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Posted: |
Mar 18, 2015 - 7:59 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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It was a miracle. It was a miracle! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles... -- the tailor Motel Kamzoil in Fiddler On The Roof
TODD RAMSAY, Editor
"Jerry scored, I think, right up until Thursday night, the week before the premiere."
JERRY GOLDSMITH, Music Composer
"We finished scoring the picture 2:00 Friday morning, and saw the answer print Monday. That was the first time I was able to see the whole picture together. If there was any problem, that was it. There was no chance to change anything if something needed to be fixed, that's the way it went out. It was nuts. I went away for a few weeks of vacation, and for three weeks I was still rewriting the last reel of the picture in my dreams. It was a continuing nightmare."
JEFFREY KATZENBERG, Vice President in Charge of Production
"Show me another director who, at 7:00 a.m. on a Thursday, will get 18 minutes of music from Jerry Goldsmith for all kinds of different scenes, put in two all-nighters and mix down four reels of picture in those two days. I don't think it's ever been done."
Oh that Wise-Goldsmith combo. Pros' pros all the way.
I have concluded PART THREE and as I head into the homestretch it looks like this whole thing will have been read and commented on in just over a fortnight. Jerry's talk of taking a break and trying to unwind and seeing the stuff in his dreams sounds about right for me. And in this way, I guess I'm absorbing the frenzy and tension coursing through the veins of the creative collective genius that dealt with such relentless deadline pressure while making a monster of a picture. Their mental and physical exhaustion is becoming my own.
Eh, I'm naturally empathic. Just call me "Gem." And speaking of gems and precious metals and a guy trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck...
GOLDE
er...GOLDSMITH
"I don't know if I have a favorite section of the score. I like some of the V'Ger stuff very much. I really don't know. I do know that it's highly unusual that I enjoy listening to it. It's unusual for me, because as soon as I do a score, I listen to the album once or twice after I've gotten it, and forget about it. But this one I actually enjoy listening to. It does wear well, doesn't it?"
...and tailor-made shining stars...
JOHN DYKSTRA, Special Photographic Effects Supervisor
"Hey, listen, all in all, I think considering that it was designed and shot at the same time that it was being edited and dubbed and scored that the stuff came out amazingly well, and that's really the result of getting an incredible group of people to work on it. That was amazing. It was a miracle, it really was."
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Posted: |
Mar 19, 2015 - 7:14 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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JERRY GOLDMITH, Music Composer
"I think the picture, for what it is, is a miracle."
ALAN DEAN FOSTER, Story
"And, considering the arbitrary time deadline, the amount of money involved, the number of egos and principals involved, I think it's remarkable that the picture turned out as good as it did...I mean, when you think about it, it's really a miracle that the picture got made at all."
"I think it probably will make money."
***
All right, enough already with the miracles, the reading--she is done. The whole book.
The last 70 pages have been a lot of fun. All the speculation about the picture making money (it did), talk of a sequel thanks to the emerging profit (it happened)...
LEE COLE, Graphics
"I think it's quite hypnotic, quite a philosophical mood piece. The critics who were expecting a lot of fistfights in the hallways and a lot of action were kind of taken by surprise."
...(it is and they were)...
ALAN DEAN FOSTER, Story
I like the movie a lot....Good science fiction will never be a mass audience pleaser, because science fiction is not made for the mass audience, it's made for a small proportion of people who are highly intelligent, read a lot, and have a sense of wonder in their brains and imagination....How do you do something that's going to appeal to enough people, that's going to make the crossover from the science fiction audience, which will have no trouble with this stuff, to the rest of the people? A crossover film....'The Star Trek audience is out there, and these are the people you're writing the show for, and you don't worry about the crossover at that point..."
...(they didn't then, it still made a fortune, and they crossed over bigtime with number IV and made a whopping fortune), and more of what were hopes and dreams then is so neat to read now because of what we know now. Indeed, in light of fullfillments unknown at the time, reading all this today is all the more refreshing and moving.
I cannot praise enough the entries of Mr. Foster. He shamed the critics ("I think some of the reviews are hysterical.") by putting everything in its proper perspective and context with impeccable eloquence. Same goes for the citations of one of my favorite all-time baseball essayists/authors, Roger Angell (Ted Williams's last at bat, anyone?), who himself crossed over and evoked fairness and class, something that was missing in particular from the poison pens of New York critics who were lying in wait to expose their ignorance on all things Trekkian. In that regard, Time's esteemed Mr. Schickel was an island unto himself.
This EPILOGUE was gripping, condescension of professional naysayers notwithstanding.
From AFTERWORD (2014)--
LUKAS KENDALL, Editor
"I wish you and I could talk, right now, to see what you thought of this extraordinary work."
HA! Guess we have been and shall always be on the same page. Pure happenstance. Again. Never gets old. 
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2015 - 9:35 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Forty years ago found me at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago as a visitor. A h.s. chum was a sophomore there. On an early Saturday evening we were heading out to dinner via a shortcut through the student center. "Is this a meeting or something," I whispered, since a tremendous number of students were clustered around what turned out to be a TV set, sitting in rapt silence. "No, this is when Star Trek comes on. It's like this every week."
I got a real kick out of seeing these future rocket scientists and engineers begin their Saturday night watching a Star Trek rerun.
There's an old proverb that goes, according to one translation, "What a shame—yes, how stupid!—to decide before knowing the facts!" It wasn't a roomful of Sheldons that night--OK there were a few in his frat--but that's what so many folks have seen ever since TOS went off the air and the passion really came out. Geeks and the other extreme, costumed crazies right out of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley or something. Ugh. Critics both professional and amateur who shut their eyes to the science in the fiction and who don't distinguish fantasy from science fiction are so annoying. To this day I still feel compelled to take 'em all on, one at a time, grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
***
The scope of the book and the way it's arranged is impressive. There is something for everyone be they Trekkians or Goldsmithians or movie technicians; lovers of movies and moviemakers; readers of science fiction or watchers of science fiction films; or both, any and all. And ST:TMP is an impressive piece of science fiction, especially the Director's Edition. The latter has restored things the absence of which in the theatrical presentation vexed writers, actors, and techno personnel alike.
For me, the picture only gets better with age. The book has solidified that feeling. At the time ST:TMP premiered, I got caught up in mixed emotions that with time have sorted themselves out. This is what I mean about the arrangement of the book; it gives context to the evolving Star Trek phenomenon in real time and beyond. For the moviemakers...and for me too! Thoughts and impressions as my reading progressed, reflected here in my blog-like entries, effectively anticipated what actually came next in the book. That can only happen with a well-arranged work of non-fiction of this kind.
But I digress. To elaborate on arrangement/context: when it came out, for instance, it was "OK, a film from my beloved TV show is neat, holy cow they're all there on the big screen, it's a little too SFXy and the score's overblown." That was the initial rough impression after my stand alone as-it-happened-then viewing experience. But when viewed and 'viewed' in the context of what's happened afterward, I'm 35 years older and now it's "a magnificent trailblazer, the score's a masterpiece, gotta love that big-movie look compared to the rest."
And I've resolved to summarily dismiss with even more disdain anyone who complains about the length of the drydock sequence.
Context exclusive to the past and inclusive vis-a-vis the present also has me thinking of the movie's creators. Collective efforts came at varied stages of individual careers. What will they make now of reading their words spoken then? I have a hunch we're all part of some shared Who knew? experience. With a little Did I really say that? thrown in.
Will the book have a negligible "crossover" appeal? Maybe. If so, it will be for all the reasons described herein. IMHO, of course...
..."Herein." There's not much else to say lest I repeat content of previous entries, which I've already done to some extent. So I'm closing the book (huh boy) on this latest FSMessageboard challenge. Thank you, Preston. Thank you, Lukas. 'S been quite a ride.
PS
I'll need more time to nail this all down. Am sure the book will be a tremendous help.
message to self: good call
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I've enjoyed reading all your posts, Howard L - thanks for sharing.
I so wish it were possible to have an e-book of this. My reading habits have changed so relentlessly that I know I would read this in e-book form, and would simply not read it all as a paperback. I would happily pay the $30 for an e-book, though I recognize that most would not.
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Howard, what can I say, except "You're welcome." I know what I can say: Thank you! Every author should be so lucky to have such an enthusiastic, eloquent reader, let alone one who shares his insights and praises so publicly. Bless you and keep you,
PNJ
And thanks to everybody else who's taken the time to post on this thread! As Lina Lamont would say, it's been great to know that all my hard work ain't been in vain for nothing.
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Be of good cheer, Genius. If I'm reading the current page correctly, Amazon has both new AND used copies -- with only a penny's difference in their prices. My hunch is that there's not a penny's difference in the actual books, either, but don't quote me on that.
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Hey, Gang !
I'm happy to report that RETURN TO TOMORROW is having its official Book Signing/Launch Party at Creature Features in Burbank on Sunday, June 7th. (Kind of appropriate symmetry, there. The movie opened on Pearl Harbor Day, and here we'll be launching the book on D-Day.) Plans are still being finalized, but it appears that in addition to yours truly and his trusty ballpoint Greg Jein (one of the F-X folk interviewed for the book) will be there, with some dandy show-and-tell from the Motion Picture. Other fun and surprises are in the works, including some props and costumes and, who knows, maybe some other veterans of ST - TMP will show up to claim their own thank-you copies of RETURN TO TOMORROW.
I'm hoping to meet some of you who dwell in Tinseltown whom I've only known by name (and icon) at this Board…
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I hope to be there. I am a big Trek fan and this was an awesome book.
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He's a good lot of other things, as well, IMHO. I assume his book, which I haven't read yet, is as forthcoming about his prickly relationship with Mr. Shatner as he is in his radio & TV interviews these days. Way back when I pitched RETURN TO TOMORROW to Pocket Books, (as most of you know, then the authorized Star Trek publisher), the editor liked the sample I sent him, but felt he had to demur because the book was so honest and straightforward about the struggles that any movie goes through. It was only in later years that, one after the other, the Enterprise crew members started autobiographing and recounting how -- horrors! -- there were times when not everybody got along like one big happy family.
Anyhow, the cat's out of the bag, now . . .
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