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Wow, the mysterious Marcy speaks. You guys have no idea how long it's been since I've wanted to hear from him.


(Backstory: Back when I was writing Hawaii in 2002, Marcy and his friend Matt were working on a very similar project on their own. I had no idea their story existed, and the two of them had no idea my story existed. In fact I didn't even find out until about two years later. How did I find out? Well because Marcy and I were cast in a game called "Survivor Tonga" on the same tribe. And right from the start, he didn't like me. I never did know why Marcy hated me, but I figured out years later it's because Hawaii had stolen his thunder. Even though his and Matt's All-Star story was much better than mine, theirs hadn't been affiliated with a website and mine was. I had the publicity and backing of Survivor-Central behind mine, so of course my story got all the press. And apparently this galled Marcy, since (as I've frequently noted), the first few episodes of Hawaii were originally shit. All of a sudden, all Marcy heard in 2002 was "Hey did you read this great story by that Mario guy over at Survivor-Central?" Marcy went over to read episodes 1 and 2 of Hawaii and said, "This is absolute shit!! Our story is better!! Why is this fucker swooping in and stealing our idea!!"

So anyway, Marcy and I have a long history on this subject, going back to the fact that Hawaii "stole" his idea and got all the press, while meanwhile both Marcy and I knew that the first few episodes of Hawaii were crap and shouldn't have been as popular as they were. As Marcy alluded to below, Hawaii really didn't pick up steam until about midway through. He knew it and I knew it. We've made up since, and now we are friends, but I've always wondered what Marcy would think about Hawaii when I finally went back and rewrote it to fix the mistakes. Glad to see he liked it this time. Because if he still thought it sucked, this time he might have actually had to hang himself. :-P )

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I was an early criticisor... god... I can't spell tonight... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN... of Mario's Hawaii story (liked Alaska and Greece though) and the reason why, was, well, if y'all read the non-redone original episode... yeah.

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See, this is the argument I was making about Hawaii for years. Yes it was very popular and yes it got a ton of press. But the original story wasn't any good until around episode five. That was where I really started to figure out the "formula" of an All-Star story, and I started to realize that four different writing styles wouldn't make a coherent story. So all along I knew that, yes, Hawaii ended up being a success, but it was in SPITE of the first few episodes, not because of them.

I was so embarrassed by the first few episodes that I eventually yanked Hawaii off the internet and locked it in a vault. I vowed that nobody would ever read it again until I made the quality of the first four episodes match the next nine. Because, I'm sorry, when you end up doing a story as well-known as Alaska, you don't want some new reader stumbling onto Hawaii and saying, "Hey, this one sucks!" So many readers didn't understand me when I said "Hawaii sucks at the start," but Marcy always did. Marcy was a writer and he knew it. He was one of the few people (along with his co-writer, Matt) who wouldn't let me get away with half-assed effort, and I always respected him for it.

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That and the Lex-Sue machete thing that happens later on that I pray to god is retconned out of existence.

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That scene is in episode two (which I am currently working on) and I'll talk about that when I get to it. Needless to say, the important thing to remember about the original episode two is that I NEVER WROTE A SINGLE WORD OF IT. That was the first (and only) episode of Hawaii or Alaska that I never touched. I let the original writer have carte blanche with it, and as you figured out, I quickly learned never to do that again. Episode two is going to be completely rewritten from start to finish. It's the only episode in the entire story that really needs it. And that scene is gone, gone, gone, because it was ridiculous.

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Post merge it was pretty good overall and I think the last 3-4 episodes were the best ones because I *think* (maybe I'm mistaken?) this is when Mario finally went solo? Can you fill me in Mario? I don't remember if you went solo at the end of Hawaii or if you did it in Alaska or Greece?

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I "officially" went solo with Greece. That was the only story that was written by "Mario Lanza" and not "The All-Star Five." Although behind the scenes, almost all of Alaska was solo. I'd guess I wrote about 90% of that one, and planned just about 100% of the story from start to finish. The only stuff I didn't write in Alaska, I just told Ryan Crist what to write instead (he was the best, and most prolific of my co-authors. His scenes were quite good, too, when he had time to do them.)

In Hawaii, my mind is a little fuzzy as to when I took over. I know I wrote the last four episodes for sure. I did that because we were under a time crunch and I needed to get them done in like 5 days each. Oh, to have the energy of a young person again. But I'm guessing I took over for good somewhere around episode 9 or 10 in Hawaii.

From start to finish, I probably wrote about 70% of Hawaii. But definitely some of the earlier episodes weren't mine. Sure, I may have edited them (I gave myself "final editing" privileges after episode two) but I only wrote about 25% of the story up to the merge.

By the way, like I said, I gave myself final say over almost everything in the story after the weak episode one and the horrible episode two. In other words, even though this was supposed to be a "democratic" group project, almost everything went through me starting in episode three. No, I didn't write all of it, but I was the one who edited everything and posted it at S-C. So starting in episode three, just because of that, Hawaii starts resembling the rest of the series.

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Anywhoo I remember the climax of the season was great, particularly the whole finale which was well written, I was semi-disapointed with the winner but it made sense in the context.

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The finale is good, but it was rushed. I'll talk more about this when I get there, but the problem was that my son was born on July 31, 2002. And the Hawaii finale was posted on July 31, 2002. Do the math and you'll realize I had to get that finale done under a crunch. I had a pretty fixed deadline when the story had to be finished. So it just wasn't as elaborate and well written (or explained) as the Alaska and Greece finales.

P.S. I'll be sure to fix that this time. As far as I know, my wife isn't having a baby anytime soon. :)

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I have another question for you though Mario, are all of the episodes going to be completely super rewritten? I'd imagine most of the later ones don't need to be super face lifted, so I was wondering if you intended to completely 100% revamp the whole thing or just "fix the beginning" like Stephen King did with book 1 of the Dark Tower (but not the rest).

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I don't intend to rewrite EVERYthing. I don't want to turn this into a morass of a project that will take months. I'd prefer to leave the good stuff as it was and just write around it. But that being said, I'm also a bit of a perfectionist. And I'm also a different person nowadays (5 years older + I have two kids). So I see a lot of stuff I did back then I would do differently now, in terms of style, subliminal theme, etc. So who knows? I don't plan to do a complete overhaul of the story, but I never know what I'll do until I actually do it. As usual, I pretty much just make this stuff up as I go along. I'll know how it ends the same time that you do.

P.S. The Dark Tower analogy is a good one. Book one of the Dark Tower suuuuuuucked.

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Also, though your wife *may* murder you, I think you should do an "all-winners" edition after S16.

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*la la la* Can't hear you *la la la*




Ask me again in 2010.

-Mario