Editing HIGHLANDER THE SERIES: AN EVENING AT JOE'S

By: Abbie Bernstein
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2001

Horvath and fellow HIGHLANDER staffer Lettow both felt the impulse to write their own follow-ups to the B story in the episode "Timeless," which had the 5,000-year-old Methos courting dying mortal Alexa Bond. The results can be found in "Postcards From Alexa," eight linked stories chronicling the romance from the time Methos and Alexa take off in a van to Alexa's death in Geneva.

"There's nothing in my story that would work as an episode," Horvath notes. "That's all back story. I never would have gone into the story meeting and said, 'Oh, we have to cut away to Alexa in Athens.' For one thing, there's no action in it, there's no bad guy it would make a damn boring episode. [In the story 'Postcards From Athens'] Alexa wanders around looking at statues until her lover comes home. This is the reason that 'Postcards From Alexa' is not a [HIGHLANDER] novel there'd have to be a bad guy. There's none of that in the story it's just a love story."

Parts of Horvath's "Postcards" were originally written as a private exercise. "When something occurs to me, I write it down," she says. "It was only later that it became appropriate to put them into a book. If I think of something I want to write, I'll write it, and if it's publishable, cool, but [prose fiction] is not how I [as a script writer] make my living."

One aspect of the "Postcards" arc that may be intriguing to fans is when some of the stories were written, especially "Postcards From Athens," which shows Methos primarily in a gentle, loving light but hints at a violent aspect. The piece was written prior to the onscreen revelation that the seemingly non-confrontational Methos used to be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

"The thing about 'Postcards From Athens' that I wish was somehow embedded in the story," Horvath muses, "is that it was written for an earlier Methos. 'Horseman' hadn't been written at the time, and the seeds of 'Horseman' are in that story. Methos in Cairo in 'Postcards From Athens' is the guy who will turn up in 'Horseman.' Of course, it wasn't published at the time, but that scene from Cairo is the first hint anywhere that Methos has a brutal side."

Apart from Horvath and Lettow, the first contributor to turn in a piece was guest actor Hudson, who introduced his Immortal-hating James Horton character in the first season and thereafter returned several times, even appearing in the season finale.

"Peter Hudson gave me his story at the Anaheim [HIGHLANDER] convention in April of '98," Horvath recalls. "F. Braun McAsh sent me his story [the novella "Death Shall Have No Dominion"] very soon after that by fax. He would call me about every three or four months saying, 'What's up with the book?' And I would feel like saying, 'Stop nagging me!' " she laughs. "But it just took forever and really, if he hadn't nagged me, it might never have happened. Those periodic phone calls from someone saying 'Weren't you working on a book project?' were very helpful to get me to go over the to-do list and move forward."

There were some benefits to the long development period. "A couple of people came through at the last minute," Horvath explains, "who'd been too busy earlier. Peter Wingfield is one. He's been working and traveling and hadn't been able to commit to participating, but as we neared the real deadline, he did something right then. So it worked out in our favor that it took so long to put together because we got more people on board."

McAsh's novella "Death Shall Have No Dominion" explores the pre-Immortal life of one Vlad Dracul as seen through the eyes of his already-Immortal Hans Ritter Kirschner, a character the sword master plays briefly in the episode "The Modern Prometheus."

"When Braun's story came in and was so rich in action and swordplay," Horvath remembers, "I said, 'This is going to be very popular.' It has better battle scenes, I think, than any of the novels or anything that was on screen, because we couldn't [have afforded] to film what he wrote. So I think it has the best battle scenes in HIGHLANDER ever."

Unusual temptations sometimes were part of the process, Horvath says. "Jim Byrnes faxed me 'Letters From Viet Nam' [a story written in the voice of Byrnes' character Joe Dawson]. I was having trouble with the fax machine and he called me and said, 'If you can't read that, give me a call and I'll read it to you.' It's so good, it's so touching I wish Jim had read it to me."

Several other stories in the anthology are also written by actors from the first-person p.o.v.s of their characters, including Hudson's "Letter to the Highlander," Kirsch's "From the Grave" and de Longis' "Consone's Diary." Horvath likes the alternate take on sometimes familiar scenarios.

"What was onscreen is what Duncan thinks of James Horton, and what was never onscreen was James Horton's side of the story, so that's what's in [Hudson's] story. 'Consone's Diary' hewed very closely to what was on screen and just gives you a new perspective on it. I think it's neat to take an episode from the point of view of the bad guy and get a sympathetic look at him and realize that he thinks he's the hero and Duncan is the idiot who's trying to kill him."

Two actor/contributors took a somewhat different tack. Valentine Pelka, who played unrepentant Apocalypse Horseman Kronos, contributed "The Staircase," a novella about a man locked in a dreamlike struggle with life-threatening illness that is seemingly unconnected to HIGHLANDER mythology.

"I do argue that the Valentine story takes place in the HIGHLANDER universe," Horvath asserts. "Even though no one in it is an Immortal, I believe there's nothing in it that contradicts HIGHLANDER and I think his view in that story of the way morality, personal responsibility and the afterlife work meshes very well with what's in HIGHLANDER."

Wingfield includes his Methos character in the short piece "A Time of Innocents," but not by name.

"Peter Wingfield's story is really not a Methos story at all," Horvath observes. "I believe those four guys are the Horsemen, I believe I can pick out which is which, but he chose to tell this story from quite another perspective. His main character is just someone who meets Methos. When [Wingfield] said he was going to explore the question of an Immortal infant, he said it at a convention which is pretty funny, because he said it before he told me he was going to do a story but people laughed. And it does sound like a joke 'I'm going to see what would happen to an Immortal baby' it sounds like it's going to be some sort of black comedy. But in fact, he gave a very realistic explanation. What [Methos] does in that story could either be the worst crime in the world or an act of compassion, and your guess is as good as anyone's and that's the beauty of Methos. I think [Wingfield] did a beautiful job of protecting the mystery."

Some of the stories are downright surreal, notably composer Bellon's "Down Towards the Outflow" and director Berry's "The Other Side of the Mirror," written with Darla Kirschner.

"I love the premise of Dennis' story," Horvath says. "This is NO EXIT on the HIGHLANDER set this is a vision of Hell in which you can never leave work. Dennis was one of the first people to accept the challenge of writing a story, although he was one of the last people to turn it in. I thought, 'This is brilliant. This is so Dennis. This is so French!' " she laughs.

One premise left unexplored by all the contributors is one that would seem fairly obvious someone newly discovering their own Immortality.

" 'What if I discovered I was going to live a long time, stay young, stay pretty, be able to do all sorts of things I thought I wouldn't have time for in my life, but have to fight for my life on a somewhat constant basis?' " Horvath sums it up. "I was really surprised [no one wrote that story]. Not necessarily, 'What if it was me as my own [self],' but what if it was anyone? [Original HIGHLANDER writer] Gregory Widen's initial premise for the first movie is that he was wandering around the Tower of London, looking at the armor, and he thought, 'What would it have been like to wear all this stuff?' And then he thought, 'What would it be like to have been the guy who wore all this stuff and still be alive today and see how the world changed?' That remains a fascinating premise, no matter who you are, to think about what would it mean to see the world change in those ways, what would it mean not to have that ticking clock saying you only have so many years."

Horvath has recently concluded her first season as staff writer on the new PBS fantasy series MYTHQUEST, which will premiere in early 2002. She's ambivalent about whether she'll edit another JOE'S anthology should the opportunity arise it's not her day job, after all but acknowledges she's tempted.

"There's never really been anything like this before. I think everyone who reads this will have something in it that they love. Some of the people I wished would participate production designers and editors especially, because those are people who know the show really well the reason they gave for not being able to participate was that they were busy on their jobs. So I hope that if we get to do another volume, some of those people will have room in their schedules and participate next time. I can easily think of twelve more people I'd love to see stories from."