Westeros in Belfast

October 5, 2024 at 11:56 am

The last time I visited Northern Ireland was in 2019. Worldcon was in Dublin that year, and a week later there was Titancon up in Belfast, a small regional that a number of the members of the Brotherhood Without Banners helped put on. There was no way we were going to miss that. So we hopped in a car and headed north, from Dublin to Belfast.

We enjoyed ourselves at Titancon, but Belfast had other attractions as well… one of them being the Paint Hall, where the big ships were painted in the heydey of the old Harland & Wolff shipyards, where the Titanic was built (along with hundreds of ships that did not sink, as our Irish friends like to point out). The shipyards were long closed, but the Paint Hall was such a huge space that HBO was able to convert it into one of the largest sound stages in Europe (actually, four stages, if I recall correctly). Most of the interiors of GAME OF THRONES were shot there. That was where our throne room was, and the Iron Throne. Those sets had been struck when GOT wrapped, of course, but new sets had gone up in their places, interiors for Casterly Rock and Winterfell designed for BLOODMOON, the Jane Goldman pilot that had just wrapped. Interiors for Winterfell and Casterly Rock, as they might have looked thousands of years before The War of the Five Kings , occupied much of the Paint Hall, and we were able to wander though them. That was pretty cool.. but even cooler, there was a GOT museum nearby, not far from the Titanic museum, and we visited that too. Just a few rooms, with a display of costumes and armor, some great dragon skull, an Iron Throne, and a wall of faces straight from the House of Black and White (well, kinda sorta).

That was 2019, though. There have been a lot of changes since then, and none more than the GAME OF THRONES display. It’s not small any longer, and it’s not in the Titanic Quarter. There’s a whole new GOT Studio Tour outside of Belfast in a own called Banbridge, inside an old Irish linen mill. A big, big, building, maybe larger than the Paint Hall itself, filled with room after room of props, costumes, dioramas, an Iron Throne, another wall of faces even bigger than the first one. And dragon skulls, of course. Cannot forget the dragons. There’s a restaurant as well, and a big parking lot where the tourist buses come and go, and… oh, a gift shop with all sorts of GOT merc, a lot of which even I had never seen before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Caq728rnE

We spent half the day there, wandering from room to room while oohing and aahing, and talking with the staff, some of whom seemed to know more about Westeros than I do. A warm and friendly crew, they were so welcoming to all the visitors, Starks, Lannisters, and White Walkers alike. We could easily have stayed longer, but we had other places to go and people to see. But if your own travels take you to Ireland, don’t make the same mistake; there’s a lot to see, so leave yourself time to see it all.

Here are a few more glimpses, the pix we shot ourselves.

It is one thing to watch a television series at home and admire the look of it… but the studio tour really brings home the incredible amount of care that went into making it… the blood and sweat and craft, the hours and days of dedication, labor, and love that brought Westeros to life. GAME OF THRONES filmed all over the world, in Scotland, Iceland, Malta, Morocco, Spain, and Croatia… and in Northern Ireland most of all… but I live in New Mexico, and while I did visit the shoots a number of times during the show’s run, it was not nearly enough. I am so pleased that we now have such a magnificent museum, so GOT fans from all over the world can experience a taste of what was.

It’s the next best thing to visiting Westeros.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: game of thrones, travel

GOING UP, COMING DOWN

September 30, 2024 at 9:52 pm

Kris Krisofferson has died.

I knew I would have to write those words eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. Kris has not looked good the past few times I’ve seen him on the tube. His health has not been good for some years. Still, one can hope. The world was so much richer with Kristofferson in it, and it is poorer now that he is gone. But we still have his songs, and what songs they are.

I am no musician myself; that’s a gift I never had. I cannot sing, I cannot dance, I cannot read music. But that doesn’t mean I do not love music… or rather, songs. Instrumental music, classical music, operas, those are all great, no doubt, but they are not for me. I am a word guy. I want the lyrics. I want them to be audible, not drowned out by the instruments. I want them to be beautiful, I want them to touch me, to move me, to make me think, become a part of me. Some of you may have noticed that the word “song” keeps appearing in the titles of my books and stories. A SONG FOR LYA, SONGS OF STARS AND SHADOWS, SONGS THE DEAD MEN SING, DREAMSONGS, A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH. There’s a would-be songwriter buried inside me, no doubt. Oh, I managed some to do “The Rains of Castamere” and “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” (part of it, anyway) and “The Dornishmen’s Wife” and “The Last of the Giants,” but damn, writing songs is hard, even if you’re only doing lyrics and leaving the actual music to the listeners.

I don’t know how Kris Kristofferson did it.

But he did it better than anyone else.

He has been my favorite singer/ songwriter ever since I first heard “Me and Bobby McGee,” back when I was in college.

It was the Janis Joplin version I first encountered, as with most people. Kristofferson was a songwriter then, but not yet established as a singer himself. The song was a huge huge hit, the biggest Joplin ever had. Sadly, it was a posthumous hit, since Janis had died shortly before it was released. In the days and years and decades that followed, many other people covered “Me and Bobby McGee; there was Roger Miller and Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot and Reba McEntire and many many more.

I liked almost all of them, but the one I loved best was Kristofferson’s own version, when it was finally recorded and released.

On my recent visit to England, there were several instances where strangers came up to tell me how much they loved my books, how my writing spoke to them, moved them, even changed their lives. That’s a lovely thing to hear. I’ve been on the other end of that as well. There have been songs and stories and books and authors who have had profound effects on my own life. Sometimes it seems as if the writer is speaking only to you.

“Me and Bobby McGee” was like that for me. I’d had my own Bobby McGee not long before I heard the song. No, I did not pull my harpoon out of a dirty red bandana and she did not sing the blues, and we’d never rode a diesel from Baton Rouge to New Orleans… but we were good together, and then I’d let her slip away (not near Salinas). Afterwards, alone, I knew what Kris meant by “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” and like the singer, I would gladly have traded all of my tomorrows for a single yesterday.

Kristofferson was a poet. His best lines haunted me for years. Only a few years later, I wrote a story I titled “… for a single yesterday” for an anthology called EPOCH. A post holocaust story about a singer and a lost love, natch. I wanted it to be the best story I’d ever written. It wasn’t. Some folks liked it well enough, but as a tribute to Kristofferson, I would have liked it to be stronger.

Kris was no one hit wonder. In the years that followed, I bought every one of his albums as soon as they came out. (Albums were these big vinyl things we listened to then). And there were other great songs that I fell in love with, that spoke to me almost as deeply as “Me and Bobby McGee” had. There was “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Casey’s Last Ride” and “For the Good Times,” there was “Billy Dee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “The Taker,” there was “Silver Tongued Devil” and “From the Bottle to the Bottom” and “Loving Her Was Easier,” and “Silver: the Hunger” and “Darby’s Castle” and “Here Comes That Rainbow Again” and…

This one.

Half talking, half singing, Kris talking about his early days as a singer. It seemed deeply personal when I heard it; for him, but it sp0ke to me as well. Especially during the hard years, when my career crashed and burned (as it did from time to time).

Kristofferson was an amazing man, all in all. A Rhodes Scholar, Flew a helicopter in Vietnam. Swept floor as a janitor in Nashville trying to break in. Then he became an actor, and a damn good one. CISCO PIKE. BLUME IN LOVE. PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID. (Best Billy the Kid movie ever made). ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE. A STAR IS BORN (the Streisand version). LONE STAR. He was damned good at that too.

But it will be as a singer and songwriter that he will be remembered.

For “Me and Bobby McGee” and all those other songs… especially this one. He was singing about himself here, not just the friends he mentions in the opening. And he was singing about me and my writer friends as well, my collaborators and contemporaries and rivals, all of us struggling to tell our stories and make a living and survive in SF and fantasy in those bygone days. We were all pilgrims.

(I slipped a reference to this song in one of my stories as well).

I heard Kris live in concert once, back in the 1970s, when I was living in Chicago. I was never lucky enough to meet him in person. I wish I had gone backstage after that show and tried to introduce myself, but I was way too shy and I doubt I could have gotten in. I wish I had tried, though, if just to tell him how much his music meant to me. Assuming I just didn’t freeze up and lose my tongue.

If I could speak to him now, I know what I would say.

His going up was worth the coming down.

And he went up very high. We shall not hear his like again.

Current Mood: sad sad

Tags: game of thrones, life and death, music, writing

Here Comes Hodor

September 29, 2024 at 4:56 pm

I promised you all a report on our trip.

I haven’t forgotten. We left Santa Fe on July 15, and returned home on August 15. In between, we visited Belfast in Northern Ireland (and Ashford Meadow in the Reach), Amsterdam, London, Oxford, and Glasgow, where the World Science Fiction Convention was being held.

It was a splendid trip, and one that did wonders to restore my bruised and battered spirits and relieve some of the stress that I had been under before we left. The first few months of 2024 had been… well, no fun, let us say. January, February, March… things just kept getting worse until we came to April Fool’s Day, when it finally dawned on me that I was the fool, and had been for years. But I do not want to talk about that now. (Or maybe ever. We shall see).

But never mind about that. I wanted to talk about our travels. And I did… at Bubonicon, a few weeks after we returned, when I spoke about the trip and its impact on me during a speech called “Eighty Minutes With George R.R. Martin.” It was a pretty good speech — at least I thought it was — and one I had hoped to share with you. We did record it. Unfortunately, the iPhone malfunctioned, and the recording was lost. My staff has spent weeks trying to recover it, or as much as can be recovered at least, but it appears to be a lost cause. And of course I did not have a written text. I was speaking off the cuff.

I do recall some of the things I touched on. Only the broad strokes, though, not the exact words.

I had intended to do a lengthy Trip report once we got back to the Land of Enchantment, but unfortunately I managed to pick up a case of covid at worldcon (along with two of my assistants), so I found myself in no condition to write much of anything for a week. I am better now, though. Or at least I do not have covid. Sadly, a lot of the stress that I escaped during my travels has crept back in again, but I suppose there is no avoiding that. So let me begin at the beginning, in Northern Ireland.

GAME OF THRONES filmed all over the world, you may recall. Scotland, Morocco, Iceland, Malta, Spain, and Croatia… but our main location was in Northern Ireland, in and around Belfast and the Titanic Quarter, where the Paint Hall of the old shipyards had been transformed into four huge sound stages, among the largest in the U.K. That’s where the throne room was, and the Iron Throne, and most of the other interiors of the Red Keep. I visited there a number of times during our filming. It was in Belfast, and in Scotland’s Castle Doune the week before it, that I first met most of GOT’s amazing cast: Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, Lena Headey, Ron Donachie, Alfie Allen, and all the rest… among them Kristian Nairn, our one and only Hodor.

Which made it a delight that Kristian was the first old friend we encountered when in Belfast, the first stop of our trips. He still lives there, working as a DJ, doing some acting… and writing. He has a book coming out, a memoir called BEYOND THE THRONE, about his boyhood during the Troubles, his days on GAME OF THRONES, and so much more. He told us all about it during our lunch.

I have not read the book yet, but Kristian promised to have his publisher send me a copy, and I am eager to get my hands on it. It sounds fascinating. I am a little envious, though. I said to him, “You’re telling me, I’m twelve years late on my book, and you wrote yours over the summer?!” And he had all of his dialogue for the first season of GAME OF THRONES memorized the day after we cast him.

(We will not speak of my own acting, which mainly consists of having my head bitten off by a shark in Sharknado 3).

Kristian will be touring the USA to promote BEYOND THE THRONE, and we’re hoping to persuade him to come to Santa Fe for a signing at my Jean Cocteau Cinema. If we get him, I’ll be sure to announce it here. Watch this space, and cross your fingers. We’d love to host him. Maybe we could convince him to DJ for us too. And hold the door as well.

((More to come about the trip. Much, much more.))

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: game of thrones, television, travels

Perfect Episodes

August 29, 2023 at 8:41 am

I have never claimed to be perfect… but if the good folks at VANITY FAIR want to say so, who I am to argue?

Of course, they are not actually saying I am perfect. They are talking about “Blackwater,” one of the episodes I wrote for GAME OF THRONES. (I scripted four. And yes, “Blackwater” is my own favorite of those, although I thought “The Lion and the Rose” turned out very well too, and I have a soft spot for that one).

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2 023/08/best-tv-episodes

I haven’t seen all of the other episodes on the list… but I have to say, the ones that I have watched were by and large extraordinary, so I can’t take issue with many of VANITY FAIR’s choices. “The Suitcase” from MAD MEN, the heart-wrenching “Ozymandias” episode from BREAKING BAD… THE SOPRANOS had lots of great episodes, but “The Pine Barrens” was special, and for the entire rest of the series I kept waiting for that Russian to turn up again when we least expected… for “The Wire” they picked the episode where Stringer died, and one can’t argue with that, though Omar’s death hit me maybe a tiny bit harder… but the show was so good, it came close to perfection pretty frequently… and BLACK MIRROR is an extraordinary series in so many ways, but “San Junipero” is the episode I love to watch over and over, and tell my friends to watch… if I had to pick one episode that was even more perfect than all the others on the list, though, it would have to be the final episode of SIX FEET UNDER. I liked that series well enough, though I cannot say I loved it as much as I loved ROME or DEADWOOD or FARGO or a few other shows missing from the list, but that last episode was far and away the best finale in the entire history of television, and I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly do better.

Anyway… I feel very pleased and flattered to be in such great company. No work of art is ever truly perfect, of course… but it is very gratifying to hear that maybe you achieved it, or at least came close… for some of your readers (or viewers)… once in a very great while. There is always a next time, though… and regardless of how well (or poorly) one of my tales is received, I always want to do better the next time I sit down in front of the computer.

Tags: game of thrones, hbo, television

Home Again

August 12, 2022 at 6:30 pm

Hey there. It’s me again. I am back in Santa Fe, and once more again seated at my computer(s). My thanks to my mighty minions for holding down the fort in my absence, and especially to the Sensational Sid, who shared my quarantine in Los Angeles and taped those video segments for me… and unfortunately came down with covid herself. Not fun, and sadly it meant she too had to miss the Hot D red carpet premiere and the world premiere of NIGHT OF THE COOTERS a day later at the LA Shorts Film Festival. Her symptoms were as mild as my own, though, and both of us in the end recovered fully.

Which does not change the fact that Covid Sucks, and all of you should avoid it if you can.

I tried my best to do just that. I attended San Diego Comicon, only the second time I’ve left home since the pandemic started in March 2020, but the only thing I did there was the big HOUSE OF THE DRAGON panel in Hall H. I never walked the floor, turned down invites to half a dozen parties, and cancelled all three of my planned autograph sessions, which would have involved me getting close up and personal with hundreds of readers. I wore a mask every time I went out, except at meals… and then only when I was eating. I even upgraded my masks before leaving home. I do not know what else I could have done, except cancel the entire trip. But covid got me anyway.

Oh, wait… I did visit the incredible Red Keep that HBO put up outside the convention center, though I stayed masked for most of that. I claimed a dragon’s egg, and hatched my dragon. He’s green, and growing nicely. Maybe the dragon gave me covid, but I doubt it. Targaryens never get sick, donchaknow? Hey, you guys can hatch a dragon too…

Have fun with that. Post pictures.

What else, what else? Oh, well, I do not lug a laptop around on my travels, so I returned home to a thousand emails. I am presently digging out from under. Mostly done.

Oh, and while in quarantine, Sid and I watched Neil Gaiman’s new show, THE SANDMAN. Neil had been kind enough to send up an advance copy. Guys, gals, don’t miss this. If you loved the comics, well, this is a VERY faithful adaptation, Neil saw to that. And if you never read the comic, don’t worry, not required, the TV series stands on its own. It’s a fabulous fantasy, and I rope it will run for many more seasons. There are, after all, many more issues of the comic to adapt.

I hope to wrap up the story line for one of the viewpoint characters of WINDS OF WINTER this week. Maybe even two.

Meanwhile, work continues on all the other GAME OF THRONES successor shows we’re developing for HBO and HBO Max. Animated and live action both. Development is a long and chancy process, of course, and there’s no telling how many series will be green lit in the end… I am really excited about the way some of them are coming along, though. Oh, and there’s also ROADMARKS, another show I’ve been developing for HBO, based on a novel by the late great Roger Zelazny. That’s coming along well too.

Thanks to covid, I could not attend the world premiere of NIGHT OF THE COOTERS at the LA Shorts International Film Festival, but Vincent d’Onofrio and Hopper Penn and several other cast members filled in for me ably, along with scriptwriter Joe Lansdale and the team from Trioscope. I am delighted to report that COOTERS took home the prize for Best Science Fiction Short!!! We’ve entered it in a number of other festivals and hope to have word on that soon. Meanwhile, our second Waldrop film has wrapped and is post-production.

Let’s see, what else. There was something, I’m sure, I….

Oh. Of course.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. August 21, on HBO and HBO Max.

That’s… hmmm…. nine days away as I type it.

I’ve seen all ten episodes now (albeit in rough cuts), and I love what I’ve seen. Ryan and Miguel and their amazing cast and crew have done some magnificent work. Hot D is all I hoped it would be; dark, powerful, visceral, disturbing, stunning to look at, peopled with complex and very human characters brought to life by some truly amazing actors.

(Oh, and FIRE & BLOOD is back on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list, and rocketing up every week. I wonder if there is any connection).

Anyway…. there’s lots more I could report, but that will need to wait. Stuff to do.

Glad to be home.

Current Mood: busy busy

Tags: a dance with dragons, conventions, everyday life, game of thrones, television

The Wedding Guest

October 26, 2020 at 8:26 am

Here’s another peek at the past, and the original pilot for GAME OF THRONES.

We shot the wedding of Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo in Morocco. Ian McNeice played Illyrio Mopatis, a magister of Pentos, and I played one of the wedding guests, presumably another magister.

Both of us, alas, were left on the cutting room floor when Dany was recast and the wedding was reshot. Ian McNeice was terrific as Illyrio, by the way, but a scheduling conflict made him unavailable for the reshoot.

I never did find time to do another cameo, but I suspect the show was better for it.

If you really want to see me do a cameo, I did two for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in the 80s, and more recently had my brilliant turns in SHARKNADO 3 and Z NATION. I made a swell zombie…

Current Mood: silly silly

Tags: game of thrones, hbo, television

More Death

September 12, 2020 at 2:07 pm

I am late to post about this, but I was very saddened by the news of a couple recent deaths.

The world of television and film lost a titan with the passing of Dame Diana Rigg. Such an amazing talent. It was such an honor to have her on GAME OF THRONES as the Queen of Thorns. I only had the chance to meet her once, when I visited the set the first year she was on the show. As brief as that meeting was, I count that a rare privilege. A lovely lady. As great as she was as Olenna Tyrell, for me… and for most every other member of my generation… she will always remain Emma Peel.

I was also moved by the death of Tom Seaver — Tom Terrific, the Franchise, the Hall of Fame pitcher for the Amazin’ Mets who led them to their World Series Championship in 1969. I never met Seaver at all, but of course I was a fan. I do not follow Major League Baseball as much as I did when I was younger, but as a kid in Jersey I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and had my heart ripped out when Da Bums moved to LA. So of course I became a Mets fan when they began play in 1962 as an expansion team. I suffered through all the years of losing — as lovable as they were, they were still losers — and the turnaround led by Seaver and Koosman and the rest of the Amazin’s in ’69 was nothing short of miraculous.

It is odd, when you think of it, how caught up a sports fan can get in the fortunes of their team… but the emotions are real. That World Series victory made me so very very happy, that even now half a century later I still smile when I recall it.

And in these dark days, we need every smile.

Goodbye, Tom. Goodbye, Diana. Rest in peace.

Current Mood: sad sad

Tags: game of thrones, life and death, sports

Crossovers and Cameos

March 26, 2020 at 9:57 am

I got a message from my friend Jonah Nolan last week. Jonah is one of the creators and showrunners of HBO’s WESTWORLD, along with his wife Lisa Joy, and he told me to be sure to catch Sunday’s episode, there might be something that would amuse me.

Truth be told, I would have been watching in any case. WESTWORLD is a terrific show, and I’ve been watching it since the beginning. In any case, I was indeed watching, and I was indeed amused when we came on the cameo of The Three Ds: David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Drogon. I thought it was a fun moment, and it made me smile.

Subsequently, of course, the internet has blown up over the cameo, as the internet is wont to do. Some people loved the cameo, some hated it, and everybody, it seems to me, is making way too much of it. Hey, folks, c’mon. It was just a bit of fun. A sort of Easter Egg. You all like Easter Eggs in your video games, don’t you? If you blinked, you could have missed it… kind of like the appearance of Yul Brynner’s “man in black” robot from the original WESTWORLD movie that appeared first season. I have been known to do that sort of thing myself. Sharp-eyed readers of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE long ago noticed the appearance of the Three Stooges in the first novel, and my subsequent mentions of how giants devoured Triarch Belicho and a knight wearing Dallas Cowboys heraldry. And if you missed those… as 98% of the readers did… that’s fine, they were just a tip o’ the hat. I also have houses named after the great fantasists Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, and Robert Jordan, for what it’s worth. More tips o’ my hat. (I wear a lot of hats).

I’ve done my own cameos over the years as well. You can catch a glimpse of me (young, dark-haired me) in two different episodes of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The first one you’d need to be blind to miss; the second one you’ll miss if you blink. More recently, I played a zombie version of myself in Z NATION (still signing books), and had my head bitten off by a shark in SHARKNADO 3 (though they cut all my lines, pfui). I also filmed a GAME OF THRONES cameo in the pilot, as a guest at Dany’s wedding to Khal Drogo. They gave me an enormous hat and really big balls, which might have been some sort of commentary.

But that was when Dany was being played by Tamzin Merchant. When we recast, the whole wedding had to be reshot and I wound up on the cutting room floor. A little later, I wanted to be a severed head on the walls of the Red Keep next to Ned Stark (and David & Dan, ideally), but our budget was not so robust first season, and those severed heads are damned expensive. I also campaigned to die horribly at the Red Wedding, which seemed only fair since I was responsible for it, but it was felt that my presence in that powerful, wrenching, bloody scene might have taken the viewers out of the moment. Fair enough. And not wrong.

One thing led to another and I never did appear in a cameo in GOT, but that’s cool. I’m a writer, not an actor… or even an extra. And standing around in costume for all those hours in Morocco while we filmed Dany & Drogo’s nuptials gave me a helluva backache. (Ian McNeice, our original Illyrio Mopatis, gave me some great advice afterwards: when filming a long sequence like a feast or a wedding, make sure you have a comfortable seat).

Had I been in Los Angeles at the time of the filming, I might well have been part of that WESTWORLD cameo as well. Jonah and Lisa have also stated that the whole thing was my idea.

Which is true. Kinda sorta. No, I had no idea this particular moment was coming until I caught it on HBO… but back during WESTWORLD’s season one, I did suggest to Jonah that, seeing as how the original WESTWORLD film featured a Medieval World, the TV version could easily have a Westeros World. I never wanted a full crossover, never thought that WESTWORLD’s hosts should adventure in Westeros World as they have in Samurai World and War World… but a brief scene or two could have been fun, and would have been in keeping with the Delos concept. And, hey, I even suggested that they could bring back actors from GOT, characters we had killed. The hosts die almost weekly, after all. The fans might have gotten a kick out of catching a brief glimpse of Richard Madden, Sibel Kekilli, Esme Bianco, Ron Donachie, or Mark Addy again… and I suspect the actors would have been game as well. But it was not to be.

Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy mentioned that I worked in television back in the 80s, when crossovers between shows were more common. That’s true. Philip DeGuere, the showrunner on TWILIGHT ZONE version 2, who gave me my first job in Hollywood, was also the creator of a show called SIMON & SIMON, and like to tell how his show was struggling in the ratings until they did a crossover with MAGNUM P.I., after which ratings for the Simon Boys went through the roof and he had a hit. We actually tried to do the same thing with TWILIGHT ZONE, and had several meetings with the writers and producers of MIKE HAMMER, the series that followed us on Friday nights. Now THAT would have been a crossover, Mike Hammer in the Twilight Zone, like some surreal meeting of Mickey Spillane and Rod Serling. Not only that, but Phil told me I could write the script, and I had just the story too… I wanted to buy the rights to Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” and adapt that. Alas, alack, we could never get around the insistence of the Mike Hammer guys that the whole thing end up being just a dream, so it never happened. A pity. That was a script I would have loved to write.

As for the WESTWORLD cameo… y’know, Robbie the Robot had a long career in film and television after FORBIDDEN PLANET. Why would we want to begrudge Drogon the same?

Current Mood: amused amused

Tags: game of thrones, hbo, television

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