ended up married to Zoe. And a ship needs to keep running, so Mal got himself a pilot along the way named Kaylee (played by the talented and downright adorable Jewel Staite), a sweet and seemingly innocent ray of sunshine on the dark boat that can fix anything that gets itself broke. Those of us (of the male persuasion) that watched “Train Job” for the first time will never forget the moment that Kaylee sat up from under a console and smiled at the camera. Complete cardiac meltdown.
Mal and Zoe, the war vets
The crew also had some passengers aboard, again whose stories we’d have to pick up along the way. First was Inara (played by one of the most beautiful women on Earth, Morena Baccarin), a “companion” (or cosmic call girl). Prostitution in the world of Firefly was a revered and classy (almost religious) profession, and she was renting one of the ship’s shuttles to live in and find new clients. And, interestingly, there was a preacher on board…or, as they’re called in Joss’s space universe, a “shepherd”. Shepherd Book (played by the gone-from-our-screen-too-long Ron Glass of Barney Miller fame) somehow ended up on this ship with these peoples of questionable character, and for reasons all his own was still around. And finally, the big mystery. There were a brother and sister on board. The brother was a doctor named Simon Tam (played to prissy perfection by Sean Maher) who was hiding aboard Serenity…specifically, hiding his seemingly crazy younger sister, River Tam (played by the amazing Summer Glau), from the Alliance, who seemed to want her back very bad. It also seemed she might be more than crazy…possibly psychic. With those two, the plot that we’d stepped into the center of nicely thickened.
The show was immediately unique, and not just for the odd blend of genres. It had action. It had really sharp comedy. It had drama. And it had some amazing characters whose relationships were immediately intriguing. And it had a really unusual and kick-ass theme song to boot. We all saw it, and we all started talking about it immediately. We were sold. And not knowing it yet, we had become Browncoats.
We started getting together as Russ’s house on Friday nights after work. We’d watch the episode, usually after or during a meal, and then hang out on Russ’s back patio, having cigars and some beers, and talk about it. We loved it more with each passing episode. Even though, I quickly learned through some internet research, Fox was, for some reason, showing them out of order. I’m a continuity buff…so much so that I won’t usually step into a series late if I haven’t seen the earlier episodes (thank God the TV to DVD revolution started, and the internet gave us the ability to download shows). So this got to pissing me off. And I was feeling cheated, too, knowing that there was a yet unaired two-hour pilot out there somewhere that I hadn’t seen that filled in a lot of the holes. But, thanks to the aforementioned internet, I, of the four of us, discovered and downloaded the pilot! I watched this unfinished version (missing some scenes that would be in later and some sound and music), and became even more pissed. Because it was brilliant! I couldn’t understand how Fox had seen it and taken a pass and denied it to the rest of us! Well, word had it that it was going to shown, around Christmas time, so the other guys decided to wait until it hit the screen, but I was very happy being in the know, and understanding a lot of the plot elements that came along as we watched.
The cast looking dead SEXY. Do they make you horny, baby? Do they?
Our Friday night tradition continued, and we tried to convert as many other people as we could. I’d tell people at work, or call my friends back in Sacramento and try to get them into it. I was successful with some, but not many. Its rather nontraditional vision didn’t sit well with everyone (why are they all speaking Chinese half the time?), and people also had a hard time finding it (Fox started to pre-empt it, too), and when they did, they, like the rest of us, found a show with its chapters all jumbled. The guys and I started getting worried about our show. We started following the ratings, via web sites, and the news wasn’t good. We kept hoping it would catch on, or that Fox would at least start marketing the damn thing! But help from Fox was not forthcoming. Fox didn’t really seem to care. This is the same Fox, by the way, that had just cancelled one of their other shows after only three episodes. Kind of a dirty habit with Fox. But even jumbled as they were, the episodes were amazing. We laughed ourselves silly over “Jaynestown”, delighted in “Shindig”, and were stunned by “Out of Gas” (an episode that hooked one friend of mine and made him an immediate convert, after he’d spent some time talking smack about the same show), “Ariel” and “War Stories”. We couldn’t get enough of this show, and couldn’t imagine it ever being taken away from us.
And then, the heartbreaking news finally came. We got word that the show was being cancelled, and confirmed it on the web. Like others, we did what we could to change their minds. We wrote, we called. But Fox had made their decision. After taking this amazing show and scrambling it and forgetting about it (it was probably only the Joss Whedon name that kept it on the air as long as it was), Fox decided they’d had their fill of it. As a special “treat”, the last thing they ever aired of Firefly was the two-hour pilot called “Serenity”. The others found out what I’d already known. Fox was insane. Joss had created something unforgettable for them, and they wasted it and threw it away. Firefly, with three unaired episodes still out there somewhere, was gone.
Hey, Fox. How many fingers am I holding up?
Don't cry, Inara! Keep reading! The news gets better, I swear!
We went into denial, hoping that some other network would pick it up, and became part of the letter writing campaigns to encourage these companies to give it a try. Joss did his part and shopped it around. But no one was taking. Not even the Sci Fi Channel. We finally had to accept the fact that it was really over. You may think it odd to get so emotionally invested in a TV show. And it is. But we’re fed so much crap on TV year after year—and so much good scripted drama has been put out to pasture in favor of “reality TV”—that when you find something that really speaks to you, doesn’t insult you, and actually delivers week after week, you don’t want to let go. But we finally did.
Joss didn’t.
Joss, you see, had an altogether bizarre reaction to the cancellation. Most creators see their shows go down, and they may try to get it going again, but eventually move on to something else. Joss not only didn’t accept that his show—and his creative partnership with his stellar cast—was over, but he decided that his cancelled show could be made into a big-budget, big screen motion picture.
Um…Joss?
I started hearing the rumors about this (first spilled by chatty Nathan Fillion to someone at a convention…at least that’s the first place I heard it), and thought Joss was more than a wee bit nuts. I mean, sure, I’d have KILLED to see my show end up a movie. If I couldn’t have series back, that would at least ease some of the pain. But that’s just not how Hollywood works. What studio would be crazy enough to throw money into a failed show that a majority of viewers never got in the first place?
Then came the DVDs.
The series makes it to DVD! Click on that image, FYI, to buy your own. BUY IT! BUY IIIIIT!!!
I had all the aired episodes in permanent storage on my TiVo (and had dubbed them down to VHS just to be safe, and to be able to share them with others), so I could relive them when I wanted, but news hit that the show was actually going to make it to DVD…and the three unaired eps would be on them! This wasn’t a return of the show, but hell, this was fantastic news for all Firefly fans…of whom there were a ravenous many, already referring to themselves as “Browncoats”. I got confirmation on the news, and soon there was even a release date. Unbelievable! Our Firefly fires were kindled again.
And not just ours.
What happened on Amazon.com was nothing short of amazing. The pre-orders started coming in. And coming. And coming. That little show that no one seemed to care about not only cracked the top 25, but actually hit #1 at one point on Amazon’s list. People took notice. Industry people. And TV fans, too, who had missed it the first time around. People started wondering what all the fuss was about, and decided to order it up and try it out. It was more than a sales spike happening. It was a movement.
The DVDs sell like crazy! And the cast couldn't be happier!
We got ours, of course, the first day. We bought them for ourselves, and as Christmas approached, Aaron and I put our monies together and decided to buy the sets for all our friends back home who’d missed the ride. The old Friday night Firefly crew of four got together again to watch the unaired episodes. Though we all owned the sets, we all agreed not to watch the missing ones until we were all together. And because there were no more episodes coming, we wanted it to last, so we didn’t watch them all at once, but got together on Friday nights, like the old days, and watched them one at a time. We got a little bit of the old times back again that way, and enjoyed it while we could.
Meanwhile, friends of ours who received the sets, some of whom had mocked the show (without ever seeing it) started watching them. You want to talk about vindication? People who had laughed at us for our dedication to the dying show were suddenly rabid fans, and angry that there were no more episodes to watch. Our friends became a microcosm for what was happening around the nation. People, too late, were finally discovering Firefly…and they wanted more.
Enter Universal.
I’ll never understand how Joss did it. What pitch he used, what promises he made…hell, what songs he sang. But somehow, his tenacity, and the unthinkable sales of the DVD sets, got Universal Pictures to sit up and listen. Though we found it hard to believe—and assumed it all had to be cruel internet rumors—soon the news was solid. Universal was giving Joss Whedon $50 million-plus to make a Firefly movie. Not a remake. Not a reinvention with studio changes and recasting. They were letting him continue the series, pick up the story six months after the final episode. It was unimaginable. It went against everything Hollywood is supposed to think and do. But it was real. Firefly was coming back. And it was coming to theaters. As a movie called “Serenity”.
The crew is BACK...and this time on the big screen for "Serenity"!
By this time the Nice Guy had kicked in and was starting to take off, and Tim and I, big Firefly guys, made sure that our site was behind the revolution all the way. We talked about it. We put links on every one of our pages that people could use to go to Amazon and buy the DVDs. And in the summer of 2004, during our first year at the San Diego Comic-Con with our Nice Guy table, we found out Joss was going to be there putting on a Serenity panel. Rumor had it that some of the cast—coming right from the set, as the movie had already started filming by this time—would be there as well. This also coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Nice Guy site, and we had already concocted an event we called “Fandom Month”. The idea was that each week (we’re normally bi-weekly with our updates, but went weekly for the occasion), we’d celebrate a different TV show or film that fans really got behind. Of course, we couldn’t leave out Firefly. So the week of the convention, the Nice Guy site held “Firefly Week”, and we put up a strip called “Serenity Now!” that spoke to Firefly fandom.
Mal and Jayne getting ready to T.C.B.
When the time came for the Joss Whedon Serenity panel, we shut own our table and went to it. Went along with my old Firefly Friday night crew. And we went with a purpose in mind besides just enjoying the event. We made up special fliers talking about Firefly Week to hand out to fans there. Russ even went up to the table where Joss would be, before the panel started, and dropped a stack of them up there. Soon the time came, and Joss came out, to a thunderous standing “O” I’ll never forget. When it finally died down, Joss got on the mic, and said, simply, “I brought some people”. And Joss then brought out the entire cast of Firefly, and of the upcoming Serenity. The place went wild. And then Joss thrilled the fans further by showing a special trailer Universal had put together with the footage shot so far, one made specially for Comic-Con. It was event I’ll never forget. It was a meeting with fans, like us, who loved the show and were never willing to let it die, and a cast and their captain who loved it so much they couldn’t give up on it either. Mutual love-fest.
A scene with Inara from "Serenity"
And the best part, for us, was seeing Adam Baldwin pick up one of our fliers, check it out, and pass it down the table for each of the cast to check out while Joss spoke. I don’t know if any of them took any, but just knowing they saw it out was more than a little “shiny”. After it ended, my Firefly guys became active members of Team Nice Guy and walked around the way-too-long-to-ever-get-through post-panel autograph line and handed out all of our fliers. That same night, we got back to Russ’s place, and Tony happened to pull up Whedonesque.com, the definitive place for all Joss Whedon news. And amongst all the big stories about the panel? There was a headline about the Nice Guy, and a link to the strip. Our traffic, and fan mail, went absolutely through the roof. The Browncoats didn’t let us down, and we gained a lot of new fans that weekend. Fans who knew the Nice Guys were Browncoats just like them.
River getting ready to kick your ASS.
I’d moved back to Sacramento by this time, and Aaron off to Seattle, but the Friday night guys made a pact that we’d still all see the film together, on opening day (appropriately, on a Friday). Aaron and I agreed we’d fly back to San Diego for it (after all, it would be an excuse for a weekend back in San Diego…), and the release date was set for April of 2005. But we got some news along the way that distressed us at first. The release date had been pushed back to fall. In Hollywood, it’s almost always a bad sign when your date gets pushed back. But Universal stepped up and let people know not to worry. The reasons were good ones. See, a certain Star Wars movie was coming out right after that, and a number of other films that were targeting the Serenity demographic. They decided it was a better marketing move (wait…a studio actually paying attention to the marketing?) to put it at the end of September. So our trip would be postponed, but considering the reasons, none of us were complaining.
Simon, Inara, Zoe, Jayne and Wash, planetside
And that also built in room for another Comic-Con appearance before the premiere. Once again, we were there (Tim was unable to make it, sadly) this past summer. Once again, Joss and the cast (all but Alan Tudyk) showed up for a panel. I thought it was big LAST time. This was THE event to be at, held in Hall H, the biggest the convention center has to offer. There was more love (and louder love). There were scenes from the film shown (Russ and Tony, trying hard to go in spoiler-free, plugged their ears and averted their eyes). And the cast could barely talk about the movie. Most of them just wanted to talk about, and give thanks to, the fans that had made it all happen. The Browncoats.
Universal is incredibly smart for a number of reasons, but the #1 reason, when it comes to Serenity, is recognizing the power and love of the fan base…and using it. Special screenings started getting held around the nation, and the world, with Universal knowing that showing it to the Browncoats would get them talking about it, turning them into an organized (and free) marketing machine. And that they have been. All through this, there have been organized “shindig” parties in different cities with fans coming together. Browncoats have organized with the common goal of letting as many people know about the Firefly/Serenity phenomenon as possible, and therefore getting as many people to the theater as possible when it comes out. See, there’s a trick to this film. If it makes enough money (per an Entertainment Weekly article quoting a Universal source, it needs to be $80 million worldwide), we get to have more than just one film. We get to have a trilogy. So we’re not only motivated to see it as many times as possible, bet to get as many other people as we can muster to do the same. It’s a great relationship. And smart business. Everybody gets what they want.
Creator/Director/Our-Master-Now Joss Whedon working a scene with Nathan "Mal" Fillion
And now, the day is almost upon it. In two weeks, I’ll be back in San Diego, with the same guys that I discovered and watched and mourned this show with, standing in line to see it on the silver screen. And if you haven’t discovered the Firefly/Serenity experience yet, there’s still time. I’d recommend you grab yourself some DVDs and do yourself a little marathon and watch them all first, but don’t let that hold you back. Get out there and see it when it comes out. I guarantee laughs, chills, tears and cheers. Because that’s what Joss Whedon never fails to deliver.
In “Train Job”, a mob has Mal, Zoe and Jayne backed up to a cliff side, guns on them and nowhere to run. The main antagonist, gun in hand, talks about putting Mal down like a dog, and asks what he thinks about that. Mal’s response?
“I’m thinking we’ll rise again”. And I won’t tell you what happens after that.
That line became an anthem for Firefly fans, and for Joss Whedon and all the people behind Firefly. And we have risen. Thank you, Joss, for never giving up. On yourself, on your people, or on us. We can’t tell you how happy we were to get back aboard that ship, and see where it’s going to take us this time.
Let’s all keep flying.
Click to visit the official site...to learn more, and to join the Browncoats!
Click to here to watch the trailer! It's shiny!
DISTURBING INTERNET IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Yes, Browncoats, that is your captain, Nathan Fillion, at a gaming table, with dice, roleplaying. Never let it be said that Nathan will not do anything for his fans. Click for a larger version.
BACK NEXT TIME...
...but a little tardy, since on October 1st I'll be a little busy in San Diego for Serenity weekend! But keep checking in...should be up within a day or two after that. See you then...and go see Serenity!
Michael O'Connell - Writer and Websovereign
Rant Shack Archive
The
Nice Guy
“Pilot”
Now on Sale!
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New strip added in the Comics! section: "Kneeeel Before Zod"
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New update in The Rant Shack...with the news on the A-1 Comics Van Fundraiser...and the shocking Tim Watts finger news...
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Update to the Photos page with A-1 Comics shots! Sorry, no shots of Tim's finger...
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Always find out the latest NG News in the What's Cookin' Section
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Look for new material on the 1st and 15th of every month!
And check out the Serenity trailer at Apple.com (click below):
