Greg responds...

I doubt he'd do that. Bravery isn't his strong suit.

Greg responds...

Dr. Anton Sevarius.

And Lg00b1, I'm glad you loved the show. But you couldn't have checked the archives too hard before you posted this question. (I mean this is a question that could easily have been answered by 99% of the fandom in any comment or chat room.)

Now, I don't mind answering it. It doesn't take very long. But assuming your still around to read this, you waited three months to get an answer you could have gotten in three minutes. And if you've already got it. Then you did waste everyone's time.

I really don't mean to or want to pick on you personally. You just have the bad luck to be a perfect example...

People, please, if you want me to answer questions, it would really speed everything up if you at least checked the archive of the topic your question is about first.

Thanks.

End of tirade.

Greg responds...

No. Not Maggie anyway. It has nothing to do with Gargoyles being for kids, by the way. (Compare what we did in "Deadly Force" for example.)

If I wanted to do a drug or alcohol story, I'd do one. I'd try to be very responsible about it. But in those days, I could do so-called controversial material. But I don't do it for the sake of doing it, I have to have a great story in mind.

Maggie wasn't about that. I don't know what might have happened to her down the road if she had stayed on the streets without Sevarius' not-so-benevolent intervention... but she probably would have eventually admitted defeat and called her parents to wire her busfare back to Ohio.

Her problem wasn't drugs or booze. It was naivete. In my mind, as I think I've mentioned before, she was a would-be actress who came to NYC with her life savings. Maybe a couple grand, which she went through ridiculously fast, thinking that any minute she'd be discovered and become a Broadway star!

At least, that's how I figured her.

Greg responds...

1. I'm not saying there was no ad libbing going on, but the evening went pretty much as Xanatos had planned.

2. He's a ham. He was having a good time. Weren't you?

3. He had something, obviously. Does it matter what?

4. I think Maggie came to New York to be a "STAR". She was tremendously naive. She probably had, like a thousand bucks, and figured that would last her the two or three months it would take before she was "discovered". Of course, a grand won't last you one month in Manhattan. Not if you don't know anyone that you can trust and not if you have no where to stay. I think she was rather quickly in desperate circumstances and living on the streets. She might very well have been sick, but no she hadn't been using drugs.

5. O.K. Per our new rules, since this is a new topic, you'll need to resubmit this question as a seperate post. Sorry.

Greg responds...

Once again, I'll attempt to recreate an answer I already typed up once.

First caveat: Keep in mind that every series, every studio, has
slightly different definitions for most of these terms. I'm describing
how we defined things, how we worked on Gargoyles.

1. Story Editors edit stories.

All right, I guess I can do better than that. Once a month, I met with
our story editors (Michael Reaves, Brynne Chandler Reaves, Gary Sperling
and Cary Bates) and we talked about stories. I'd usually start by
tossing out "springboards", i.e. notions for episodes that I had. The
Story Editors would each pick the ones that interested them and that fit
in with their delivery deadlines. We'd talk about the stories in the
conference room, and then the story editors would go off to work with
their stable of writers. (Some stables were bigger than others. Cary,
for example, personally wrote all the episodes that he story edited.
That decision is partially based on speed and financial issues. Cary
was a free-lance story editor who was very fast. He could make more
money by writing and editing his episodes. Gary Sperling, on the other
hand, was on staff. He made the same amount of money whether he wrote
the episodes or not. So he wrote the ones he had a personal affinity
for, and passed the others off to his free-lance writers.)

The editors would coach their writers through premise, outline and
script -- sometimes multiple drafts of each. (I would in turn coach the
editors.) Then the editors would take their pass on the work --
literally editing the stuff for content, quality, page count, spelling,
everything. Finally, they'd turn the documents over to me, and I'd do
my "Producer/Creator" pass. My job was to make sure that the show was
consistent. That four story editors and multiple writers all wrote with
one voice.

1b. Frank Paur and I were the original Producers on Gargoyles. I was
in charge of writing; Frank, of art. Both of us kibbitzed on the
other's guys territory. We were a real team. We both worked together
on voice and post-production. Basically, it was our job to follow
through on every single aspect of the show.

Later, Dennis Woodyard and Bob Kline were brought in to direct episodes,
and at some point they were "promoted" to Producer level. They were in
effect, "Line Producers", in charge of all the nuts and bolts of
production, making sure the individual episodes they directed were
completed. That freed Frank up to focus more on the big picture. When
Dennis and Bob got their "promotion", Frank and I were bumped up to
"Supervising Producers" to indicate that we still outranked the other
two, basically.

*Note: The reason "promotion" is in quotes is because the only thing
that changed for any of us was the credit we got at the end of the
show. It's not like we got a raise or anything. Nothing really
changed.

2. Tim was great fun. Professional, but he had a good time, and really
did a great job cutting loose on the bizarre (and hammy) Dr. S.
2b. Can't think of any off the top of my head. Sorry.

Now, let's pray this posts this time.

7-21-99

Greg responds...

Glitcheriffic, I answered these yesterday, but with the server problems the answers were lost. So here I go again.

1. Yes.

2. Depends what you mean.

3. You answered your own question, to the extent you asked one.

4. Yes. (Don't you love either/or questions?)

5. Yes.

6a. Don't know.
6b. Haven't decided.
6c. Ditto.
6d. Late forties.
6e. I don't think his work is that well known.

7-20-99