Its March 1977, and theres a very odd party going on at Paramount.
The champagnes flowing, the glasses are clinking, but the atmospheres far from celebratory.
The dosage may be increased if the directors in town.
Paramount really had no idea what they wanted, Bryant recalled, the frustration clearly still in evidence.
It was a miserable experience.
On the front was a picture of the Enterprise crew: Spock, Kirk, Bones and so forth.
On the back, the legend:
FUCK STAR TREK.
Were in the UK, 1975.
Leonard Nimoy is looking up at a billboard poster, and hes not a happy man.
The advert, standing about 10 feet tall, shows Spock with his famously pointy-ears drooping forlornly.
Next to it, another Spock, this one drinking a pint of beer.
Next to that, still another Spock, pint glass empty, ears erect.
Leonard Nimoy has a beef, and its a legitimate one, William Shatner explained a year later.
Its about the merchandising, and its something that irks me as well.
So Leonard and I have had this battle, with whoever licensesStar Trek, for a long time.
I mean, kids are walking around with my face on their shirts.
Occasionally I see a postcard with my face on it.
People are exploiting us.
Little did Roddenberry know that his problems were only just beginning.
Gene, the series has been cancelled, Shatner joked.
I know the series has been cancelled, Roddenberry said.
Im writing the movie.
Suddenly intrigued, Shatner asked Roddenberry what the film was going to be about.
The story which followed was high-concept stuff even for Roddenberry.
So we gotta find all the original crewmen for the starship Enterprise, but first where is Spock?
Hes back on Vulcan, doing R&R; five year mission seven years of R&R.
He swam back upstream.
So we gotta go get him.
It was a bold idea, alright, but all a bit much for Paramount.
He demands worship every seven days.
He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes.
Hes a poor excuse for a Supreme Being.
The God Thingscript was duly shelved.
Both Roddenberry and Paramount knew that they wanted a grand story worthy of the silver screen, something cinematic.
The problem was, neither could quite agree exactly what aStar Trekmovie should look like.
AfterThe God Thingwas rejected, Paramount began looking elsewhere for story ideas.
Ellisons story spanned all of time and space something that certainly fitted Paramounts brief.
But a studio executive named Barry Trabulus had one small request.
Trabulus liked Mayans a lot.
Would Ellison write some Mayans into the movie?
Im a writer, Ellison thundered.
I dont know what the fuckyouare!
And with that, Ellison stormed out of the office, never to return.
Other story meetings ended less explosively, yet bore similarly withered fruit.
This story also failed to pass muster with Paramount.
They said it wasnt big enough, Blacksaid.
They imagined that the Titans of Greek legend actually existed on a distant planet.
Again, the story was grand.
It took in multiple epochs, aliens, and even the question of our own origins.
Yet still it didnt seem quite right somehow.
I said I would like to do a science fiction movie.
And he said, Well, Im sure you wouldnt want to doStar Trek.
Kaufmans enthusiasm forStar Trekhelped to convince Paramount to up the budget considerably to a more generous $8-10m.
For the screenwriting duo, the writing was on the wall.
We begged to be fired, Bryant recalled inThe Greatest Sci-Fi Stories Never Made.Which they finally did.
Hence the leaving party, the bottle of pills, and the potty-mouthed t-shirts.
I never have again since, and Ive done well over a hundred scripts since then.
Interestingly, Bryants strong feelings about theStar Trekproject dont quite match with Allan Scotts.
If we came up with some aspects that pleased Gene, they often didnt hey Phil and vice-versa.
We were kind of piggies in the middle.
Weve only been gestating for seven.
So theres no baby.
But theres an embryo.
To have Spock and Mifunes character tripping out in outer space.
While the story remained amorphous, theStar Trekproject managed to hire two of the eras most talented designers.
Together, Adam and McQuarrie created some fascinating work, including a drydock built inside a hollowed-out asteroid.
Unfortunately for Kaufman and everyone else, it may have beenStar Warswhich hastened theStar Trekmovies demise.
In an off-shared anecdote, Kaufman remembers hobbling downstairs one morning after a punishing, all-night writing marathon.
Finally, Kaufman thought, hed cracked theStar Trekproblem.
Rose, Ive got it!
Kaufman called to his wife.
Ive got the story!
At that very moment, the phone rang.
It was Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then the assistant to Paramounts chairman, Barry Diller.
Philip, Katzenberg said, Were in trouble.
Paramount had decided thatStar Treks future lay on television and not the big screen.
So with that, the plug onPlanet Of The Titanswas finally pulled.
In the wake of theStar Trekmovies cancellation, theories varied over who to blame for its failure.
If we had just gone forward and done it, we might have done it quite well.
In this case [the Scott-Bryant-Kaufman version], it was the script.
We felt, frankly, that it was a little pretentious.
Give me a break.
Roddenberry, on the other hand, blamed Paramount.
Paramount went about the movie in exactly the wrong way to accomplish anything artistic, Roddenberry complained.
They decided to make it a committee effort, and have no one really in charge.
You cant make a worthwhile movie that way.
Good movies are made almost invariably by one person carrying the enthusiasm and the vision of it into completion.
This is the way George Lucas madeStar Warsover three years of struggle.
He fought hard because he had the vision of what he wanted.
And guess how many of them actually got a shot at writing a script?
I want a2001[A Space Odyssey].
Star Trek,it seemed, wouldnt emerge on the big screen without a fight.
