I received a shocking e-mail today from a Star Trek insider (who insisted on anonymity if I wanted the information). The bulk of that e-mail is quoted below. Some portions of the e-mail have been redacted to protect the innocent:
**********BEGIN TOP SECRET E-MAIL***********
In a shocking move late Friday afternoon, J.J. Abrams threw in the towel on Star Trek forever.
“I just can’t take it anymore," effused Abrams, on the verge of tears. “I’ll never get it right!”
Where did it all go wrong, many fans wondered. Abrams started out a pillar of strength, masterful and confident in his vision of the future. He was thrilled with the script, loved the design of the new Enterprise, and couldn’t have been happier with the cast he had assembled.
So what happened?
“In a moment of weakness, I doubted myself,” Abrams revealed. “I had added these really cool vectoring nacelles to the ship that I just knew everyone was going to love. One of the guys at ILM asked me if he could show the vectoring nacelles to his buddy, and I said ‘Sure, why not? Just as long as he’s not one of those nuts on the internet message boards. If you trust him, that’s good enough for me.’”
“Well, that was a huge mistake. The guy apparently posted the news about the vectoring nacelles all over the internet, and the fans freaked out. They all laughed at me. I felt like Carrie at the prom. So I figured, look, these fans are pretty much the experts. They know this stuff better than I do. Maybe I should listen to them.”
“I broke down and logged on to one of the boards. The first thing I saw was a thread from a guy named 'Gogley' that basically warned me not to listen to anyone. But it was too late. If I was going to listen to him, I had already ignored his warning. And if I was going to not listen to him and still ignore the fans, then I was essentially listening to him anyway, so I was stuck. And the floodgates were open.”
“I read polls, charts, graphs. I absorbed it all. ‘Should Shatner be in the film? Should Spock have a forked penis? Gary Mitchell must be in the film!’ Who the fuck is Gary Mitchell? I have no idea! It was overwhelming.”
“I tried to forge on as if nothing was wrong, but then I was filming last week and I suddenly came up with the perfect one-liner that we couldn’t use because of the writers' strike. There’s a scene where Finney leaves a control panel open, and when Kirk reports the mistake, I was going to have Finney look right at the camera like Norman Fell used to do and say ‘My bad!’ My same writers used that line in ‘Transformers’ and it brought down the house. If it’s good enough for Optimus Prime, it’s good enough for Finney. But I couldn’t use it!”
“So I decided fuck it. I can’t do it anymore. Besides, Nimoy was always drunk and slumped in the corner and could never remember his lines. Every time I said ACTION, he would say ‘Turn the rock knob’ which was apparently his only line from ‘Zombies of the Stratosphere.’ And I was like, ‘Leonard, do you even know where you are?’ And he would just stare at me bleary-eyed and say ‘Jim… Your name is Jim.”
“Plus, apparently some guy named Harland Ellison is pissed at me, and I don’t even know who the fuck he is. I think he’s the guy who played Gary Mitchell. And I just hate when somebody’s mad at me. I’d rather not even make the movie at all if somebody is going to be mad.”
“Besides, let’s face it. Simon Pegg looks nothing like Scotty. Never stay out at strip clubs until 4 a.m. on the night before you have to cast Scotty.”
“So you know what? The fans can take my vectoring nacelles and ram them right up their collective asses. I’m going to take the $147 million that I haven’t spent yet and head to Cancun. Maybe I’ll make that ‘Felicity’ movie that’s been bouncing around in my head for years.”
“To cover my tracks, I paid some dude to take a couple photos of the extras standing around in raincoats. I’m going to have him slowly release a few of those photos each week while I make my escape. The fans eat that shit up. It will be months before they realize I’m gone.”
“The fans can make their own fucking movies if that’s what they want. If they insist on putting Ensign Ricky in it or making sure Spock’s mom looks exactly-the-fucking-same as Jane Wyatt, let them go resurrect her from the dead. I’m out.”
“And I am only telling all of this to one person. The person I trust more than anyone else. You must swear on your life never to reveal what is going on. After I got burned by my only other friend, I am entrusting all of these details to you, TeamTrek. Protect them with your life. Good luck, man. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
**********END TOP SECRET E-MAIL**********
Forgive us, Lord. We know not what we do.
**********BEGIN TOP SECRET E-MAIL***********
In a shocking move late Friday afternoon, J.J. Abrams threw in the towel on Star Trek forever.
“I just can’t take it anymore," effused Abrams, on the verge of tears. “I’ll never get it right!”
Where did it all go wrong, many fans wondered. Abrams started out a pillar of strength, masterful and confident in his vision of the future. He was thrilled with the script, loved the design of the new Enterprise, and couldn’t have been happier with the cast he had assembled.
So what happened?
“In a moment of weakness, I doubted myself,” Abrams revealed. “I had added these really cool vectoring nacelles to the ship that I just knew everyone was going to love. One of the guys at ILM asked me if he could show the vectoring nacelles to his buddy, and I said ‘Sure, why not? Just as long as he’s not one of those nuts on the internet message boards. If you trust him, that’s good enough for me.’”
“Well, that was a huge mistake. The guy apparently posted the news about the vectoring nacelles all over the internet, and the fans freaked out. They all laughed at me. I felt like Carrie at the prom. So I figured, look, these fans are pretty much the experts. They know this stuff better than I do. Maybe I should listen to them.”
“I broke down and logged on to one of the boards. The first thing I saw was a thread from a guy named 'Gogley' that basically warned me not to listen to anyone. But it was too late. If I was going to listen to him, I had already ignored his warning. And if I was going to not listen to him and still ignore the fans, then I was essentially listening to him anyway, so I was stuck. And the floodgates were open.”
“I read polls, charts, graphs. I absorbed it all. ‘Should Shatner be in the film? Should Spock have a forked penis? Gary Mitchell must be in the film!’ Who the fuck is Gary Mitchell? I have no idea! It was overwhelming.”
“I tried to forge on as if nothing was wrong, but then I was filming last week and I suddenly came up with the perfect one-liner that we couldn’t use because of the writers' strike. There’s a scene where Finney leaves a control panel open, and when Kirk reports the mistake, I was going to have Finney look right at the camera like Norman Fell used to do and say ‘My bad!’ My same writers used that line in ‘Transformers’ and it brought down the house. If it’s good enough for Optimus Prime, it’s good enough for Finney. But I couldn’t use it!”
“So I decided fuck it. I can’t do it anymore. Besides, Nimoy was always drunk and slumped in the corner and could never remember his lines. Every time I said ACTION, he would say ‘Turn the rock knob’ which was apparently his only line from ‘Zombies of the Stratosphere.’ And I was like, ‘Leonard, do you even know where you are?’ And he would just stare at me bleary-eyed and say ‘Jim… Your name is Jim.”
“Plus, apparently some guy named Harland Ellison is pissed at me, and I don’t even know who the fuck he is. I think he’s the guy who played Gary Mitchell. And I just hate when somebody’s mad at me. I’d rather not even make the movie at all if somebody is going to be mad.”
“Besides, let’s face it. Simon Pegg looks nothing like Scotty. Never stay out at strip clubs until 4 a.m. on the night before you have to cast Scotty.”
“So you know what? The fans can take my vectoring nacelles and ram them right up their collective asses. I’m going to take the $147 million that I haven’t spent yet and head to Cancun. Maybe I’ll make that ‘Felicity’ movie that’s been bouncing around in my head for years.”
“To cover my tracks, I paid some dude to take a couple photos of the extras standing around in raincoats. I’m going to have him slowly release a few of those photos each week while I make my escape. The fans eat that shit up. It will be months before they realize I’m gone.”
“The fans can make their own fucking movies if that’s what they want. If they insist on putting Ensign Ricky in it or making sure Spock’s mom looks exactly-the-fucking-same as Jane Wyatt, let them go resurrect her from the dead. I’m out.”
“And I am only telling all of this to one person. The person I trust more than anyone else. You must swear on your life never to reveal what is going on. After I got burned by my only other friend, I am entrusting all of these details to you, TeamTrek. Protect them with your life. Good luck, man. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
**********END TOP SECRET E-MAIL**********
Forgive us, Lord. We know not what we do.
