by Edward Gross
My position during those discussions was: “I don’t want you to perceive me as a problem. I don’t want you to think I’m an actor trying to build a directing career on the strength of my leverage. I want you to see me as the solution to your problem. You need a director, and I know this material. I will bring you a movie that will satisfy the Star Trek audience.” I didn’t want to take the posture with the studio of “You want me to act in Star Trek III? Then I’m the director, period.”
WILLIAM SHATNER
I would surmise that when Leonard was able to leverage his desire to direct against the very natural desire to grow and expand his horizons as an artist, that he wanted to direct the film. So he was able to use the leverage of them wanting him to do Spock with his desire to direct. I would think that those men who finally agreed made some kind of deal that if he wanted to direct, he had to come back at least for the fourth Star Trek.
RALPH WINTER
We selected Leonard because he was very familiar with the material, obviously, and had been in front of the camera for many years. He’d directed a T.J. Hooker and some Night Gallery episodes at Universal, and had directed on the stage. And it was bound to spark interest at the box office, getting one of the cast of the family of Star Trek to be involved creatively in putting the show together. We thought that would be an advantage. I think it was. It turned out very nicely and Leonard knows about Vulcans and mysticism and everything that is involved with that culture on film.
Leonard knew about that and wanted to bring to life a lot of the things that had been glossed over or never really developed before. For a long time he wanted to participate in creating and putting that vision on film. Plus we were seeing it through his eyes for the first time after all these years of playing that character, and working and interacting with those other characters.
DAVID GERROLD
He is a good director and a good actor. He is good at what he’s good at. He’s not Dustin Hoffman or Spencer Tracy, he’s Leonard Nimoy. Then again, John Wayne was John Wayne.
LEONARD NIMOY
We worked out what I felt was a constructive approach. Basically, I told them, “Promote from within.” Michael Eisner [then Paramount president] got very excited about it and said, “Great idea! Leonard Nimoy directs The Search for Spock!” It went downhill from there. At one point they said, “No, we’re not going to do it.” Harve and I kept operating on the assumption that it was going to work out and kept talking story ideas. In April of ’83, I started my prep on the picture, reported on the lot, and immediately went to work with Harve.
HARVE BENNETT
On Star Trek III I said, “Look, it’s got to be faster and more efficient than the writing of Star Trek II.” So I was the sole writer on Star Trek III, which was the easiest writing job I ever had. The reason for that is that since it was so direct a continuation of Star Trek II, the outline was already in place. I knew exactly what I had to do and I did it in six weeks. One of the virtues of having grown up in TV as both a producer and writer is that you’re forced to function at a rapid tempo. You don’t have time to overthink. And I recognized that it’s the greatest lesson I could have learned.
I see people in the feature business agonizing over treasured scenes and treasured words, stuff that makes no sense to shoot. It is the stuff of which colossal disasters come. No one wants to part with a vision. Well, in TV you don’t have time for those extravagances, you’re much more into committee thinking. Now, these things bear negative connotations in our society, but the good side of real collaboration between trained professionals is that no one steps on anyone else—there is a tremendous give and take of ideas in a rapidly changing situation. And when you hit something that’s working, everyone senses it, puts their differences aside, and goes on to the next problem.
For instance, I had written the Star Trek III script for Romulans. But Leonard felt that the Klingons were more exciting, more theatrical. I went back to some TV episodes and I realized he was quite right. A sampling of mail also indicated that the fans wanted to see Klingons. So I rewrote my script and “Klingonized” the characters.
The most extraordinary thing about Leonard was his functioning for me as editor. He would read my drafts. Now, you don’t get compliments from Leonard. He’s very Vulcan. Very tied in. His passion is contained. He said, “This is very promising.” I had to adjust to that, because I’m an enthusiast. But in the course of his method, he challenged me and when I couldn’t get what he was trying to say, he’d say, “Let me write a draft.” And he’s a good writer. There are pounds of stuff in the screenplay that are pure Leonard.
WILLIAM SHATNER
Leonard and I are the dearest of old friends. We had shared a mutual struggle with management in various stages, whether it was a script, a thought, a concept, or a dressing room and asked each other what we thought. We’d have a plan! Whenever we were to deal with management, we’d plan it out together. Now, suddenly, my “brother” was saying, “Well, you should do this and I think you should do that.” There was an awkward period of time for me, although I don’t think for Leonard, when I felt more alone in anything I might have objected to. From my point of view, it was more awkward in the beginning than with either of the other two directors. But that slowly erased itself.
EDDIE EGAN
There was definitely a different dynamic on Star Trek III, because two peers were at the helm. It was very much a Shatner vehicle and it was directed by Nimoy. As a result, those two were thick as thieves. I think there’s a place where the cast might have felt a little isolated from their colleagues, because of that dynamic being so front and center on both the production side as well as the acting side.
HARVE BENNETT
When the draft of the piece was finished and Leonard and I were both very happy with it, we sent it to Bill. He called and said, “I’d like to have a meeting.” So we came over on a Sunday morning to Bill’s house. Bill said, “Are you happy with this script?” I said, “Yeah, we like it a lot.” Leonard said, “Promising. Very promising.” Bill said, “Well, I just can’t do it.” The complaint was that there wasn’t enough of him in the material. That he was standing by, that he wasn’t leading. We said, “Let’s talk about it.” There was merit in much of what he said.
STEVE MEERSON (cowriter, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
The approach we were told to take on Star Trek IV is that Kirk really had to be the one to lead everyone. Not necessarily that he had to actually have the idea to do something, but it had to appear as if he had the idea. We were told Bill had to be the leader at all times.
HARVE BENNETT
You have to understand, it’s not quite as selfish as it seems. This is their career. It’s like a quarterback saying, “Who’s going to be blocking for me?” The actor says, “How am I going to come off? Are they going to like me? Are they going to love me so that I can make the next picture?” Being a star over a long period of time is a nerve-racking affair. So that’s where his trust was, and we had neglected to protect our star.
The compromises that came out of that were funny. Bill said, “I think I should be in the scene where Bones talks to Spock.” We said no. “You see, that’s a very lovely scene and I should be there. Why am I not there?” We said, “It feels like one of those moments when two guys are joined together and Bones has not really had his moment.” On that one he said, “Why don’t we shoot it both ways?” Then he said, “Now Bones gets to go up there with the priestess, don’t you think I should be up there and do something that makes it all happen?” We said no. He said, “Well, maybe that’s too much.” I said, “Bill, I’ll tell you what you are. You are a quarterback who wants to call the play, run back, throw the pass, catch the pass, score the touchdown, and lead the cheers.” He hugged me and said, “You’re right. I can’t help it.”
Bill is a Shakespearean actor. It shows in everything. He has to wind up to draw a gun. And Bill has, in candor, a great talent and a great ego. Did you notice the last scene a
s the cast is surrounding Spock? Who remembers where Kirk is? By himself. He knew where his light is. This is not a fault. It’s the way he is. He’s a matinee idol in the traditional, historical sense of that word.
DENNY MARTIN FLINN (cowriter, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
In All About Eve there’s a marvelous line where Hugh Marlowe says, “It’s about time the piano realizes it has not written the concerto.” You deal with star actors in every film and every television show.
WALTER KOENIG (actor, “Pavel Chekov”)
Initially, I was apprehensive with Star Trek III. I didn’t know what to expect, Leonard’s not the most effusive guy. He is by nature a little bit on the distant side and he never established a real rapport with us. Perhaps with Bill, but not with the supporting actors. He was always present and a delight, but I didn’t know whether he would try and interpret our roles, and that’s a concern I always have when an actor is directing.
He didn’t do any of that, he primarily directed by omission. He only spoke about your performance if he didn’t think it was going well. If you did it well, he’d just say “Cut, print.” That was it. He said very little to me either through the course of III or IV, because I guess he thought I was okay. I saw him get angry once because somebody had done something that was kind of a caricature and he said, “Don’t do that.” That was the only time I ever saw him express any emotion.
LEONARD NIMOY
I must be really naïve about this. I was surprised that there was so much interest and so much concern about that. The interests and concerns are valid. I just didn’t perceive the potential problems or friction that other people perceive. My fellow actors were concerned about it before we started doing the picture. I simply took it as fact that I had their best interests at heart. That I would know their characters well, and I certainly knew their potential well and would try to explore it. That was one of the things I argued in that period of time when I was asking for the job.
HARVE BENNETT
Do you have any idea, can you project in your minds, the sibling rivalries, the little passions, the petty jealousies that no one ever talks about? I’m not talking scandal gossip. I’m talking about the day-to-day grist of living in a family. “Well, he had the close-up yesterday, I think I’ll have the close-up today.” It’s deadly if someone can’t come in and make everybody pull in the same direction.
Leonard handled the Star Trek family in the most elegant way. He never raised his voice. He got the best out of them and I will tell you: they had fun. There was more fun on Star Trek III on the stage than I had witnessed at all on II, which was much more strained. And even I thought he got things out of Bill that were vulnerable, that were Shatner letting down his operatic style.
LEONARD NIMOY
I discussed it later, after the fact, with some of the cast, and they admitted to me that they had been concerned. I think the concern grew out of a potential competitiveness. I discovered that there was more of a sense of competition between actors than I have ever been aware of. That’s a strange thing to say. I’m an actor, have been in television and films since 1950. This was the first time that I had it really enunciated to me that some of the actors in the cast were concerned that my competitiveness would be a detriment. We got over that very quickly. Generally they saw that I was well prepared, that I was well intended where they were concerned, and they were given the opportunity to develop and have some fun in their performances.
JAMES DOOHAN (actor, “Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott”)
Nicholas Meyer was so in love with Star Trek and was such a terribly good director. He’s one of the best directors we ever had, but the best we ever had was Leonard Nimoy. The beautiful thing about Leonard is that when he directed the third movie, he tended to talk an awful lot, but he was still terrific. When he directed IV, he hardly talked at all. In other words, I can picture him going home at the end of the day and saying to himself, “Oh boy, I sure talked an awful lot directing that movie, I’m going to shut up when it comes to number four!”
GENE RODDENBERRY (executive consultant, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
I’m delighted Leonard Nimoy directed. I was hesitant at first about him doing Star Trek III, because I thought he didn’t have the broad background of experience. But then I began to think, “Well, he does know the show, this way you don’t have to break a new director in.” It worked out well.
Among Roddenberry’s continuing concerns—he was still serving as executive consultant—was the film’s screenplay, which had been sent to him. In a seven-page memo, dated June 3, 1983, Roddenberry cogently addresses the many flaws he found in Bennett’s script. Among the concerns he delineates are Saavik acting out of character, an emphasis on drunkenness, the lack of viability for the massive space dock, the “twentieth-century concept” of the Enterprise being considered obsolete, the automation of the starship that does not necessitate the use of a large crew, and the idea that the Genesis Planet is off-limits, feeling it “comes off like political foolishness seen in our twentieth century now.”
But his biggest concerns were over the MacGuffin used to resurrect Spock. “Suggest that the entire ‘regrowth’ of Spock needs some careful reexamination. For one thing, it does not seem at all reasonable that young Spock’s mind would be a ‘void.’ One could get oneself easily painted into a corner by stuff like this and probably deserves more care and more careful explanation than the usual story situation … What does Spock mean to the Vulcan race? These comments and this scene are really very difficult to understand since Star Trek has always played Spock as a half-breed Vulcan, sometimes barely tolerated by pure Vulcans. The fact he may be quite famous in Starfleet for his rare ability does not make him a revered figure on his own planet. Yes, the temples and the thousands of extras and the torchlight parades make for interesting photography, but do we really want to risk this if it comes off unbelievable or even amusing to some?” He concludes with a criticism of the finale. “Is the fact that Spock now recognizes Kirk a sufficient ending to a major motion picture?”
HARVE BENNETT
A great motion picture has a very similar last scene. It was almost, beat for beat, the last scene in The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. It is the moment in which, after the entire play, little Helen Keller is at the well with her teacher and she begins to get some understanding, and finally with her hand on his face she says, “Water.” And the teacher says, “Yes!”
The studio notes at the same time, dated June 8, 1983, reflect a desire to give Uhura a greater piece of the action, noting, “Film could use a few active femme characters, and Uhura is a beloved regular” as well as asking that there be some mention of Carol Marcus. “Need to reveal what she’s doing now. Wouldn’t there be some mention of her by David or Kirk upon their son’s death?” Harve Bennett’s terse response: “No.” The studio also suggests that Kirk’s infamous “I have had enough of you” to Kruge as he pushes him into the lava pit be changed to “This is for David,” and evoke the tone of Indiana Jones versus the “sword-wielding attacker” in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This note was ignored as well.
In Gene Roddenberry’s last memo on the final draft script, dated August 1, 1983, he doesn’t mince words. “If shot without revisions, this draft would create some fairly serious problems for me and, in my opinion, also for Paramount as regards the continuing viability of the Star Trek property. The problems I see have mainly to do with script items contrary to what has been established and proven successful in the Trek format.” He dismisses as hokey Scotty’s foiling of the Excelsior’s pursuit by removing a chip from their transwarp drive. “This could come across as unbelievable, even laughable. When are we going to stop portraying Kirk’s beloved Starfleet as a ‘Pirates of Penzance’ admiralty? It flies directly into the face of an optimistic future, one of the format’s most powerful elements according to every study and poll made of Star Trek.”
Roddenberry was also particularly concerned with what he refers to
as “Vulcan immortality” and the notion that Kirk, Spock’s “blood brother,” would not be aware of the situation; as well as the idea of Spock’s mindless body being brought to Vulcan to have his katra restored to him. “I can’t imagine,” Roddenberry muses, “there have been many planet Genesis effects around before, certainly even fewer of them involving a Vulcan, and this can hardly avoid being a very special thing. But the feeling one gets from the script now is ‘Hey, here’s another Genesis effect victim and his mindless body, so let’s climb to the temple on old Mount Whassit again.”
He takes Leonard Nimoy’s potential staging of the final scene to task as well. “A principal concern with the scenes as presently written lies in what the audience and critics may make of Leonard Nimoy directing Leonard Nimoy’s cocreation in scenes that read, at least, like a DeMille creation.”
RALPH WINTER
Gene was very involved in consulting with Harve on the story and during the production. But Harve Bennett is the one who was developing the story and producing it. He certainly developed this whole idea from its very inception, and it didn’t hurt to keep it on track, getting his blessing and all that.
GENE RODDENBERRY
Being an executive consultant is really what I want to be. Basically, my contract gives me about the same no matter what I do now. I guess after so many years you get certain privileges. I’d say the main difference is that they listened to me a little more carefully than on the last movie. I think Paramount came around to decide that, well, maybe it wasn’t just a big mistake—maybe there was some thought behind it all.
DEBORAH ARAKELIAN
Gene and Harve were a lot alike except for the fact that Gene had created something that Harve never created that’s his and it will always be his. Harve produced Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman and participated in one of the largest lawsuits known to ABC over royalties. Harve was not an easy man. He’s not a simple man. He’s very complex, but in terms of why II worked and III didn’t, you have to go to the script first and foremost. Everybody that’s got a half of a brain cell knows that there’s a huge difference between the scripts in Star Trek II and Star Trek III.