News Introducing Fact Trek
- Thread starter Harvey
- Start date
If they had any sense, yes.
Say it with me: Typo.Christopher, thank you? I'm too much a proofreader's son. No mistake implied. But full first names are equally nice.
Yea, sorry about that.
They might have gotten the idea it was MGMTV because I believe at some point they went to the MGM lot to screen Forbidden Planet:
"Star Trek Fact Check: Gene Roddenberry's Cinematic Influences" http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/07/gene-roddenberrys-cinematic-influences.html?m=1
No; the memo you quote is dated seven months after the newspaper article above. At the time of the article, Roddenberry was producing The Lieutenant for MGM, so it stands to reason that he offered ST to them first.
As @Harvey can attest, Roddenberry didn't go to Desilu until months later, after Oscar Katz started in early April, 1964.
On May 4—reportedly Solow’s 1st day at Desilu—Gene Roddenberry wrote a letter to his agent Alden Schwimmer—who also represented Desilu—summarizing the meeting he says they’d both attended with Solow and Katz, which includes:
[...] We had already delivered to them a series prospectus [...] for "Star Trek", which Oscar Catz [sic] had read previous to this meeting. He declared the studio was interested in this project[...]
So the show was first pitched to Desilu in April 1964, ~four months after the Variety notice.
Roddenberry's development deal at Desilu was announced in the trades May 13, 1964.
On May 4—reportedly Solow’s 1st day at Desilu—Gene Roddenberry wrote a letter to his agent Alden Schwimmer—who also represented Desilu—summarizing the meeting he says they’d both attended with Solow and Katz, which includes:
[...] We had already delivered to them a series prospectus [...] for "Star Trek", which Oscar Catz [sic] had read previous to this meeting. He declared the studio was interested in this project[...]
So the show was first pitched to Desilu in April 1964, ~four months after the Variety notice.
Roddenberry's development deal at Desilu was announced in the trades May 13, 1964.
The underlined above is inferring something unsupported by the memo cited. Nothing there says they went to MGM, the memo says "we saw MGM’s 'FORBIDDEN PLANET'". It's more likely they got a print to screen at Desilu. Careful about jumping to conclusions; that's how Cash Markmans are born.
The memo's language is confusing. First, Roddenberry suggests they might "run the film again" to show to Guzman, implying they have access to a copy. But then he asks if it would be "ethical to get a print of the film and have our people make stills," which makes it sound like they don't have a copy. Or maybe he meant they had a borrowed copy but didn't have their own print that they could cut up to make stills?
I remember reading that they screened several sci-fi films, including Robinson Crusoe on Mars which Roddenberry praised. I always figured that Desilu was able to borrow the prints as a courtesy between studios. At most, they would have had to rent the film reels. We take owning your copy of a movie for granted, but in 1964 it was a much bigger deal. It just wouldn't be justified.
Agreed. So "run the film again" means borrow, look but don't touch, and "get a print" means buy one outright so they could cut it up to make stills. Or even just take their sweet time with it, if they had a machine that could make stills without cutting frames out.
So is it just that they wouldn't have had the legal right to copy frames from a version they hadn't paid for, or is it that they would've had to physically cut up or otherwise mistreat the print in order to create those stills for Guzman's reference? With library books, the general rule is that it's okay to photocopy small portions for reference as long as you don't copy the complete work. I don't know if the same would go for borrowed film prints.
I wasn't asking for certainty, just what a plausible interpretation might be. What do we know about how reference stills would have been made in the 1960s? What can we discover about the legalities of copying borrowed prints? These are potential avenues for investigation in attempting to clarify what the Roddenberry memo meant.
