RocketSTEM Issue #6 - March 2014 | Page 36

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