New unofficial Making of TMP book

[trevanian]

Those Fluor shots must be from the back of the building, the other pic in the mag looks a lot more interesting (in an upscaled Glen Larson/BuckRogers kinda way.)

They were going to come down with a powers of ten shot through space to San Francisco and I guess dissolve into an overhead of Fluor like it was a part of the Bay Area instead of being in SoCal. That would have been a Yuricich matte painting (this is when Collins was directing, I guess at the point when MY was asked if the camera could FLY AROUND TO THE BACK SIDE OF THE BUILDING DURING THE MATTE SHOT [insert whatever google-eyed emoticon is most relevant here]), and presumably any ground-level wide shots would have involved his brush too. I think the advantage with Fluor was that in addition to being distinctive with its exterior, the interior has a geometric futuristic look (imagine Museum of Modern Art if it were a Borg construct.)

I gotta get my scanner fixed ...

Maybe the Fluor bldg in SoCal has gotten changed ... the fluor page DOES have a cool looking building, but it is their Texas locale, the SoCal one doesn't look like anything in this image.
http://www.fluor.com/about_fluor/locations/Pages/default.aspx
(you might have to click on the map after clicking on LOCATIONS to get the pics to come up.)

 

[trevanian]

Forgot about the Richard Taylor interview from last year, there's a pic of the Magicam model of vger based on Minor's design, for P2, then abandoned.
http://beyondthemarquee.com/21244/tmp-rt-mr-vger2/

Wonder what happened to those models.

Considering how flimsy that thing looked the remains probably ended up in a Paramount dumpster after somebody accidentally belched on it during a snack break.

Magicam was a union shop, I'm sure it was properly armatured. It might have been a little crooked (that's a reference to how badly they originally built the K'tinga), but I dispute your conclusion. Also, ain't the honeycomb design supposed to be extra strong?

 

[Maurice]

Wonder what happened to those models.

Considering how flimsy that thing looked the remains probably ended up in a Paramount dumpster after somebody accidentally belched on it during a snack break.

Magicam was a union shop, I'm sure it was properly armatured. It might have been a little crooked (that's a reference to how badly they originally built the K'tinga), but I dispute your conclusion. Also, ain't the honeycomb design supposed to be extra strong?

He just tries too hard to be funny... and isn't.

 

[trevanian]

I can sympathize; I keep milking a joke I came up with nearly 20 years ago, and I ALWAYS hit it too hard (to be fair, when your joke is a pun dependent on the jokee knowing the defining moment of Sophie's Choice, you're begging for failure.)

I'm much better with stream-of-consciousness throwaways (which when I read it just now makes me think I'm describing a condom for the cerebellum ... buh-dum-bah!)

 

[Captrek]

OK, I'll bite. What's the Sophie's Choice joke?

 

[trevanian]

OK, I'll bite. What's the Sophie's Choice joke?

PM sent. But in the words of Bones before he started singing in TFF, "don't say I didn't warn you."


To vaguely interested parties, it isn't any better than the ketchup line in PULP FICTION, just somewhat more inventive.

 

[publiusr]

I was thinking--maybe the problem was that STTMP wasn't long enough.

five six seven.

Now a miniseries is really needed for a big story like this--but here is a guess.

Had we seen the machine world looking at the simplicity of an Earth probe--very like some folks want religion rather than thinking, then even computers can become zealous. perhaps a sense of ennui, there. Samurai Jack proved you don't need a lot of dialog.

I wonder if the backstory to each character was done, game of Thrones style, STTMP might have appeared to fly along too fast?

 

[trevanian]

WTF? What's with the ridiculous shipping costs?

On the assumption that you live in the United Sates, kindly spare a miniscule thought for those of us who reside overseas and are therefore reduced to using extortionately expensive outfits like Reship.com when dealing with scumbag eBay and Amazon Marketplace vendors who refuse to ship outside of the US.

I yielded to your wisdom and ordered a second copy. Surprised they haven't sold out yet.

 

[Timby]

Has anyone received this book? I placed an order in July and have heard nothing about shipping, and four emails and one voicemail to Creature Features with requests for an update have gone unanswered.

 

[Campe]

No word. Was starting to wonder the same thing myself.

 

[Harvey]

Per the thread for this in Trek Lit, the book has been printed (overseas) and is currently being shipped to the US. It's a slight delay, but they're not about to take our money and run.

EDIT: This update has been posted on their site:

UPDATE: The finished books are en route by sea freight from the printer in Hong Kong, and are due to arrive at our warehouse in Los Angeles in mid-to-late November (pending weather and clearance thru customs). Based on the high volume of pre-ordered copies, please allow 1–2 weeks for us to process all of the orders, including the first 100 signed editions.

All orders will be shipped by USPS in the order they were received, so look for delivery shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday, and closer to Christmas for overseas orders.

 

[EnriqueH]

I'm glad they finally updated. Good for them.

 

[Timby]

That's comforting, but holy moly, there is no excuse for their abysmal customer service. It doesn't take that long to send an email that says, "It's shipping soon and we'll let you know."

 

[Khan 2.0]

well alright then. Was planning on keeping it for Xmas anyway - along with the TATV Cushman tomes (all for myself of course)

 

[Indysolo]

As mentioned in the thread in the Trek Lit forum...

Neil

 

[Indysolo]

And this was just shared by my friend and colleague, Lukas Kendall, on facebook:

"Hello friends, the oral history of ST:TMP is back from the printers and will start shipping on Monday. I want to give a little background on what this is, assuming this is the friendliest forum to do so...in 1979-80 Preston Jones interviewed just about everyone involved in the making of ST:TMP for what was supposed to be a cover story for Cinefantastique. It never got printed, and became a legendary unpublished book of Trek documentation. Flash forward some 35 years and I asked Preston if he had the manuscript, and in fact he did. It came to me in three Kinko's xerox boxes that I scanned at (appropriately) the Paramount music dept., then converted with an OCR reader, then spent a week manually fixing all the OCR boogers. Then a good half dozen of us systematically proofread it and tracked down some fact-checking matters. And our friend at Creature Features, Taylor White, took up the cause of publishing it. One heads up: there are no illustrations. Those were long ago misplaced—we don't have them—and this is being published without CBS approval. So we're allowed to publish text, but not copyrighted stills. That said, this is one of the most incredible accounts you'll ever read, with the entire cast and almost the entire crew. I look forward to reading people's reactions...!
http://creaturefeatures.com/shop/books/returntotomorrow/"

Neil

 

[Maurice]

Well, I finally found my receipt for the book (forgot I'd put in on my Paypal card), but I never did a confirmation email from Creature Features. I just pinged them to make sure they're sending it to me!

 

[One Lucky Red Shirt]

Im Waiting on the shipping email here. Think about it fellow trek fans. Soon we will all be happy and kicking back reading our copies sipping on some romulan ale. Ok more like egg nog. We will soon be able to say "the wait is over."

 

[Maurice]

When TMP came out there was no Romulan Ale. Stick to Saurian Brandy.

 

[publiusr]

I think the shipment is off the coast from China--a labor dispute with longshoremen is the hold up.