Gene Roddenberry and The Making Of Star Trek....

[Maurice]

My point was that we only know that Gene scored with Majel and Nichelle, but not how often he tried it or how often he struck out, hence it's all supposition. We know we didn't get with Grace Lee (she always has said as much). We also know he was "hands on" with acrtess costume fittings and all that. I recall, Inside Star Trek claimed he wanted to score with some actress (Andrea Dromm, I think?) but the opinion was "pretty sure it was a non-score".

 

[Harvey]

For what it's worth, Andrea Dromm confirmed that Gene struck out when interviewed for the book Drive-In Drem Girls.

 

[HIjol]

Oh, but it is not just about who got couched. To try to put together the best "whole story" of the Making of Star Trek that is possible to put together. Now THAT would be really something.

 

[Maurice]

As I said before, the most reliable "what happened" info are the memos, and they mostly concern the script and production logistics, but not the day to day of how the show happened. TV being what it is, you'd invariably end up with what Tim Burton did in Ed Wood: dramatize the popular myth that the flying saucers were hubcaps or paper plates even though it's long been known those saucers were Lindberg model kits. It would be every Mark Cushman conspiracy theory mashed with every disproven anecdote and while it might be fun it would bear only a passing resemblance to reality.

 

[EnriqueH]

He may have or may not have scored.

Think what Hollywood would do with that?

They'll have him as James Bond Roddenberry by the time Hollywood is done with the scripts.

 

[Christopher]

I merely meant the love for a certain recent series of making-of books shows that people really don't know the truth and accept what is told to them as truth.

Again, that is an invalid comparison. The author of those books is claiming they represent truth, so if the audience trusts him and he misleads them, that's on him. But the author of a work of historical fiction is not claiming that it represents truth. Any remotely sensible observer can understand that its goal is to tell an entertaining story that's merely inspired by the truth. If an audience member mistakes a work of fiction for a work of history, then that audience member is a fool, and the blame is on their own head. Caveat emptor. The creators of fiction cannot be blamed if some of their readers are naive enough to mistake it for fact.

It's been claimed that when Gilligan's Island was on the air, there were actually people who called up the Coast Guard and asked why they didn't go rescue those poor people. Most of those were probably prank calls, but you never know. But that doesn't mean the show was misleading, because any reasonable observer would've understood that it was clearly fictional. Nobody can be blamed for how unreasonable people react to what they do.

I would wish that historical drama did hew to the truth since that's where so many people get their "knowledge" of history. I read where "Selma" (haven't seen it, I admit) casts LBJ in a negative light contrary to his actual role in civil rights legislation. So that's how many will think of him.

Again, the fault there is not with the dramatists, because the dramatists aren't trying to present the truth and any sensible person can see that. If anyone mistakes fiction for fact, that's their own fault and their own responsibility. They should know better.

The job of a drama is to be dramatic. It's not trying to be factually accurate -- it's trying to be dramatically satisfying. Clinging too closely to the historical facts would make for bad drama. If you want accurate history, there are other places to go for that. Fiction's job is to tell a good story.

Years ago, I saw Richard Attenborough's Chaplin and Tim Burton's Ed Wood very close to each other. And while Chaplin strove more for accuracy and took fewer liberties with the facts, I found Ed Wood to be a better movie and, frankly, a more effective portrait of its subject. Even though it departed more from the facts, I felt that it gave me a better feel for the essence of the man and his life. Chaplin was just a series of disconnected vignettes spread over decades, so it didn't have the same sense of focus and emotional arc that Ed Wood did. Of course, obviously, I know that if I want to learn more about the real Ed Wood, I should consult actual nonfiction sources about him, and I've done so. Ideally, historical fiction should inspire people to read up on the real history that it draws on, just as science fiction should inspire people to look into the real science that it's based on. Those kinds of fiction are meant to create interest in the real thing, not replace it. But it creates that interest by appealing to the emotions. Ed Wood may have taken more liberties with the facts, but it made me more emotionally engaged with the man and his life, which gave me more incentive to dig deeper and find the real facts. Fiction is a complement for truth, not a decoy from it.

 

[EnriqueH]

I like the Chaplin-Ed Wood comparison.

If a Roddenberry story were proposed as a drama or as a colorful story, that might be one thing.

However, that's not what this thread is proposing.

This thread is proposing---as I understand it--- to tell the story of how Star Trek got made.

So there's a factual theme in the way its proposed. So if I want to truly be educated on how something got made, I'm leery of a dramatized version since dramatized versions often take artistic licenses and distort the truth.

Did Bruce Lee really injure his back in a fight? Did Malcolm X really smile when he saw his assassins coming for him? Those artistic liberties take me out of the movie.

Especially when you kind of know the subject of the movie.

 

[Melakon]

Unlike for us, Gene Roddenberry (and Rick Berman) is not a household name to the general public who would watch a tv-movie or theatrical film. If there was a "docudrama" on how Star Trek came to be, they'd be wondering where J.J. Abrams is.

 

[RandyS]

Unlike for us, Gene Roddenberry (and Rick Berman) is not a household name to the general public who would watch a tv-movie or theatrical film. If there was a "docudrama" on how Star Trek came to be, they'd be wondering where J.J. Abrams is.

And that's assuming they even knew that much.

 

[Warped9]

Okay, here's what I was thinking.

The story is primarily the one of Gene Roddenberry and the fact that Star Trek was the most significant thing he ever did.

If I were to start the story it needn't be as a kid in Texas and then his family moving to LA. But some of that could have value in showing the things that went into making GR the person he became and ultimately reflected in what he created. As a film those childhood years could be covered in a handfull of key scenes that helped form his later thinking. As a miniseries you might spend a bit more time there.

His experiences during the war and in the LAPD would also affect something of what he put into his creative work later on.

But his role and experiences as writer and producer would really come under more focus when he created The Lieutenant. That would be where the ground starts to get laid for what would happen on Star Trek.

The making of Star Trek could best be reflected in the workload and pressures and conflicts as well as the creativity that went into it without having to delve into all the minutae of the series and individual episodes. I think that would best carry the atmosphere and overall sense of what went on. To cover the making of TOS in more detail would be more approriate to a documentary style project I think.

Where would this story end? It could end at a number of points. It could end with the greenlighting or the premiere of TMP. Or it could end with the beginning of TNG. Or possibly at some other point.

This kind of story could give us some better sense of the man and the people involved in bringing Star Trek to life. GR himself should be shown as the complete person he was rather than as mere deification or villification of him.

Just my two cents.

 

[Christopher]

If a Roddenberry story were proposed as a drama or as a colorful story, that might be one thing.

However, that's not what this thread is proposing.

This thread is proposing---as I understand it--- to tell the story of how Star Trek got made.

Warped9's original post suggested a "film or miniseries." I take it to mean he's proposing a docudrama in the vein of those that have been discussed in this thread (Back to the Batcave, An Adventure in Space and Time, Ed Wood, etc.). Not a documentary film, but a work of biographical fiction that dramatizes Roddenberry's life and/or the creation of the show.

Did Bruce Lee really injure his back in a fight? Did Malcolm X really smile when he saw his assassins coming for him? Those artistic liberties take me out of the movie.

But such movies are not intended to be exclusive sources on their subject matter. As I said, they're meant to complement factual sources rather than competing with or replacing them. If you have those questions, then you track down the factual sources after you've seen the movie. The movie isn't trying to be anything other than its own self-contained entity, a work of fiction that resembles real events and hopefully captures some emotional or psychological truth about the people and decisions involved, even while clearly not intended to represent the objective facts.

Of course, sometimes a work of fiction deliberately diverges from historical fact because it's using historical characters symbolically to represent something else. For instance, the film Agora is nominally about Hypatia and the way the Christian persecution of pagans in Alexandria led to the destruction of Greek scientific knowledge. But it takes considerable liberties with Hypatia as a character, making her something of an amalgam of thousands of years of scientific thought and giving her insights that didn't really come along until thousands of years after her time. Because it's more about using her as a symbol for something more universal than it is about being a coldly literal representation of historical events. Symbolism and metaphor are fundamental parts of fiction. Maybe Malcolm X didn't really smile at his assassins, but maybe showing him smiling at them serves as a metaphor for some broader statement about defying racism and oppression. The story is not meant to represent reality, but is using real people and events as symbols and analogies for the issues of concern to the audience. If you want coldly objective facts, then you should know that the place to find them is a history book or a contemporary newspaper article, not a work of fiction.

 

[plynch]

Christopher, you are far, far smarter and more rational than the great bulk of humanity. Your writing audience is also a much-smarter subset of the reading public (a subset itself of the general public.) I am not being sarcastic here btw.

Trust me, I got your point the first time that an entertainment company is attempting to entertain. Buyer beware, sure. But I also have a concern for the MANY people who aren't critical thinkers/consumers and will never ever go try to learn more about, say, Howard Hughes, than what they see in "The Aviator."

A couple of years ago the universe started teaching me to take care of my own business more and worry less about others. Maybe this is one of those case. Screw 'em if they're not smart enough to know entertainment is entertainment and they get their truth from movies. Again, not sarcasm. They should make a "seriously" emoji.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, but the thing is, when someone is talking about the creators of historical fiction and you use that as an opportunity to complain about shoddy historiography, as if they were equivalent topics, then you're implicitly (if unintentionally) equating storytellers with liars, and I think that's unfair. If nothing else, it's a non sequitur, because they're two different subjects.

 

[plynch]

There's still a part of me that thinks the storyteller should still get the facts right because so many people get their facts that way.

Sort of like all the role models who say kids shouldn't imitate them. But they do. You're a role model whether you want to be or not.

Same to those telling a story based on past events -- people are gonna believe you. Whether it's smart or not.

But as I said, I'm getting over that urge to worry about other people's wellbeing if they are gonna be dumb.

Been thinking of starting a pyramid scheme actually.

 

[Maurice]

The easy way to do a based-on-reality story is just sexy-it-up and turn everything into overripe melodrama and damn what actually happened. Reality is rarely as narratively and thematically neat as a TV for movie script requires. The trick with "reality" is to figure out a clever way to make it dramatic. The more you know about the subject, the more actual moments you can find to thread together into action or a sequence or montage or whatnot which illustrates a theme. If you have only a superficial understanding of the subject you're left grasping at the most obvious levers to create audience engagement because you haven't mined the source material deeply enough to find the gold. But doing the latter, obviously, is a lot more work.

 

[Christopher]

There's still a part of me that thinks the storyteller should still get the facts right because so many people get their facts that way.

It's not the storyteller's responsibility to play into people's misconceptions about the difference between fiction and fact. When I write a book, I include bibliographical notes in the acknowledgments and post online annotations with links to factual articles. Lots of writers of fiction do similar things. The answer isn't to restrict how you tell the stories, since it's not the job of fiction to do the job of nonfiction. The answer is to approach it as fiction while also encouraging people to seek out other sources for more historically accurate information.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Historical fiction tends to lead me into real history. But, I was a kid who read the encyclopedia for fun.

 

[EnriqueH]

There's still a part of me that thinks the storyteller should still get the facts right because so many people get their facts that way.

It's not the storyteller's responsibility to play into people's misconceptions about the difference between fiction and fact. When I write a book, I include bibliographical notes in the acknowledgments and post online annotations with links to factual articles. Lots of writers of fiction do similar things. The answer isn't to restrict how you tell the stories, since it's not the job of fiction to do the job of nonfiction. The answer is to approach it as fiction while also encouraging people to seek out other sources for more historically accurate information.

But if you're going to take artistic licenses, why bother making a movie about a real person? Why not just make a drama on something based on the person that inspired your story?

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story had a subplot involving a fighter that broke Lee's back and fought him in a tournament with a timer. TOTAL and COMPLETE fiction. Never happened.

Dragon also showed Linda Lee bringing Bruce Lee a copy of his book. The problem is: the book was published after Lee died. Oops. Credibility out the window.

If you're going to fabricate, you shouldn't bother telling the story. Why am I going to bother to watch Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story if I'm not really learning Bruce Lee's story?

If a person's life is interesting enough to inspire a movie, then the facts should be facts and the filmmaker shouldn't cheat or distort the truth to make something sexier or entertaining.

I consider that a tad irresponsible and dishonest to your audience. But that's just me.

 

[Christopher]

But if you're going to take artistic licenses, why bother making a movie about a real person? Why not just make a drama on something based on the person that inspired your story?

Because stories are about symbols and recognizable ideas. You want to build a story using a conceptual vocabulary that will be familiar to the audience, in order to prompt particular ideas in their minds. But the goal is to take those familiar ideas and elements and combine them in new ways.

I just finished watching an episode of The Musketeers on BBC America. That show's version of the Musketeers is different from earlier screen adaptations, which were different in turn from Alexandre Dumas's novel, which was based on real historical figures but took liberties with them. This is how fiction has worked throughout human history. You take recognizable concepts and characters and do new things with them. It takes both the familiar and the novel; they're complementary, not competing. Reusing the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan resonates with the audience in ways that new, unfamiliar characters would not, but of course you don't want to retell the same stories that have been told before.

I mean, heck, if you want to say it's wrong to use real people's names as the basis for fiction, you might as well take it all the way and say it's wrong to tell stories set on Earth or featuring human beings or having people breathe oxygen. Sure, there are some stories that don't feature those things, but quite a lot that do. It's absurd to say that every storyteller ever throughout eternity should be required to choose one and not the other. Then there'd be far fewer stories in the world.

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story had a subplot involving a fighter that broke Lee's back and fought him in a tournament with a timer. TOTAL and COMPLETE fiction. Never happened.

Yeah, so a work of fiction is total fiction. Good. That's exactly what it set out to be. Why would you expect it to be anything else?

Dragon also showed Linda Lee bringing Bruce Lee a copy of his book. The problem is: the book was published after Lee died. Oops. Credibility out the window.

"Credibility" is an inappropriate standard to apply to something that is not claiming to be reality. You're not actually supposed to believe it, just to suspend disbelief for the duration of the story.

If you're going to fabricate, you shouldn't bother telling the story.

But that's what telling a story is. It wouldn't be fiction if everything in it were factual.

Why am I going to bother to watch Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story if I'm not really learning Bruce Lee's story?

Why do you watch Star Trek if you're not really learning about outer space? It's not about presenting reality, it's about telling an entertaining story that uses elements from reality as the building blocks of a work of imagination.

That's the key: imagination. Imagination does not occupy a vacuum. It works by taking the things we know and putting them together in new ways. It works by taking what was and asking, "What if it had been this way instead?" That's basic to how the human brain works: imagination is how we model different permutations of reality as an aid to understanding and decisions. It lets us envision and weigh different choices for the future, which is a valuable survival skill. And when we apply that same cognitive skill to the past, it lets us envision alternate pasts, versions of real life that weren't but could have been. We can't not think of the world that way.

For that matter, memory itself is a process of fictionalization. We don't actually remember every last detail of our past. We remember portions of it and our brains construct a plausible narrative to link those bits of information together. Those narratives are usually more coherent than the real events, and with each new recollection, our memory of an event gets rewritten more and more. The reason we tell fictionalized accounts based on real life is that it's just how our brains are wired. And doing it overtly, as fiction, keeps us honest, because it helps remind us that there's a difference between an emotinally satisfying narrative and an objective fact.

If a person's life is interesting enough to inspire a movie, then the facts should be facts and the filmmaker shouldn't cheat or distort the truth to make something sexier or entertaining.

It's not cheating, because, for the umpteenth time, a creator of fiction is not claiming that it's true. It's not saying "This is how it was," it's inviting you to imagine that it could've been another way.

 

[Melakon]

The easy way to do a based-on-reality story is just sexy-it-up and turn everything into overripe melodrama and damn what actually happened.

And you know they would put in the scene having to do with Grace Lee Whitney's unfortunate encounter with "The Executive".