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Who's going to Phoenix?
- Thread starter Raw Shark
- Start date
Ninja_Squirrel
Regular
I'm here. Got to Phoenix on Wednesday. The first B5 fan panel, Babylon 5 101, last night was really good. Looking forward to this morning's back-to-back guest panels of Walter Koenig, Claudia Christian, and JMS. JMS is having his spotlight panel on Sunday, but the one today has something to do with keeping a 19-year promise. A few fans discussed it last night after the panel, and we have no clue what it could be about.
I made it there in time for the Q&A with Claudia Christian, which was very funny. She's a firecracker, and always smiling or laughing. Then the JMS Q&A, which was also funny, but interesting, too. He answered some questions for a half hour, then spoke for another half hour on working with and being friends with four of the actors from the show who have since passed away, Jeff Conaway, Richard Biggs, Andreas Katsulas and Michael O'Hare. It was a very touching tribute and I'm so glad he did it.
I imagine this is going to show up somewhere else, so I might as well mention what he said about the last of these four (and maybe the others later). He had made a promise to Michael O'Hare 19 years ago when he left Babylon 5, to keep secret the reason why to his grave. O'Hare responded that he should instead keep the secret until O'Hare's grave, then let it be known. Today was that day. I didn't record the talk, but it might be on Youtube or elsewhere by now. The short version is that Michael O'Hare, about halfway through filming the first season, was having serious problems with delusions (and possibly more, this was kept vague by JMS), like thinking there were hidden messages written for him in books and magazines. They were affecting his life and his work, and people knew it was happening. He held it together until the season finale was wrapped, but it was getting worse and he had to leave the series to devote his time to getting mental health treatment.
I've had numerous friends develop mental issues to varying degrees over the past decade (and depression in my own case), and found all this fascinating. Keeping it secret was necessary for O'Hare, of course. Mental health (and the way people perceive it) does carry a stigma in some ways, and if known, might have affected his career, as Conaway's struggles with addiction and alcoholism affected his career, causing him to start over as a guest actor on B5. I'm glad we got one season's worth of strong performances out of Michael O'Hare, I thought he was terrific. I was sad when he left, in part because his deep voice was something I came to associate with Babylon 5 as a whole.
Raw Shark
"You wouldn't hold out on me, would you old friend?"
Cmdr. Sinclair
I imagine this is going to show up somewhere else, so I might as well mention what he said about the last of these four (and maybe the others later). He had made a promise to Michael O'Hare 19 years ago when he left Babylon 5, to keep secret the reason why to his grave. O'Hare responded that he should instead keep the secret until O'Hare's grave, then let it be known. Today was that day. I didn't record the talk, but it might be on Youtube or elsewhere by now. The short version is that Michael O'Hare, about halfway through filming the first season, was having serious problems with delusions (and possibly more, this was kept vague by JMS), like thinking there were hidden messages written for him in books and magazines. They were affecting his life and his work, and people knew it was happening. He held it together until the season finale was wrapped, but it was getting worse and he had to leave the series to devote his time to getting mental health treatment.
I've had numerous friends develop mental issues to varying degrees over the past decade (and depression in my own case), and found all this fascinating. Keeping it secret was necessary for O'Hare, of course. Mental health (and the way people perceive it) does carry a stigma in some ways, and if known, might have affected his career, as Conaway's struggles with addiction and alcoholism affected his career, causing him to start over as a guest actor on B5. I'm glad we got one season's worth of strong performances out of Michael O'Hare, I thought he was terrific. I was sad when he left, in part because his deep voice was something I came to associate with Babylon 5 as a whole.
Raw Shark
"You wouldn't hold out on me, would you old friend?"
Cmdr. Sinclair
