Prisoners of Gravity: Myths and Archetypes (Part 3 of 3)

From the episode guide: Commander Rick looks at the importance of myths and archetypes in comic books and speculative fiction with Walt Simonson, Chris Claremont, Neil Gaiman, Matt Wagner, and Arkham Asylum co-creators Dave McKean and Grant Morrison from the world of comics, and Canadian writers Robert Sawyer, Charles De Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, horror expert Robert Hadji and horror writer/director Clive Barker. With clips from The Doors, The Adventures of Superman, and Frankenstein.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Prisoners
• of
• Gravity
• TVOntario

[Elric33239]

There you go. I guess these people had to "pay for it" in order to "play with Lucas/Spielberg/Writer-Directo­r-Producer-Flavor of the Month!" Funny how TV shows hosted by movie critics never had that problem. I guess companies like Buena Vista Television have deep pockets! ;)

[Teddog3000]

That and the crew would have to either fly out to interview them or manage to grab them in town. I'm under the impression that some big names only got on because they happened to be in Toronto for a weekend.

Oddly enough, they got around this problem during the first season by reusing interviews from official clip reels and old interviews with Elwy Yost (who had some serious connections). Only problem is that the first season seriously sucked...

[Elric33239]

Is Elwy Yost Canada's equivalent of Sir David Frost or that other interviewer on BBC Television who did the Geico commercial awhile back?

I can understand the draw to Toronto. Besides being a beautiful city, it also hosts a film festival and several SF/Fantasy conventions annually. Do they still get coverage on your local TV stations?

[Teddog3000]

Yost isn't even close to Frost, but his respectable in his own right. Yost was the host of Saturday Night at the Movies before he retired. He ended up interviewing a lot of people in the film industry and had an impressive interview library to pull from.

The film festival still gets a ton of coverage. Conventions, less so, but I believe that might be connected to the general shift in cons. Major cons in Toronto seem to vary in quality. The big draw for Fan Expo, for example, is SHOPPING.

[Elric33239]

That tends to be the easiest format that they can set up - The Dealers' Wing. I'm beginning to wonder if there are any old-school SF/Fantasy conventions left anywhere in the civilized world where we can meet the authors who created the dreams that made us avid readers instead of just couch potatoes wondering "will they ever get off of that island!"

[Teddog3000]

There's a few local cons that I know about which include authors, but these are mostly smaller cons with an older audience. It's hard to find people to go with. But yes, I'm sadly noticing what you have - most cons cater to fans out of the TV end and ONLY that, which is a very narrowminded view. This doesn't even get into material based on books, where you have one side of fandom attacking the other.

Let alone popular "fan/geek" books that are garbage. Twilight, for example. Barf.

[necrobestialerotic]

I know it's silly to point put such minutiae, but this show is so good that it's almost painful to hear Beowulf quoted as Celtic mythology (when it is, in fact, Anglo-Saxon).

[MrStephenRGilman]

It's so weird that he went through the entire episode without mentioning Star Wars.  Helloooo...

[Elric33239]

I tend to keep my distance from teenage vampire/werewolf/pick-your-fav­orite-adolescent-angst-metapho­r stories when I'm in a bookstore, going to the movies or channel-surfing! I understand that current marketing trends focus on the 15-35 year demographic in order to survive, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or throw money at it! After "Forever Knight," another wonderful Canadian export I believe, I've given up on vampire derivatives of all sorts!

[Teddog3000]

Come to think about it, I don't really recall anything Lucas-related mentioned much in the show... EVER! I always though this was odd when it came around to the Games episode and they weren't mentioned in the context of adventure games. Then again, I was a LucasArts fanbrat when I was younger.

There were few people who refused to show up on the show, but the only one I remember mentioned by name was Orson Scott Card.