As we near the 30th anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters, John puts together a Roundtable discussion on the phenomenon. They discuss the movies, the animated series, the comics, and the proposed third movie. Joining John is unabashed Ghostbusters fan Jay Smith and The Real Ghostbusters writer, Marc Scott Zicree.
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Marc Scott Zicree’s landmark book THE TWILIGHT ZONE COMPANION has been credited with creating the modern genre of books on TV series and inspiring a generation of series creators and filmmakers. The COMPANION was an instant bestseller (over a half million copies to date) and named in 2006 by the New York Times one of “ten science fiction books for the ages,” the only non-fiction book on the list.
Zicree is an alumnus of the Clarion Writers Workshop, the most esteemed science fiction writing workshop in the country. Graduating UCLA, he went on to a successful career as a writer-producer in film and TV, serving on staff on such shows as SLIDERS, THE LAZARUS MAN, FRIDAY THE 13th – THE SERIES and BEYOND REALITY. He has sold over 100 teleplays, screenplays and pilots to every major studio and network, including landmark stories for such shows as STAR TREK– THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE, BABYLON 5, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, FOREVER KNIGHT, SLIDERS, LIBERTY’S KIDS, SUPERFRIENDS, HE-MAN, REAL GHOSTBUSTERS and SMURFS. He’s written about his odd family in features and pilots for CBS, NBC and Showtime.
Zicree is regarded as one of the country’s top media experts and has been interviewed by hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio shows, including THE TODAY SHOW, AMERICAN MASTERS, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY, WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES and L.A. TIMES. Beyond his three-year stint as a commentator on NPR’s MORNING EDITION he is a regular guest on COAST TO COAST, one of the country’s top rated night-time radio shows.
In addition, Zicree is a lauded novelist with the bestselling MAGIC TIME trilogy, published by HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio.
Zicree has lectured at many colleges, professional conferences and museums in America, Europe and Asia, including USC, UCLA, Stanford and Ithaca, where he was a keynote speaker.
Over the last decade with his wife Elaine, he has taught classes for thousands of writers, directors, actors and producers, guiding them to successful careers in film, TV and books. Their classes have been glowingly reported on by such magazines as WRITTEN BY, SCRIPT and CREATIVE SCREENWRITING, and the Writers Store named their DVD on How To Sell a TV Series one of “ten essentials for a screenwriting career.” Beyond this, Zicree is founder and for the last nineteen years has run The Table, which has provided resources and a supportive community to thousands of Industry professionals both in Hollywood and around the world. (The documentary on the Table just won the Best Documentary Award at the SoCal Film Festival.)
One of Zicree’s recent credits is STAR TREK “World Enough and Time” starring George Takei, which he co-wrote, directed and executive produced. The episode won the TV GUIDE Award – beating NBC Universal’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA – and was nominated for science fiction’s top two prizes, the 2008 Hugo and Nebula Awards. Zicree has also been nominated for the American Book Award, Humanitas Prize and Diane Thomas Award, and has won the prestigious Hamptons Prize and 2011 Rondo and Saturn Awards.
Most recently Zicree has completed LOVE, GLORIA, a memoir about his mother, collaborated with director Guillermo del Toro on GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES for Palace Press, worked on LOST MARS, a TV miniseries project with science fiction legend Ray Bradbury, teamed with producer Gabe Sachs (FREAKS AND GEEKS, JUST SHOOT ME, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID) on the TV series version of MAGIC TIME, and written and will be directing the upcoming science fiction feature FUGITIVE SPACE, produced by Chris Wyatt (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE). He is currently working on THE SECRET SCIENCE FICTION TV PROJECT with Oscar and Emmy winner Doug Drexler and producer Neil Johnson.
Jay Smith is a six foot tall ape-descendant and a man Harlan Ellison once called "a great scam-man liar or a born writer." Because of this, you must decide for yourself what, if any, of the following information is true.
Jay is the author of the stoner/gamer novel RISE OF THE MONKEY LORD called "Masterful", "Amazing", "A Natural Twenty", "The Stuff of Every Geek's Dreams" and "Incredible Fun" by several readers who were in no way coerced or related to the author. He is also responsible for the series of "aggressive vignettes" called BLUE COLLAR GODS. Jay also possesses his own weight in rejection slips.
In his spare time, Jay collects action figures, reads to his children (sometimes against their will) and writes audio drama scripts, including the un-produced space-western "Blackjack Masterson: Space Marshal" and the zombie apocalypse radio soap opera "HG World". His experimental soundscape program “The Delano Rose” remains popular with the hard-to-please and highly-specified “joker and toker” demographic, according to some guy who smelled like he might be on The Pot.
Jay's dream is to write the novelization of the upcoming Ghostbusters 3 motion picture. Or cure cancer. Yeah, curing cancer would be awesome. Jay’s website of projects, daydreams and products for sale is: www.3015north.com. Jay’s web-log is the memorable and convenient livejournal account “dr_p_venkman”.
