Beauty and The Beast: The Newsletter/Issues 009-010
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Beauty and The Beast: The Newsletter |
| Publisher: | Beauty and the Beast Fan Club (US) |
| Editor(s): | Deb Hense |
| Type: | |
| Date(s): | March 1988-June 1990 |
| Frequency: | four times a year |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Beauty and the Beast (TV) |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Beauty and The Beast: The Newsletter is a Beauty and the Beast fanclub newsletter and letterzine published out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
It was published four times a year: March, June, September, and December.
The first issue was published in March 1988 and ended in June 1990. The newsletter spanned from the end of the first season to two months before the show was cancelled. As a result, the letters, fan discussion, and translation of information doled out to fans by TPTB reflected a cycle of excitement and optimism, fear and anxiety about characterizations and show cancellation, fervent mobilization to keep what they loved, and finally, for many fans, the crushing defeat and sense of betrayal that fractured the fandom.
This zine series was informally continued in Passages, which began the month "Beauty and the Beast: The Newsletter" ceased.
v.3 n.9 (March 1990)
Beauty and The Beast: The Newsletter v.3 n.9 was published in March 1990 and contains 34 pages.
Editorial and Layout Staff: Patricia Adams, Rita Adams, Eileen Hartwig, Deb Hense, and Linda Palm.
This issue contains the controversial Lifeline Letter.
From the editor, some changes in the newsletter:
My writer for the Tunnel Visions column has unexpectedly quit. We are currently searching for someone to take it over so we can get it into the June issue.
We are looking for more persons who want to be listed in the penpals column. We would like to print an entire page or better yet two.
We are changing our policy on publishing fanzine ads. We want to encourage fandom, to keep it alive, and the best way is through your collective efforts and work. Unfortunately we can't afford to publish the flyers for free. So we will be charging them the same rate we are charging everyone else who advertises in this newsletter. Please read the inside front cover for rates.
Official club announcement. Our charter states simply that we are a dub for the series Beauty and the Beast. Nowhere does it state for the first two seasons only, for the third season only, or only as long as Catherine is alive. IT STATES WE ARE A CLUB FOR THE SERIES! We, here on the staff take this to mean we are a club for however many seasons there are, for whatever changes may occur.
We are adding an amendment to the charter that states A FAN IS ANYONE WHO FOUND SOMETHING TO LIKE SOMEWHERE DURING HOWEVER MANY SEASONS THE SHOW BEAUTY AND THE BEAST SHOULD RUN. What does this mean? It means that if you found something, anything at all to like about Beauty and the Beast, in whatever form, you are considered to be a fan.
- Whispering Gallery (3)
- Chamber Musings: Interview with Robert John Guttke (photographer, sculptor, writer of the episode "When the Blue Bird Sings") (5)
- Photos (14)
- Robert Guttke and his statue
- The writers on staff (including G.R.R. Martin) and Kevin dressed as Vincent
- Jo Anderson "Diana" (publicity still)
- Stephen McHattie "Gabriel" (publicity still)
- Tunnel Con Fan Quality Awards Voting Ballots (18)
- Membership Survey Results (21)
- The Lifeline Letter (23)
- Chamber Musings: Interview with Franc Luz (portrayed Kristopher Gentian) (25)
- Invictus, poem by W.E. Henley (30)
- Pascal's Pipeline (31)
- Artwork (32)
- Adverts (33)
v.3 n.9: Excerpts from the Interviews
From the interview with Robert John Guttke:
From the first draft till the draft you finally submitted, how long of time was that?
I started it in February and finished it the end of September. Shortly before Thanksgiving, George called and said he liked it I always felt confident it was a good story. But it wasn't important if they took it or not I never counted on it in any way whatsoever. When I came home from foundry class one night there were two messages, two messages from this Hollywood person on my answering machine!
George R.R. Martin's voice is so much like my friend Greg's voice that I thought it was Greg pulling the wool over my eyes. I thought, "Oh, Greg-right" Then I called the Hollywood number. George answered, "I have some good news for you." They were going to buy it. My script! He did tell me that this was close to a miracle. I was very entertained by that notion. He also said, "We very much like this creation of this eccentric artist." He had no idea at that time that what 1 had written was "me." I just said "Thank you."
He didn't view it as a ghost story?
Somewhere, ( I lost the letter) but I have this letter from George in response to a letter I had written telling him what the story was about, "No ghosts need apply." is what he wrote back. I wrote, "George, there are ghosts, and there are ghosts!" He told me there would be some changes made and they were going to make it more ambiguous. He warned me that changes are just the way that things are done in Hollywood. "Then he said, "This is how much we will pay you for the script". I said, "Oh?" And he asked, "Were you expecting more?" I said, "Oh, no, no." I had no idea! I didn't do it for money. I know that's odd to say, but I did it because I wanted to do it. I do a lot of things that way. I'm never been terribly motivated by money. It's nice when it comes along but being creative is more important.
Did you see them filming your script?
No, no. I didn't go out to see them film it.
Did you want to?
At one time I had written to George and asked about the possibilities. He said there were possibilities. But unlike some of the fans of the show, I don't really want to see behind the scenes. If I had gone out and seen it filmed would have been disappointed. Because all the magic that we talk about would have been gone, all that illusion that they create. I would have seen the reality that they would wrap up later. The last thing I want to see is Vincent with a cigar in his mouth, or Catherine drinking Coca Cola, or Kristopher coughing on someone and blowing his nose. 1 didn't want that. I wanted to see the end product. Maybe if they had sent me a free ticket to come out. But that didn't come. I don't really feel disappointed that I wasn't there for it. It's more fun in a way to hear how it happened in an after the fact kind of way. I'd rather see the end product and be satisfied with that.
Were you satisfied with the end product?
Yes, I was. When I saw the script the first time, I couldn't quite see it When I looked at the final version of the script I went "hmm." And then it wasn't until I saw the filmed version that I relaxed. I was worried about the rewrites. Naturally, you would be. You give your baby to somebody and you hope it doesn't get run over by a truck. Then George's episode "Brothers" aired. It was wonderful. I thought "George Martin is working on the rewrite of my script Good!" I had no fears whatsoever that something would go wrong Nothing went wrong! From what I heard there were great possibilities for things to have gone wrong on that show. Yet they didn't. Cast and crew enjoyed working on it People were talking about it before they did it They heard about the script. It was coming down through the rumor mill. Linda Hamilton enjoyed working on it so much. She told Franc during the cafe scenes when they weren't doing anything, just sitting there humming with one another, that she really enjoyed working on this episode because usually all she gets to do is cry. When you look at "Bluebird" you realize that Linda has a range to her that you've never seen before.
Not that I've ever felt that she was a bad actress. I think she's done wonderftdly with this show.
You're one of the few screenwriters who's satisfied then with what's been done with their script. George guided me through this. He let me know there would be some changes. And there were changes. But they could have gone in this direction instead of in the right direction.
It's like all of the changes were for the better, they embroidered the story a little bit more. Kristopher Gentian's name on the bookplate in the book. That was neat I didn't think of that George did. The chain on the warehouse falling down itself. That's neat stuff! I think credit should go to George for Vincent's reaching out and touching the painting and finding out that is was dry. That's wonderful.
Originally that was supposed to a sculpture at the end. And Vincent and Catherine would hold one another and have the voice over. But that's an example of what's more important- -your ego or the story. And the story was very important to me. That's why I'm very cautious when people want to give me too much credit It's not just me. It's George R.R. Martin's too. I like to think that maybe my story inspired George on to something else, something different. Maybe the other script will do that too. It doesn't have to be purely what my vision was. You can't expect that out there. It just changes too much. What would be terrible would be to put it in the hands of somebody who didn't have any feeling for it or understanding of it and they would just chop it up. Because that happens all the time. I' like to maintain the idea that there's a little bit of George that's also a part of Kristopher Gentian. That he understood the character.
[...]
So you were really happy with the way the episode turned out?
Very happy. The only disappointment was when the sequences with Vincent and Kristopher were deleted. The script was turned more in the direction of Catherine's story rather than a story about Catherine and Vincent in the original version. There were some magical moments where Kristopher and Vincent talked about how the two of them share in exquisite pain. That they both suffer from not being part of society, true society. That society has a way of not leaving much room for magic in our lives and Vincent was part of the true magic. Yet, at the same time, society has a way of isolating its magicians. That was part of the dialogue that just didn't make it My only disappointment. There was another sequence. A Narcissa sequence. It was a another sequence that George created. He wrote the thing with Narcissa. Originally, I had planned for Elizabeth, the painter of the tunnels, to be a character in it. But they said their couldn't get her back.
Also, those tunnels are long gone. The sets were gone. I had no idea. The second script I wrote is about Vincent and Catherine discovering a beautiful young woman who has been trapped on the other side of a mirror since the turn of the century. It has these gorgeous flashbacks to 1885. George told me, "We have no cobblestones in California." I had called for tons of mirrors to be in some of the scenes and the camera crew hates mirrors. So I had to rewrite that script based on the information that George gave me. Stuff that I was totally ignorant of. I don't know what the rules are for writing for television. I probably wrote a small motion picture for a few million dollars with this thing. But when he told me specifically what had to be done, I pared it down, changed things around and
made more sense out of it. This has been a big learning experience for me.
v.3 n.9: Excerpts from Fan Letters
The single fan letter is an open letter by Diane Davis, Pamela Garrett Carole Olson, Karen Silliman, and Kathy Trapani. See The Lifeline Letter.
v.3 n.9: Sample Interior
from v.3 n.9, Guttke and his statue
from v.3 n.9, the writers on staff (including G.R.R. Martin) and Kevin dressed as Vincent
from v.3 n.9, survey results
from v.3 n.9, survey results
from v.3 n.9, not credited
from v.3 n.9
v.3 n.10 (June 1990)
Beauty and The Beast: The Newsletter v.3 n.10 was published in June 1990 and contains 30 pages.
Editorial and Layout Staff: Patricia Adams, Rita Adams, Eileen Hartwig, Deb Hense, and Linda Palm.
This issue mainly consists of publicity stills, official production announcements, and an interview. It has no fanart or letters of comment.
While there is no indication that this was the last issue published, there are no more. This is likely to fandom turmoil; the editors were plain just worn out. Fandom discourse continued in the letterzine, Tunneltalk.
From the editor:
Glad Tidings: Sister Dorothy Sconzo of Christ the King Convent reports that over $1000 has been received from B&tB fans for the Lights of Winterfest announced in our December 1989 issue (Vol. 2 - Issue 8). Let us all continue to help in some way to make this world we live in more like the caring and giving world of the tunnel community. You can either volunteer time at the local shelter, or give money, or tutor someone in reading skills. There are as many different ways to give of yourself as there are people in this world. Find the one that best makes use of your unique talents and time.
Video tapes: We do not make copies. We do not accept advertising for video copies. Nor do we keep a list of persons who are interested in trading or buying or selling copies. If you are interested in obtaining video copies, please write to the penpals that are listed in this issue. Many of them have the episodes on tape, make a new friend while filling out your video library.
- Whispering Gallery (3)
- Chamber Musings: Interview with Shelly Moore and Linda Campan (script writers) (5)
- Heard It Through the Pipeline, penpal listings (17)
- Family Channel News (21)
- Republic Pictures News Release (22)
- Adverts (25)
- Photo of Linda Hamilton (26)
- More Adverts (27)
- Address to Write (30)
- Back Issues Available (30)
v.3 n.10: Excerpts from the Interview
From the interview with Shelly Moore and Linda Campan:
Who is your favorite character to write for on the series? Linda; It used to be Catherine. I mean, you would look at our outlines, and every single scene had Catherine in it, and we'd say, "My god, we're going to kill Linda this week. Where can we lose her?"
Shelly: "We're going to kill Linda this week" meaning we're going to overwork her. Killing Catherine was not our idea. Except in "The Watcher."
Linda: Brought her back, though.
Shelly: We liked what I guess you could call Catherine stories because we approached this show from a viewer stand-point. First and foremost, we were — are — fans of the show. There's a fairytale going on here, and we want to be in it. We want to be swept up in it. If you're looking at a story that's got a prince, a king, and a princess, and then a lot of evil-doers coming in and out — if you're a woman, I think, the character you're going to identify most with is the princess. And the more of her, the better.
So you think it's because you're women that you feel more affinity for the women characters?
Linda/Shelly: Yes.
Shelly: But it's a fine line. Too much of Catherine and the series goes off-balance. That's why I think it's important to have a mixture of people on a show's staff — George likes the tunnel community, so he's always pulling for those kinds of shows, Linda and I liked Catherine, so we were always pulling for those, and Ron is, I guess, Vincent's guardian angel...
Linda: Now, I think this may be someplace where many of the fans disagree with Shelly and me, but we would prefer to see more of Catherine — overall in the series — and less of Vincent. Like we did the first season.
Shelly: In the first season, he seemed to be present less, so when we did see him, it was very special. A treat.
Linda: In the second season, he was there so much, the specialness was gone. The anticipation was gone.
Shelly: The mystery. And for us, some of the magic. Linda and I still feel that we never did really get to know Catherine Chandler. And we used to have knock-down meetings pushing for us to get to know her better.
Linda: Compare what we know about Vincent — his world, his family, his friends — with what we know about Catherine — her world, her family, her friends
Shelly: Try to name five close friends of Catherine.
inda: And it's just out of balance.
Shelly: But this was our first staff job, and what we wanted wasn't always what our bosses wanted, and that's the way business works. Our bosses weren't there to learn from us, we were there to learn from them. It's just a hard lesson for us. We're still working on it.
Linda: But getting back to the female character question, we're now doing the same thing with Diana. We're working on an outline right now, and it's the same thing — Diana is in every scene.
George Martin once told me that he loved the point in writing scripts when he got to go home and write as he damn well pleased and didn't have to compromise anything.
Shelly: But that moment doesn't last long. It ends when you deliver the script. Then it's back to script-by-committee.
Linda: There's a lot of compromising in television writing. There are a lot of voices who have a lot to say in what you write. It's hard. Shelly and I, for example, would have preferred Vincent and Catherine to have had more differences of opinion. We wanted their relationship to be less smooth sailing.
Shelly: Not because someone's trying to kill one of them, but because they're dealing with issues from within.
Linda: We wanted Catherine to question that relationship. We wanted to see more shows like "A Happy Life." Not shows that duplicated "Happy Life" — but shows where what was at stake was not Vincent or Catherine's life but the future of the relationship.
Shelly; Even if the threat was only emotional.
Linda: Yeah, not a threat to life. Actually, "The Watcher" came out of this struggle for compromise. Shelly and I kept submitting ideas and outlines that were about this notion: let's threaten the relationship.
Shelly: We must have sounded like a broken record because every idea we suggested was about this same thing. And the powers that be kept rejecting all of them. They were probably thinking "Enough. Give it up. Can't you see we don't want to do this?" Or else they just thought we only had one idea in our head. The truth was we had other ideas, but compared to a story exploring the relationship, all of our other ideas seemed less exciting.
Linda; So after about five misfires, we came up with "The Watcher" which was at least a threat to the physical relationship.
Would Vincent have gone into Catherine's apartment in "The Watcher" had they not been interrupted.
Shelly: He did. In one draft.
Linda: At the end, though. In one draft, our last scene had Catherine in his arms in front of a blazing fire in the fireplace.
Shelly: We could probably spend half a day just talking about the different takes (ed. written, not filmed) we had on the last scene of "The Watcher."
Linda: This reminds me of something else that was ultimately lost in "The Watcher." When Catherine was inside in the first scene lighting candles, I remember we wrote "A magical breeze whispers through the room." We wanted to show this by having the candles flicker simultaneous with a chime-like sound. Catherine would know — and turn — and Vincent would be there — in the threshold, outlined by the New York City sky. It was that aura of "The Ghost And Mrs. Muir." We loved that moment, and I'm not I think maybe no one else even noticed it — or if they did, they didn't think about it.
Shelly: Those are the kind of moments I love on this show. Like in the voodoo story, when Vincent throws, I think, dust into the air off the balcony, except it unexpectedly glitters. That one small detail gave the whole show a magical feeling for me.
Linda: Yeah, those are the things that make it special.
So do you have any control over those things? Where in the production does it get lost — those little nuances?
Linda: They can get lost anywhere along the line.
Shelly: You have to have a producer walking that script — say "The Watcher" — through production and — first of all, saying to himself "This moment is special — let's get this in," then really staying on top of everything all the way down the line. That's a full-time job, and on BEAUTY our producers were also busy writing their own shows. A lot of things may get lost just because there are only so many things a human being can do and check on in one day.
Linda; At our level, the best we can do is to write it in the script. We'll mention it to someone if we think it's really special and it might be glossed over. But once a scene's shot, they're not going to go back and reshoot just because the staff writers didn't get their breeze in there. So how much does your job differ then from a producer's job since you're just a step below them this (third) season?
Shelly: For me, the biggest difference is in control. Even as executive story editors, we don't have the power to make decisions.
Linda: But we promised ourselves we'd be more vocal this year. We'd fight more. And we are. Shelly: Of course, I'm sure all the guys really wish we wouldn't've made that promise to ourselves.
Linda: Not that we're winning any of these fights...
Can you name some other things you lost or would have done differently? Things you can tell us about?
Shelly: Well, let's take one.
Linda: Okay. Let's take Catherine Chandler. We think a lot of the time the show is very loyal to Vincent and not very loyal to Catherine as far as paying attention to "Let's look at Catherine and make sure we're being true to her character. Would a woman do this? Would a perfect woman do this?" Yes. But I want to watch someone like me, and I'm not a perfect woman. I mean, I do get jealous, I do get mad well, here's an example. "God Bless The Child." One of my pet peeves is when Catherine goes and finds Lena and brings her back to the tunnel world -- to Vincent- — now, this is a woman who has gone to Vincent in his bed twice — and Vincent is there waiting with Lena's baby, waiting to take Lena back to his world, and Catherine just stands there, like "Oh, I've done a good thing." Shelly and I watched the dailies on that show — we weren't on staff when the script was going through — and we thought, "I don't know. This is a little screwy." You know, Catherine seems to just hand Lena back over to Vincent knowing Lena is in love with him, and we don't see Catherine having any hesitation.
Shelly: She oozes goodness. A perfect woman would, but a real woman would probably have some doubts, some jealousy. She might ultimately do the same thing, but not without an inner struggle. Linda: But Catherine didn't. So we're watching dailies, and the director calls "Cut," and Linda Hamilton turns to the camera and says kinda kiddingly, "What about me? What about my feelings?". And all the guys said, "What's she doing?" — they just kinda sloughed it off. But Shelly and I thought, "No, no, no, she thought the same thing we thought. We've missed Catherine's side of the story here."
Shelly: Not to pick on "God Bless The Child" — that was just the first episode we were present during — but a second similar beat is when Vincent is on Catherine's balcony telling her about Lena coming to his bed, basically wanting to share that bed with him. But we don't see any of that. We join the scene in progress. We hear that Lena is missing and Catherine is going to go out and find her. We wanted to see Catherine's reaction to hearing that Lena had come to Vincent's bed — something Catherine had never done. I wanted to see Catherine struggle through her feelings and thoughts — "Do you understand that I love you, or do you think that maybe this girl is able to see something that I'm not able to get past?" We kept saying you guys are missing a big part of the scene — the moment I maybe wanted to see most happened before the cameras started rolling. But the basic feeling we got back was who cares about that stuff — the meat of the scene is Catherine is going out into the cold night to find Lena.
Is that what contributed to Linda Hamilton's complaints that she always qets the weepy scenes? She never gets the strong scenes?
Linda: I never heard those complaints.