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George R.R. Martin Wrote For Beauty And The Beast
Nick Briggs/HBO
No, we're not talking about the Disney version (though you're forgiven for thinking so, considering that that movie did sort of imply a horrific, Martin-esque rape that one time). Rather, the author of A Song Of Ice And Fire wrote for the 1987 CBS series of the same name starring Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman.
CBS Television Distribution
Seen here in makeup ... we think.
The show was a 1980s retelling of the tale, with Beast being a lion-something mutant or whatever living in the sewers of New York and solving crimes with John Connor's mom. Martin got a job on the show shortly after the reboot of The Twilight Zone (for which he was a staff writer) was cancelled.
Once he landed the CBS gig, Martin proceeded to immediately train for his future career by insisting the network spice up B&tB with as much sex and violence as possible. Due to what we can only call a profound lack of foresight, the network wouldn't let him.
CBS Television Distribution
"Damn." -- furries
As Martin himself explained it: "There were battles over censorship, how sexual things could be, whether a scene was too 'politically charged,' how violent things could be. Don't want to disturb anyone." Despite that, Martin still managed to write some surprisingly good episodes for a show with such a laughably stupid premise. But in the end, all the limitations wore him down, and he left the show.
Shortly after that, he expelled all of the pent-up sex, violence, sexual violence, and violent sex inside his head onto several reams of paper which would eventually turn into A Song Of Ice And Fire. (He started working on it in 1991 -- it would take until 1996 for the first book to get published.)
HBO
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