by Edward Gross
GERALD ISENBERG (producer, Star Trek: Planet of the Titans)
Michael Eisner and I were very close until the Star Trek event. I dropped out after Planet of the Titans had been canceled and they were doing Phase II. But when I realized they were making a movie, I went back to him and said, “You know, Mike, I have a contract that says if the movie is to be produced, I am the producer,” and he said, “No, you passed.” My response was, “No, Mike, I passed on a TV series, I didn’t pass on the movie.” He said, “No, you’re out and you can’t be involved.” It wasn’t as though I wanted to be involved, it was that I had a piece of the action. I got myself out of Paramount and took my TV company away. That’s how we settled it.
GENE RODDENBERRY (producer, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
Paramount turned me down a couple of times for a movie, then finally they said, “Write a script and we’ll give you an office on the lot and think about it.” They were not that serious about the movie when we first started it. I think they had in mind a two- to three-million-dollar picture. Star Wars woke them up to the fact that these things I’d been telling them for a number of years were true: There was an audience of millions of people out there who are interested in “message literature.”
They wanted something that was good, staple Americana—like Grease or Saturday Night Fever. They wanted something they could understand and deal with. So after they read my script and turned it down, they called in—over the period of a year—maybe fifteen writers. And none of them did any better, because all these writers were trying to give them science fiction, and that’s the last thing they really wanted.
DAVID GERROLD (author, The Martian Child)
Studio executives are maligned by everyone who works for them. If a studio makes fifteen hit pictures in a year, who gets the credit? The directors, the actors, the executive producers of the picture, but the studio executive who said, “I’ll buy this picture, I’ll finance it,” he’s just lucky enough to be sitting there when they brought the project in? I have to tell you, I’ve spent a lot of time with studio executives, and they can tell the difference between a good story and a bad story. They get excited when they work with exciting people. You don’t get to be the head of a studio by accident, and the ones I’ve met are not stupid men. Admittedly there have been some stupid men as studio executives who can make mistakes, but twenty years at Paramount? Down the line they’re doing all these great pictures like The Godfather films, Saturday Night Fever … and they can’t get Star Trek on the boards? Give me a break.
GENE RODDENBERRY
I would have had the same problems at any other studio, and, indeed, science-fiction writers have all had the same experience. George Lucas fought the same fight. He had the good fortune to have a hit motion picture behind him, and he could say, “I’m sorry, this is the way we’ll do it,” and make it stand. I could do that on a television show; I could not do that on what was, essentially, a first science-fiction motion picture. I had several pictures behind me, but I never had any hits.
JON POVILL (associate producer, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
Everyone on the show was pretty much thrilled at the prospect of working with Robert Wise. His presence brought an entirely new feeling of stature to the production. We felt like the everlasting cloud of doubt over the project had finally lifted and now it was really going to happen. And that proved true almost entirely thanks to Bob, who held the picture together through a constant stream of crises. He got a ton of blame for the way the picture turned out, but I feel rather strongly that if not for him, there would have been no further incarnations of Trek. If Bob had failed, I think Paramount would have given up. Maybe they’d have gone back to the notion of doing a series, but they sure as hell wouldn’t have thrown any more money at a feature. It’s always bothered me that, through the years, Bob wound up with none of the credit and all of the blame for the issues with The Motion Picture.
RICHARD TAYLOR (designer, Robert Abel & Associates)
Robert Wise was a kind of strange choice for director. He’d done Run Silent, Run Deep but wasn’t really a science-fiction buff. He’d rather do Sound of Music. He was older and he would sit there on sets and drift off and then have a masseuse keeping him awake. I don’t think he was ever very enthusiastic at all about directing this movie, and he was wrangled into it and made good money doing it. He was not passionate about it. It was a job.
DAREN DOCHTERMAN (visual effects supervisor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture—Director’s Edition)
I think that’s a little unfair. Robert Wise is a very quiet man. Very level-toned in his reactions to things, because that was just his nature. All of the guys at Abel were extremely excited to be working on Star Trek. They were jumping all over the place to please everybody and show them all the neat stuff they were doing. Bob Wise was, like, “That’s great, let’s see if that works. You guys carry on.” That could have come across as lack of enthusiasm, but he had so much other stuff to deal with. He had to balance the crew, the actors who hadn’t worked with each other in ten years, the writer who was almost killing the producer. All of that stuff he had to deal with. Honestly, the Abel guys were not very conducive to speedy shooting onstage. The necessities were very taxing on him. They needed to shoot the wormhole sequence two or three times with different cameras and different film stocks, just to have stuff.
ROBERT WISE (director, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
I have always been intrigued by science fiction, even though I have only done two other films in the genre, and I thought it was time that I did a science-fiction picture that took place in space. Both of my other ones were earthbound. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, we had a visitor from outer space coming to Earth in a spaceship, so that really intrigued me more than anything else. From the beginning I liked the idea of doing Star Trek. It was really the fascination and the desire to do a film that dealt with the experience of being in space.
SUSAN SACKETT (assistant to Gene Roddenberry)
Robert Wise is a very serious man and there was not much levity on the set. He had a very tough job to do, because this was a big reunion and it had a lot of things built into it of necessity because it was a reunion picture. Things were tough for Robert Wise and, in all fairness to him, that would probably be why his was a more serious production.
ROBERT WISE
I knew of the TV series, but I had not become a Trekkie when the TV series had first come out and I had only seen one or two segments, which I thought were all right, but I didn’t get hooked on it. After the president of Paramount asked me if I would be interested in considering directing the movie, I said, “Well, I just don’t know. I’ll have to read the script, of course, and I would have to see several more of the TV segments.” I had to get familiar with what it was and what had caused it to become so immensely popular. So that’s what happened: I read the script and I saw about a dozen episodes of the series so I could become familiar with it, and make my own judgment.
The other thing is that when I read the script, Spock wasn’t a part of it. I have three Trekkies in my own family. My wife, Millicent, read the script, and she was outraged when she discovered that Mr. Spock was no longer among the crew. “Why?” she asked. “Because,” I said, “Leonard Nimoy was doing the play Equus on Broadway when the last version was written.” Millicent said, rather emphatically, “With no Spock, there can be no Star Trek,” and she was just as emphatically backed up by my stepdaughter, Pamela, and her husband, Robert. Their vehemence impressed and shook me. I went to Paramount and repeated their words: “With no Spock, there can be no Star Trek.” So the studio enticed Nimoy back into the fold with a considerable amount of money.
WILLIAM SHATNER (actor, “James T. Kirk”)
Leonard had a beef and it’s a legitimate one. It’s about the merchandising and it’s something that irked me as well. Our faces appear on products all over the country, all over the world, and we’ve not really been compensated fairly for it. Leonard was w
alking in London, England. He stopped to look at a billboard. The billboard’s divided into three sections. The first section is Leonard’s face with the ears—Spock—the ears are drooping. The second section of the billboard has Leonard, with the drooping ears, holding a tankard of ale. The third section has an empty tankard of ale and Leonard’s face, with pointed ears straight up in the air. So Leonard and I had this battle, with whoever licenses Star Trek, for a long time. So Leonard goes back to the studio and says, “There’s a demeaning billboard of me out there. Did you guys okay it?” So he goes to his lawyer and tries to sue. But at that point, Paramount wanted Leonard, and Leonard wanted fair recompense. It was only reasonable that Paramount meet his demands.
EDDIE EGAN (publicity department, Paramount Pictures)
There was a lot of bad blood between Roddenberry and Paramount because of the vagaries of his merchandising contract through Lincoln Enterprises. Paramount got no split from that, but they were obligated to turn over any film trims and so forth, and that persisted into the movies for a while until someone put an end to it. From what I was told, the contract was so vague for the TV series that it said he could use discards from the series, meaning anything that was thrown away; call sheets, pieces of sets, unused film that was going to be destroyed—which were dailies or alternate takes—and he had the absolute right to them. I think Desilu wrote that contract and at that point there was no foresight to realize that those things could be valuable.
Gene held Paramount to that for years and years and years, which also spun into the bad blood between Paramount and Nimoy and Shatner about their share or royalties, because they had no share in any of those things that Lincoln sold. That was a big part of Nimoy’s settlement with Paramount before he agreed to star in the movie. And then because he and Shatner had favored-nation clauses, Shatner got cut into that also.
GENE RODDENBERRY
They started off wanting to blithely recast. And until six months before we actually began shooting, they were still trying to get Kirk killed off in the first act. “At the very least, Gene, you can promote him to admiral and bring in a new star,” they said. I refused to do this, because I think William Shatner is an extraordinarily fine actor. There was also a whole comedy of errors with Leonard Nimoy, because, at one time, the studio decided that the only way they wanted to do it was as a two-hour movie special and pilot of a new Trek TV series. Leonard Nimoy refused because of Broadway commitments and the time and energy required by a series.
I felt very much the same way. A legend grew that we threw Nimoy out of the show; that was not true. He did not want to do a television show. Nimoy and Spock are very important to Star Trek, but none of us was absolutely essential. There are writers and producers around who can do what I do—just as there are good actors around who could do another kind of Mr. Spock or Captain Kirk. Star Trek would still have been Star Trek. I’m glad we didn’t have to, but I would never hold up a production because any one of us was not able to do it. That wouldn’t be fair to the others.
LEONARD NIMOY (actor, “Mr. Spock”)
We’ve had a long and complicated relationship, Paramount and myself. We had a lot of details to work out. There have been periods of time when the Star Trek project was moving forward and I was not available. I went off to do Equus on Broadway. During that period of time, the concept changed to a TV series. It was difficult then to get together because there was a question of availability. When the project turned around and I was available again, we started talking immediately. It has been complicated; it has been time-consuming. But there was never a question of reluctance to be involved in Star Trek on my part. I’ve always felt totally comfortable about being identified with Star Trek, and being identified with the Spock character. It has exploded my life in a very positive way. The Spock character has always been a part of my life. I have never tried in any way to reject that. I’m very proud of the fact that I’m associated with the character.
JON POVILL
Here’s what the problem was between Gene and Robert Wise: Paramount told Gene that he still had creative control, so he had no reason but to be thrilled this was all happening. But they also told Robert Wise that he had creative control and neglected to tell Wise that Gene had creative control. It was not a good working situation.
HAROLD LIVINGSTON (writer, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
Gene was supposed to have limited creative control, but he made Bob Wise’s life miserable. But Wise was smart enough not to get into any arguments with him. Instead, he indulged and pacified him. He believed—and rightly, I’m sure—that anything else would have been totally nonproductive. I’m the only one unwise—pun intended—for that. But Wise had a picture to make and he had to keep the peace.
ROBERT WISE
Working with Gene was comparatively easy. Of course, as much as producers and directors are separate entities, you always have little conflicts at times, but by and large, it was fine. When I came on after being asked to direct the film, I said, “What about Mr. Roddenberry? Because it’s his baby,” and they said, “Well, you’ll have to work it out.” So Gene and I talked at some length about how we could work together, how he and I saw the whole thing. We came to reach a working agreement about halfway in our positions, and I think we functioned pretty well on that level.
GENE RODDENBERRY
There were a lot of places we disagreed, but in a friendly, professional way. My taste for costumes was a little different than his, but in the end I went with his taste because he was the man responsible for creating the whole visual image. If it had been more than just a question of taste, if I had thought the costumes violated Star Trek format, then we would have probably had a very serious fight. But we didn’t, because it was just a question of taste. There are some places where we wanted to do something, I can’t remember an example right now, and I would say, “Bob, the Star Trek format has always been this. I don’t want to lock you into format, but let’s not change unless we have some value that makes the change worthwhile.”
DAVID C. FEIN (producer, Star Trek: The Motion Picture—Director’s Edition)
This is my understanding: The project was already overcontrolled by Gene before Bob ever got there. The studio already had a lot of issues with Gene’s absolute control and absolute power over the entire project—and all projects in regards to Star Trek—and this was a big deal, of course. Here’s this guy who absolutely wants to tell great stories—I don’t necessarily disagree with Gene being as protective or even as influential as he wanted to be. He’s had some great successes with all of this. But the studio wanted a movie, and they wanted a movie that could be done on budget and on time without the chaos that was potentially there. One of the executives at Paramount proposed the idea of bringing on Robert Wise to direct the film. You see, Gene’s favorite film of all time is The Day the Earth Stood Still, and what could you say to Gene to get him to be somewhat under control or somewhat cooperative? You needed to get someone that Gene respected. Somebody who would lead Gene to say, “Here’s somebody who could potentially do a better job than me or at least I would love to collaborate with, but I would trust them.” That’s how Bob came on board. I think it was, “How can we control Roddenberry in making a collaborative, fantastic movie?” Gene was at the top of his game, he was Star Trek, so what do you do? You get his idol.
JON POVILL
I think there’s some truth in that. I know Gene certainly did have a lot of respect for Bob Wise, at least in the early going. It became less so the more dissension there was on what to do. When Bob overruled him and the studio stood with Bob, that was a problem.
ROBERT WISE
When I came on the project, they already had the original team of special-effects men, Robert Abel and Associates, at work, and a number of the sets were already done, but there is one area that I did have influence on: I upgraded the sets considerably from what they had originally built. What you saw in the film is not at all what I came on to.
JOS
EPH R. JENNINGS (production designer, Star Trek: Phase II)
I was involved with the feature for a time, but when Mr. Wise came aboard, I felt that he really didn’t want anybody who had been involved with the proposed television series. As a result, most of them disappeared along with me. The sets had proceeded to such a degree that they insisted on including my name on the credits. When the second feature was being made, I was brought back.
The sets we had designed for Phase II were a great deal more sophisticated in their mechanics than the ones on the original series had been. The reason for doing so was that the bridge of the Enterprise was designed to go into series, so we were designing to be all things to all people. As a result, all of the devices were practical and they worked off proximity switches. This was not for one specific show. What you’re being asked to do is design a set that will function for three years of shows, so we were being a great deal more sophisticated than perhaps we would have been were it laid out to be a feature picture in which there were a certain given set of actions that had to be performed on that set. Then you only build those things that operate properly. When you talk about going to series, you don’t know down the line what you’re going to need.
GENE RODDENBERRY
Changes within the Enterprise came from outside artists who would bring them to Bob and me for our approval. It was a very involved process. Bob and I began chatting before we had our first sketch. You know, “Make sure it looks like this, and that…” We inherited a bridge that had been designed for a TV show, and I said, “Bob, I don’t want to stick you with something we designed for TV, which is a totally different type of image. I think that now you should bring in your own designer and revise it.”