Ann Druyan preserves the
legacy of Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’
with ‘A Spacetime Odyssey’
By Brandon Fibbs
How often are you so moved by your job
that you actually shed tears? On “Cosmos:
A SpaceTime Odyssey,” this was a fairly
regular occurrence. It is impossible to work on
something of such scale and import without
being overcome, now and again, in the exact
same way you hope your audience will be.
I will never forget the first day that Ann
Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow and the writer
and executive producer of both series, first
arrived in Los Angeles from her home in Ithaca,
New York. Ann has a bearing and poise all her
own, at once professorial and maternal.
While the production office would eventually
be transformed into a well-oiled machine
– a sort of anthill of organized chaos that is
representative of all Hollywood productions
and unique, a work of exquisite narrative
power and profound human insight, a piece
of entertainment that literally has the power to
change the way people see themselves and
their place in the universe.
No one on this planet was closer to Carl
Sagan than Ann Druyan. Her intimacy has
preserved his spirit with a fierce passion and
uncompromising resolve, and she poured that
essence into this new work. She was the keeper
of Carl’s flame, and it was the plumb line that
guided everything we did.
One of my favorite memories was of being
present in the screening room when a rough
cut of a scene was shown describing how a
then young Neil deGrasse Tyson first met the
famous Cornell astronomer. It was a beautiful
and ephemeral moment, and in the dark of
“
We’ve designed ‘Cosmos’ to have a very long shelf life.
It’s not about the latest hypothesis. It’s about something else.
It’s a