The fact that I was able to score an
interview with Timothy Zahn was huge for me. I've never interviewed
anyone before so to me I was starting pretty high up on the awesome
scale. I know not everyone knows who he is or has read his books so
I'll give a very brief intro for those of you who don't know why I
was so excited. Although I'm not sure why you'd be reading this if
you don't know who he is. Timothy Zahn basically started the Star
Wars expended universe. He's kind of a big deal. In 1991 he wrote
Heir to the Empire, and followed with 2 more books to make up the
Thrawn trilogy. There was no such things as Star Wars novels before
he came along. Now there are gagillions of them, but this is the man
that started it all. Even if you haven't read any of them you
probably know his original characters. Talon Karrde, Mara Jade, and
Grand Admiral Thrawn are almost as well known as any original movie
characters. He them proceeded to write 9 other Star Wars novels, and
a bunch of short stories.
His most recent Star Wars novel Scoundrels was a good Han, Chewie, and Lando adventure that I recommend as a fun light read.
His most recent Star Wars novel Scoundrels was a good Han, Chewie, and Lando adventure that I recommend as a fun light read.
So pre-interview set-up: I was due to
be at the interview room at 4:30, and arrived over-eagerly early. I
was nervous and excited, and I knew if I waited any longer I would
end up having a few to many “relaxers” before my time came. When
I arrived in farthest corner of the sub-basement in the Hyatt there
were only a few other people hanging out in the hallway ahead of me.
There was a sort of proto-typical nerd type (probably younger than he
looked, breathed heavily through his mouth when he moved around too
much, that sort of thing), and 2 guys with a huge camera who were
discussing whether or not they should start watching Doctor Who
because they felt like they should be into it, and 1 guy laid out
asleep in front of the door. The closest room to the interview room
is some filking thing. The sleeping guy is snoring up a storm, and
the filking is going full blast, and I'm starting to wish I'd another
drink before coming down here. I'm not judging, but I just don't get
filking. I can't really tell what they're singing about most of the
time so I don't get how it's so different from regular folk music.
It was a very informal situation which
made me way more comfortable. At the time no one was manning the door
so Timothy Zahn popped his head out the door and asked if we were
there for him or just hanging out. The dude who eventually showed up
to monitor the process started to try and regulate telling us in what
order we would go in, and such. Those of us who were conscious had
already politely agreed first come first served worked for us, but he
had other plans. The big guy who'd been there long before any of us
was shocked to discover that he wasn't going to be allowed in until
5:40 which was an hour away at that point. Luckily the doorman was
called away to other duties, and replaced by some much more laid back
ladies. I was surprised to learn that Mr. Zahn only had an hour the
whole weekend to give interview, and only myself and 3 other outlets
got time with him. I'm not sure if no one higher on the nerd totem
pole asked or if we have more pull than I generally believe, but
whatever the reason I was feeling even more lucky after learning
that. The other reporter (who was late and had an irritatingly loud
entourage) pulled out a huge microphone, video camera, and laptop
that made my phone recorder, and notebook feel pretty lame. Since
they were annoying I didn't let it bother me too much though.
Eventually it was my turn, and what follows is the audio
transcription of my brush with fame.
BV: Thank you for taking the time to
talk with me. I know you're a busy man this weekend as you just had a
book release last night.
TZ:Yes we had the launch party last
night. This is A Call to Duty. It's my first collaboration with David
Weber. We're stating a series call Manticore Ascendant. For those who
are Honor Harrington fans this is the same universe, but 400 years
before honor herself. And it's the early days of the Star Kingdom of
Manticore or before they become a major political, economic, military
force in the galaxy. So that book started, I'm almost done with book
2. There are 3 contracted for, but David and I are thinking more in
the range of 15 to 20; we've got lot of history we can cover in that
era, and a lot of good stories to tell. So we're hoping it does well.
BV: Wow, that is a lot of stories to
tell. That'll keep you busy for quite some time I'm sure.
TZ: David has asked me if I have any
plans for the next few year so we'll see.
BV: Sounds like more than a few. So
with that much going on do you have any plans to continue writing
Star Wars books? Scoundrels came out just last year, and it was
excellent.
TZ: Well thank you. It was Star Wars
meets Ocean's Eleven. It was a fun one. I have not been contacted by
Lucasfilm or Del Ray to do any more books. I don't know if they will
be asking me down the line or not. If not I've gotten to do 10
novels, 19 short stories, and I'm guesstimating about a million and
a half words in the Star Wars universe. If I'm done I've had a good
run. If they want me to do more they know where to find me. I'm
certainly game, and regardless I’ll be in the theater that first
night probably the midnight showing to see the new movies.
BV: But hey, they're starting the
midnight showings at 10 or even 8 on Thursday now.
TZ: (laughing) Which is better for
those of us who are getting on in years.
BV: One of the things that struck me
when reading Scoundrels, but really all of your Star Wars books was
how well you captured the characters voices. When reading any of them
I can really hear them talking in my head. How did you go about get
those voices so true?
TZ: That is a piece of serendipity that
nobody knew when they asked me to do these books. Back when our son
was 4 or 5 or so we discovered that if he'd seen a movie enough times
we could do an audio recording of the movie, we started with the
Wizard of Oz, by simply putting a tape recorder up against the TV
speaker. We could tape the whole movie, and then play it for him in
the car tape player. And he would sit in the car seat for a couple of
hours. You know, sit there happy as a clam playing with his legos
visualizing the movies. So the upshot is that however many times I
had seen the Sar Wars movies I'd heard them 5 or 6 or 7 times more
which meant that I could get the voices without the distraction of
the visuals so by the time I started the Thrawn trilogy we'd done
this many times. I had a really good feel for how Han talks, how Leia
talks, how Luke talks and that just naturally came out in the
writing. One of those fortunate events.
BV: I can see how visuals might be
distracting for a writer in a movie like that. They're such big
movies with so many explosions, and so much happening you don't
always focus just the speaking without anything else in there.
TZ: You're doing a bunch of sense, and
this way it's boiled down to just the hearing so the stuff just kind
of seeped into my subconscious. I had the rhythm down and everything.
So it was just a matter of how does Han talk, okay he talks like
this.
BV: So other than a really good career
boost if it went well what were you hoping to achieve with the Thrawn
series? Did you think that you were making Star Wars history, and
becoming basically the start of the expanded universe?
TZ: No one even knew if the Star Wars
fans were out there. This was a big experiment, and a big gamble on
Bantam's part. In fact, I found out later that Lou Aronica who was
head of Bantam Spectra basically put his job on the line to bring out
the Thrawn trilogy as hard covers. This is serious work, this is not
just a paperback knock off media thing, but he put his job on the
line that these things were going to be successful. But nobody had
any idea. The fans had been very quite because there was nothing to
grab on to so we did not know, not so much was this the start of
something great, we were going to be happy if we got 3 books out of
it that made enough money to break even. So it caught everybody by
surprise. We had 70,000 copies for the first printing. They'd wanted
100,000, but they couldn't get the orders for that so clearly no one
was interested. The 70,000 we gone in I think 2 weeks, and they went
back and I don't remember how many print runs they did of hard cover,
but the Heir to the Empire hardcover was still being printed. It had
2 or 3 printings in hardcover after the paperback came out which
never happens. Once the paperback comes out you sell of the
hardcovers as remainders, and that's it. They were still printing
hardcovers when the paperback was available. So yeah, it became a
phenomenon because the Star Wars fans were still there. They've never
gone away, and there are more of them now than ever. We've been given
prequels, and clone wars, and lots of other books. Now we're gonna
get rebels and spin-off movies. So yeah, it was the start, but nobody
anticipated that at the time.
BV: I can't believe it's been over 20
years. I actually just got the 20th anniversary edition of
Heir to the Empire for my kindle. And there's just so much new
content in there with the annotation that you did.
TZ: Yeah, director's commentary kind of
thing along the margins.
BV: It just blows my mind how long ago
that was. I'm sure it blows your mind too though.
TZ: Yeah, 1991 it came out so a shade
over 20 years. 23 years, but who's counting?
BV: So with what we know now with the
clone wars, and the rise of the empire, and Vader's past is there
anything that you feel like you would have changed if you knew then
what you know now?
TZ: There were small tweakings, but
really the books have held up pretty well considering all the stuff
that's been going on elsewhere in the series. The only really major
problem is that I was given a time line for the clone wars, and the
following, and there was a 15 year gap between the end of the war and
the birth of Luke and Leia. And then they changed that in the middle
of writing book 2 so there is a 15 year discrepancy in anything I
mention time wise. It would have been nice to fix that, but I don't
want to go and retrofit that. The idea of the 20th
anniversary was the original, here are my comments, here's where we
goofed up and why or I don't remember why I goofed up but I did. But
I can't think of much else I would change. Everything else has held
up pretty solidly.
BV: So are you disappointed that
there's been so much time between episode 6 and 7 that The Heir to
the Empire isn't going to make it to the big screen?
TZ: There are ways you could do
something like that. But they've already said there not going to
take the expanded universe in the sequels, but if they wanted to you
could jump a generation and Thrwan comes back from the unknown
regions in time to deal with Han, Luke, and Leia's kids the next
generation, and you could do the story that way. The other thing I
hold out hope for is that even if nothing I've ever makes it into the
movies Disney does have 4 TV networks they gotta fill with
programming. I'm holding out hope that sometime in the next 10 years
ABC TV will have the Thrawn Trilogy mini-series. Disney has paid 4
billion dollars for Lucasfilm. They're going to get everything they
can out of it so I think eventually they will start mining the
expanded universe. My dream TV season would be say a Thursday night
starting with X-Wing, and then going on to Tales of the Jedi, and
followed by The Mara Jade Chronicles or something like that . I think
ABC could own that evening, but it all depends on how much they want
to do, how much an episode these things cost. That's what kept Lucas
from doing a live action so many years. It was just too prohibited
cost wise, but special effect get cheaper every 10 minutes really. So
always in motion the future is. We won’t know what's going to
happen until it happens. But I have hopes. Disney has a record of
having bought Pixar and Marvel and not screwed them up so I think
there's a good chance that they'll also not screw up Lucasfilm. I
think the future is always iffy, but it's a better future than we
could have gotten with any other home for Lucasfilm than Disney.
BV: I think a lot of people would like
to see Mara Jade and Admiral Thrawn on even a small screen if not the
big screen, but there are ways that those characters could work into
the big screen too.
TZ: There are a lot of ways. I mean if
they asked me for advice on how to fit any of my characters or
scenarios into the movie I'd be there, and I could do it. We authors
are masters of spackle and making fitting things in and readjusting.
You thought it was like this, but actually the seeds are there to
show it was like this instead. So if they ask advice or opinions I
can certainly give them some thoughts. If they don't, that's okay,
it's their property. The thing is, they know I’m here. It's not
like I'll hear in 10 years “oh yeah, if we'd know you were around
and were interested we would have used you, but we never did”.
That's the real nightmare, but oh what might have been. But no, they
know I'm here, they know what I've done. If they choose not to use my
stuff or my knowledge or my abilities that's fine. That's their
decision, and I'm good with that. I just don't want to lose by
default.
BV: Well I wouldn't see why they
wouldn't consult you if you're here and willing.
TZ: Movie people do not always think
that novelists know what they're doing, and there a lot of novelists
who don’t really understand how to transpose into the visual medium
of film and TV. So probably every Hollywood major production has has
a story about some author who did not understand how you can't
translate their wonderful book into a wonderful movie directly
because the media are different, and so they kind of avoid us.
BV: Well I certainly hope that we'll
get to see more Star Wars from you, and good luck in your new series.
I think that'll probably be keeping you busy for a while, but
hopefully something to do with Star Wars again from you in the
future.
TZ: We will see. I'm ready when they
are.
Whew! Who knew that 13 minutes of audio
would transcribe out to be so long? Oh yeah, I didn't because I've
never done this before. So that's the end of my first, and hopefully
not last interview. And that's also the end of my first year of
Dragon Con coverage. Finally, huh? The boss is working on getting us
into Walker Stalker Con, and says they’re good about interviews so
hopefully I'll get another shot at this soon. Stay tuned for that,
and a bunch of Halloween themed posts coming in just a few short
weeks!
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