Tuesday, January 13, 2004

"You Can't Take the Sky From Me."

For the past week or so, I've been watching Joss Whedon's "Firefly" on DVD. This show promised a lot for me to enjoy, and delivered a home run each week. Misunderstood and poorly scheduled by FOX TV, it was a show whose characters I knew like longtime friends or those rare ones I've instantly bonded with. Every choice the actors and creative staff made seemed well motivated, authentic.

The character I related to best was Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion. A resistance fighter against an all-assimilating Alliance, Reynolds' outward cause was lost from the first episode. Though his side lost the war, and he was hence thrust into all manner of predicament just to get by, he had the will to keep on, to live with as much dignity as he could scrabble together. In that way, I like to think he represents the best of the human spirit and potential.

In writing my first two stories with pilot-for-hire C.J. Stone, I tried to bring out a similar love for freedom and the corresponding desire to see others live as free as they wanted to be--even if that meant leaving him.

"Firefly's" cameraderie, spoken to by DVD material, reminds me of the three semesters I worked on Hofstra's Literary Magazine, Font. Simply put, we were eight friends who built something from the ground up and were lucky enough to realize how special the experience was as we lived it.

To everyone on "Firefly," and to my friends on Font, a knowing salute.

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