J. Michael Straczynski (the "J" stands for Joseph) is, arguably, one of the most controversial figures in Hollywood.

During his series-long tenure as Creator/Executive Producer of the award winning television epic Babylon 5, Straczynski (nicknamed "JMS", inspired by the initials with which he closes every e-mail and newsgroup post) has built a cult-like following of fans, who have stood by his side through numerous "Renew the Show!" campaigns and the vitriolic firestorm surrounding TNT's handling (and ultimate cancellation) of the Babylon 5 spinoff, Crusade.

He has been praised for "reaching out" to his fanbase and making them part of the creative process (if you send an e-mail to JMS, chances are better-than-not you'll get a reply), and criticized for over-using the fanbase to affect the political environment impacting the show. Love him or hate him, JMS' influence on the field of science fiction and Internet publicity is unquestionable: among other notices, he was voted one of the fifty most influential people on the Internet by Time magazine; was the subject of a significant write-up in Newsweek ("The Master and Slave of Babylon 5", June 1997.); received several of science fiction's highest honors (including the Hugo and Saturn awards); and B5 received multiple Emmy nominations (winning Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series in 1994).

In FilmForce correspondent Kenneth Plume's four part interview with JMS, the charismatic writer/producer/director discusses the his start in writing, development of Babylon 5, what Crusade might have been, the nature of Hollywood development & politics, and his forthcoming segue into movies.

PLUME: What area of the country are you from?

JMS: I was born in Patterson, New Jersey, and raised pretty much all around the country. My family tended to move from place to place following economic prospects and jobs and looking for new opportunities, so we changed schools, colleges, grade schools, high schools every 6 months to a year – depending on the breaks. I grew up in Jersey, California, Illinois, Texas... That sort of thing.

PLUME: It must have been difficult...

JMS: It was difficult. As I went from place to place, I would arrive and there was no point really to making friends, because you knew – in 6 months to 1 year and sometimes less – you would be gone and they would be gone, which tended to lead me toward an isolationist style. The only thing that I discovered very early on is that, even though we might change schools and cities and towns and states, the books in the library were the same. They had the same covers. They had the same characters. I could go and visit those people in the library as if I knew them. Hence, even as a very young kid, I began spending a lot of time in the school library. By the time I was about 11 years-old, I'd already worked my way through the kids section and had moved into the adult section – which is where I really began to discover science-fiction for the first time.

PLUME: Which genre was your favorite at that time?

JMS: It was probably space science-fiction. The Lensman books by E. E. (Doc) Smith. The Lord of the Rings – being more of a fantasy thing, but I discovered that as well. A lot of Arthur Clarke, a lot of Ray Bradbury. The first Bradbury books I read were R Is for Rocket and S Is for Space. A lot of the futuristic space stuff seemed to me to be a very cool form of science-fiction, so that was my first real baptism in the genre.

PLUME: Were you writing at that time as well?

JMS: I always knew that I was going to be a writer. There was no question in my mind about that. I can't recall a time when I didn't know that, so I knew I had to prepare myself. I read voraciously. I learned about all the different kinds of pens and grades of paper. When I got to high school, I took four semesters of typing, because I knew that if I was going to be a writer, I should learn how to type. I was one of the fastest typists to come out of Chula Vista High School. It was in my senior year that I had prepared myself enough so that something kind-of rolled over in my head and said, "Now." That's when I wrote my first short story, three poems, and some other material. That day, I wrote 10 pages, and the next day I wrote 10 pages... and I've been writing 10 pages ever since – to my current age of 46.

PLUME: What aspects of the writing process appealed most to you? Was it the ability to create your own worlds? Was it as a companion? What was it that entranced you?

JMS: It was the story-telling aspect more than anything else. I loved watching stories and I loved hearing stories and I loved telling stories. It was creating new places and people and telling those stories... It's a holistic kind of a thing. I've always enjoyed the writing process. There are times when it's frustrating – when you're staring at the monitor and, for some reason, the characters are playing coy. But 98% of the time, it's terrific and a lot of fun.

PLUME: When you first began writing those 10 pages a day, was it initially merely for yourself, or were you writing with the intention that other people would see it?

JMS: Initially – in my own mind – it was to learn the process... To learn how to do it. It was something that was really my own, for the first time. The odd thing is that – almost immediately – whatever I began to write, I began to sell. I would send out little articles to kid's magazines and they would get picked up. I wrote a couple of short stories, and they appeared in the high school periodical. I began writing sketches, and when one of my teachers happened to see what I was writing and asked to look at it, and the next thing I know, they had formed a troupe of actors out of the high school class to go from class to class acting out these one-act plays. Then the high school came to me and said, "We're going to institute a new deal where a student will write an assembly-length play. Do you want to write it? Of course, if it doesn't work, we'll never do it again." No pressure. I said sure, so I wrote this full-length show. This was within 3-4 months of having started writing. Literally the next year, I was commissioned to write an actual stage play for Summer stock for a local theater. Just coming right out of the box, I began to sell – which was very much to my own astonishment. One play that I wrote I sent off to a local theater, and they called back wanted to arrange for me to meet them. My mom got the message, and I showed up, and they were looking for my dad. I said, "No, I wrote this." They wouldn't believe it. I had to quote parts of it back at them before they'd believe me. So even though I started off primarily just writing for myself to learn the process, I began selling almost immediately and have ever since. I've sold about maybe 85-90% of everything I've ever written. I have no explanation.

PLUME: So were your high school years more stable as far as moving than your elementary and junior high years?

JMS: No. I attended four different high schools: St. Benedict's High School in Matawan, New Jersey, Matawan Public School, Lennox High School in Lennox, California, and Chula Vista High School in Chula Vista, California. I went to four different colleges: Kankakee Community College in Illinois, Richland College in Dallas, Texas, Southwestern College in Chula Vista, and San Diego State University.

PLUME: Did you find yourself having to reestablish your writing presence in each of the institutions as you moved?

JMS: Yeah, but – again – it was never that much of a problem. I would go to the campus newspaper or the local papers and say, "I'm a writer and I can do this, that, and the other thing..." It was never much of a problem. I was very lucky in that respect. When I got to San Diego State University, I sort of took over the campus paper. I was writing entertainment reviews, columns, news articles, investigative features, I had three different columns of my own... Instead of The Daily Aztec, they began calling it The Daily Joe, because every day I had something in there. It was then that I began to get kind-of persnickety about it because at the time – being an idiot and not knowing any better – I refused to take any kind of a salary for what I was doing for the paper. I said, "If I do it my way as a freelancer, I'm not committed to following anybody's orders. I can do what I want and walk away." So even though I could have made a lot of money writing for the paper, I never did. I thought I would be more pure that way. I was, of course, an idiot.

PLUME: Especially at that level.

JMS: As a struggling college student, no less, where I could have used the money. Very early on, I approached writing from a very na?ve, idealistic point of view. I've gotten rid of some of it, but unfortunately a lot of it still lingers.

PLUME: What's the hardest part to divorce yourself of, in terms of that idealistic, persnickety attitude?

JMS: The hardest part is standing up for what I want to say and not compromising on certain principles. For instance, while I was in college, I began to write also for the Los Angeles Times, San Diego bureau. I became one of their key entertainment writers. One story I did about a group in San Diego called The Lambs Players, I found out that this religious theater group was getting state funding – which, of course, you're not supposed to do, and I included that in my article. The editor said, "This has to come out, because this is news and you're writing an entertainment feature." I said, "But that's integral to the entire story. This is something that has to be included in the article." He said, "Well, then it has to come from a news reporter. You can't do it." I refused to take it out, and he refused to run it with it, and that standoff basically ended my time with the LA Times. I wouldn't buckle on principle.

PLUME: It was a principle worth fighting for...

JMS: Yeah, it was. Over the years, that has been the one thing that's lingered the most with me in the sense that most of the jobs I have walked away from, I've walked away from on principle. When I worked on an animated series called The Real Ghostbusters, the first season for the network and the syndicated season that I edited at the same time – 78 episodes simultaneously – they brought in, after the first successful year, consultants who wanted to change the show to make it more politically safe. They proposed, to my mind, some really offensive things. They wanted to make Janine a mommy character, instead of the strong female character she'd been in the movie and the series; they wanted to make Winston, the only black character in the show, just a driver, which I though was profoundly racist. They wanted to meddle even though, in the beginning, it was ABC's number one rated show.

So I said, "If you do this, I'm walking. If you force these changes on me, I'm leaving, because they're ethically wrong." And they did, and I left. When I worked for Captain Power, after the first season, they said that the toy company was going to get more say over the content. I said, "That's not correct – that's not moral to have a toy company giving approval over stories. If you do it I'm leaving." They did it, I left. I've always put money secondary to standing up for what I think is right as a writer. The moment you compromise that... The moment you let it go and say, "Well, it's just the one." Then there's two, and then there's going to be three. It's something that I think my wife, at times, is driven to distraction by, and my friends can't understand it sometimes, but I think that – at the end of the day as a writer – what you leave behind on the shelf, your stories, say, "This is how I saw the world and this is what it meant to me." If you compromise that, then everything you leave behind is a lie.

PLUME: Given the way the industry is, do you believe that fighting that good fight is more detrimental or positive in the long run? How has that affected where your career has gone over the years?

JMS: It's both. On the one hand, you get a rep for being difficult. But on the other hand, the jerks of the world who hear that you're a pain in the ass on moral points tend not to come to you – which on some level is good, because it saves me from having a lot of hassles. Those who understand what I'm about and what I fight for tend to come to me for jobs. Most jobs I've had have been multiple assignments, where if I worked for a producer in years past, they come back to me and say, "Would you do this again?" They know that I'm a pain in the ass, but I write good.

PLUME: The things you're fighting for are quality and integrity issues...

JMS: Yeah. I was on Murder, She Wrote for 2 years and left to do B5, and just this past year – after Crusade ended – they've been trying for 3-4 years to get a Murder, She Wrote TV movie off the ground and nothing could get past the studio and the network. They were desperate to get something on the air, and one day they finally said, "Well, there's always Joe." I'm told there was this really long sigh, and they called me. They said, "We know you're a pain in the ass, but you're going to give us a good script." I said, "I'm happy to do it." I wrote the script – it got past the network, it got past the studio, it got produced, it got aired in May. And it did very well.

PLUME: So well that there's talk of another one?

JMS: Yeah. They were not sure they wanted to do another one or not, but this one actually did very well – in fact, they aired it opposite the Friends season finale – so I figured, for sure – phhhttt! – that's it. But it did extraordinarily well in spite of that, so there's going to be another one... I'm not involved in that one, because they want to get another writer – now that I've broken the spell, if you will, they go to easier writers to work with.

PLUME: Going back to college... Your college years would have been, what, the mid-to-late '70's?

JMS: I graduated high school in '72 and I got out of college, finally, around '78-'79. I got two bachelor's degrees – one in clinical psychology and the second one in sociology, with minors in philosophy and writing. So it took me a little longer to get those done. I went to the Master's program but didn't get very entranced with that.

PLUME: What drew you to those particular majors? Was it to enhance your writing?

JMS: I figured, at the time, that they could possibly be additional income providers – not understanding fully that one had to get a Ph.D. in psychology to make any living at it, unless you're flipping burgers... Subtitle again: I'm an idiot. I did figure it would get me a chance to learn about people and applied techniques that would be useful as a writer, although what I did with that period of time and what I would recommend to all people who are aspiring writers who are in college is this: I took full advantage of all the facilities that were available to me. I tell students to do the same thing... Take an acting class, take a theater class, write for the college paper, write for the college magazine. Often, the theater department will take small plays, or the telecommunications and film department will do little 10-15 minute productions. Use the radio station. You can go to college and just see the classrooms and the bathrooms and the restaurants and the parking lots and that's it – that can be your whole college experience. I say use the entire campus, because that's where you'll get the grist of what you need and the experience you need to be a writer later on. By the time I got out of college, I had a half-hour pilot produced, I had 9 plays produced, I had a radio drama, I had written a hundred articles or more for the college paper – so by the time I finally walked out of college, I was a honed and toned writer.

PLUME: Out of the 8 years in college, what is the strongest experience that has stuck with you?

JMS: Actually, it was 6 years in college. It was probably just the open-mindedness. Back when I was in college, it was more of a well-rounded education, I suppose, and it instilled a need for learning in me – that need to learn new things and experiment and try things that people don't necessarily try. It's propelled me to keep doing that, which is why – to this day in my work – I try to experiment with form and style and turn things upside-down on their heads and try different things.

PLUME: So, after two bachelor's degrees, where did you go after college?

JMS: I stayed in San Diego for a while, working at various newspapers and magazines – San Diego Magazine, The San Diego Reader, and a bunch of others. I did some work for "Alien Worlds" – a radio drama series at that time, based in Los Angeles. Finally, I got a contract to write my first book – a nonfiction book on scriptwriting. I figured this could be the key to getting to Los Angeles, which is where I knew I wanted to go. Synchronicity being what it is, the woman I was involved with, who later became my wife – Kathryn Drennan – got a job offer at Carl Sagan Productions. I met her at San Diego State in the Telecommunications and Film Department. She was offered a job to come work for Carl Sagan, who was then doing a thing called Cosmos. So we said, "Let's move up together." We did that – we moved up to LA on April Fool's Day, 1981. For the first year or two, she primarily worked for Sagan and I worked on my book and tried to make the transition to a much larger pond. Back in San Diego, I was a good-sized fish in a very small pond. In LA, I was a microscopic fish in a very large pond. It took quite a few years to finally overcome that and to find a place as a writer here in this town.

PLUME: It's also a pond that has a strong current moving against you...

JMS: Yeah. I'd never worked in television much, and it was something I'd wanted to do. I ended up working, finally, for the LA Herald Examiner, The Los Angeles Times here in LA, and The LA Reader. I ended up working with Time, Inc. for a magazine called TV-Cable Week. After which, when it folded, I went to People Magazine and – without going into details on it – there was, again, an ethical crisis that came up. I realized what People Magazine was, and I said, "I just can't do this any more." I quit journalism. I didn't have anything else lined up, but I said, "I can't do this anymore. I gotta go straight." I ended up in television. I'm not sure if that's going straight or not, but for the time it was.

PLUME: At least television understands that it is fiction...

JMS: Yeah. Definitely.

PLUME: Was it easy at that time to make the transition into television? What was the market like at that time?

JMS: It was very tough, and for about 6 months it was an absolute struggle to try and crack what I wanted to do. What happened finally was that I happened to like cartoons – I'm a big cartoon nut, like the Warner Bros. cartoons – and there was a show called He-Man which I liked to watch... because I'm a goofy kind of guy and I like cartoons. I thought, "Well, someone writes these. I see writing credits go by." So I thought, "What the hell," and I wrote a sample He-Man episode and sent it off cold to the studio. No agent, no prior contact... Nothing. If you know anything at all about the business, things don't happen that way. To my astonishment, I got a call from one of the producers on the show saying, "This is a great script. Can you come in for a meeting?" I came in and sold that script. I sold, I think, 3 others – one right after the other. Then they said, "Look, we're out of budget this year to buy freelance scripts." I thought, "Oh, well, there's goes that." But they said, "Would you want to come on staff?" I, of course – having finally learned how not to be an idiot – said yes. That was my first regular gig earning more money than I'd ever seen before. That was in 1984-85. After that, I was on the staff of shows non-stop for the next 15 years without a break.

CLICK HERE to jump to the second installment of Ken's interview with J. Michael Straczynski – in which JMS discusses the pressure from toy companies in writing for shows such asand, and his work onand