The Enterprise, brought out of mothbails one time too many in STAR TREK V (1990), the disastrous movie entry directed by William Shatner that almost tempted Paramount to call it quits.
The producer who tended Paramount’s movie final frontier on why he parted ways with Roddenberry and the studio.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
The Starship Enterprise's registry plate hangs on the wall over Harve Bennett's wet bar It is one of the few STAR TREK mementos on displayin the producer's Brentwood green-hued living room. On one mantle sits the Emmy he received for GOLDA, the made for TV movie about the life and times of the late Israeli premier Golda Meir
After ten years invested in four fairly solid STAR TREK movies made for Paramount (grossing anaverage of $80 million apiece), Bennett's regard for TREK is now ambivalent Bennett, sixty, pulled out of the FREK business last year when the jittery studio, at the urging of Gene Roddenberry, the “classic” cast and a hard core of irate fans, reneged on its commitment to have him producea prequel to the film series
Bennett had been asked to prepare the prequel when STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER, a film he had produced despite misgivings about its story and the competence of its director—and which opened to poor critical and boxoffice reception called into doubt the continued reliability of the major “tentpole’’—propping up Paramount Pictures
“We did the best we could on V,"recalled Bennett, “and when it was over, I went to see Ned Tanen, who was the last of the decisive people at Paramount before the bean counters took over, and he said, “Well, are we going to do another one?’ I said it was time to do the prequel, and he said, *Do it." It was later that everybody else asked for long meetings.”
The prequel was written by David Loughery (co-writer of STAR TREK V), in close collaboration with Bennett. It would have centered on the Starfleet Academy heydays of a young Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Spock is estranged from his parents, and becomes the first Vulcan to attend the Academy. Kirk is “a crazy hotshot, flying through haystacks on his lowa farm.” And Bones, a substantially more senior thirty year-old, attends because, having assisted his terminally ill father in dying, he finds his own life bereft of meaning “Our model, or mockup,” said Bennett, “was THESANTA FE TRAIL, a Warner Bros movie made in 1940 about John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.” The film starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ramond Massey, Ronald Reagan, and Alan Hale and was directed by Michael Curtiz The classic film, noted Bennett, would have served inspi- rationally, rather than as a blueprint for the TREK prequel. Like THESANTA FE TRAIL, STAR TREK VI would have functioned, said Bennett, as the gathering point of famous TREK faces during their academy years. The western had focused on a group of West Point cadets in 1859, including George Armstrong Custer, and Robert E. Lee.
Bennett conters with Shatner during the filming of STAR TREK Ili in 1984.
Kirstie Alley as Saavik with Shatner and Nimoy in STAR TREK Ii (1982), the sequel given a nautical, military action spin by Bennett to shore up the sagging franchise.
One facet of the western echoed in the prequel, said Bennett, was its preoccupation with matters of race and the issue of slavery. In the prequel, a new struggle against slavery is being mounted elsewhere in the galaxy. In a strange way, noted Bennett, his story served as an honorarium to Roddenberry, who had dared to tackle such problemsas racism before it was the place of television to do so. But neither Roddenberry nor the management at Paramount felt honored bythe idea. And Roddenberry, said Bennett, was too sanctimonious to recognize the recurring themes of his ownearly passion.
“We gave Kirk a genuine love affair with an eighteen year-old, her first,” said Bennett. “A lady cadet, she is hard to come by, and when she goes, she goes. The girl dies heroically. Kirk, insane with grief, performs his first heroic act against all odds. And Spock saves the day ina struggle with racist overtones, getting the medal of honor.”
The prequel’s purpose, apart from sheer storytelling, was three-fold: in Bennett's estimation, it would have enabled Paramount to dispense with the increasingly hoaryand prohibitively expensive triumvirate of William Shatner ($4 million a film), Leonard Nimoy (ditto) and DeForest Kelley ($500,000), not to mention the supporting cast members Shatner reportedly characterized as “The Seven Dwarves,” each now carning approximately $125,000 a production. It could also have introduced a new cast of unknowns, who, had they kindled the proper chemistry, might have reinvigorated a series perhaps otherwise destined for the dustbin. But equally important, from Bennett's vantage point, it would also have preserved a better launching pad foranother STAR TREK with the original cast. It was the concept of the Enterprise in an ongoing mission that actualy resounds as the last thought of the film.
“It would have cost $27 million [STAR TREK V cost $35 million] and Paramount would have been left with the choice of doing another movie with the young kids or “The Overthe-Hill Gang Returns to Save the Galaxy.” said Bennett, who reportedly was to make his directing debut on the project.
Bennett said he tried to allay the studio’s fears thata TREK movie without the so-called “Big Three” would bomb. He even suggested framing the movie with Shatner and Nimoy by having them flash back to their halcyon days while on a visit to Starfleet Academy. “Bill [Shatner] is the featured speaker at an Academy graduation ceremony,” recalled Bennett, “and he is looking tired. He is also considering a teaching appointment. The kids ask him what it was really like when he attended the Academy, and what Spock was like then, and the story he tells the cadets is the film. The prequel story ends over the grave of his lost love, giving us some insight into why Kirk never falls in love again for the rest of the STAR TREKseries. “Atthe end of the film, while contemplating her passing, Spock beams down and asks him if he’s going into teaching or back to the ship. They havea sentimental exchange, and Bill says, ‘Beam me up.” Unfortunately, with the resignation of Paramount president Ned Tanen, Bennett found himself without the backing to press his prequel through the system. Instead, he was asked by Paramount to produce a more conventional movie with the old cast in time for STAR TREK’ Silver Anniversary this year. Such a film held little challenge or magic for Bennett, however, and despite the offer of what he described as an enormous sum of money, Bennett declined, choosing to leave Paramount rather than seck an extension of his contract with the studio. “| have a reputation for saying the emperor has noclothes, though in a gentle way,” said Bennett. “I stand quietly on my principles. One can do so and prosper, but I think | was kidding myself after these last two years on STAR TREK.” Ralph Winter, Bennett's close production associate on the film series, stayed on, and Nicholas Meyer was recruited to write and direct STAR TREK VI, which began production last April, featuring all of the classic cast. Paramount plans to open the film in December, still taking advantage of STAR TREK’s anniversary hoopla, According to Bennett, the script strongly suggests that this will be the final film featuring the old cast. Bennett acknowledged that his impromptu departure from the STAR TREK universe took some getting used to. In his own eyes—and in the eyes of others inthe industry, he had clearly become associated with STAR TREK. “It was like a badge,” he said, “and without it, some people nolonger know what to make of me.” The Chicago native, who broke into show business during the “40s asa radio “Quiz Kid,” is hard at work on a new feature script. And he is being wooed by his alma mater, ABC, which wants him to make some made-for- TV movies and perhaps take over a series or two,
Happier times, on the set of STAR TREK IV (1986), the most successful of the movie series, (I to r) Shatner, Nimoy, Roddenberry, Bennett and Nichelle Nichols.
Bennett came to the TREK franchise in 1980, after producing such hit shows as THE MOD SQUAD, SIX MIL- LION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN. Bennett also produced RICH MAN, POOR MAN, the world’s first miniseries, and FROM HERE TOETERNITY, which he remains proud of. Bennett was brought into TREK’s inner sanctum by Paramount TV chief Gary Nardino, in a meeting with then Paramount chairman Barry Diller. Diller had, in fact, been Bennett's assistant at ABC. Also present were fellow ABC alumni Michacl Eisnerand Charles Bludhorn, the Austrian immigrant who built Gulf & Western, Paramount's parent company, and who, said Bennett, “resembled more thananyone I've met in my time the mogul image.”
Bludhorn asked Bennett what he thought of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PIC- TURE and Bennett told him. “I said it was boring,” recalled Bennett. “Bludhorn turned to Eisner and Diller and said, ‘Aha! By you guys bald is sexy!’ [A reference to actress Persis Khambatta, as Ilia.] To me, he said, ‘Do you think you can make a better movie than that?’ Isaid,*Yeah, lcould.’ He said, ‘For less than $45 fucking million?’
“Oh,* I said, ‘Where I come from Ican make a/orof movies for that.”
Much has been made about how Paramount cut thecostof making STAR TREK pictures by turning the task over to its TV division. Bennett said that in reality, this was an exercise in meaningless semantics. “It was a smokescreen to indicate that people shouldn't spend a lot of money,” said Bennett. “It meant nothing. There comes a time where belts get tightened and everyone gets fired, and people are gone, and we want to make films for less 1980 was a time of pullback. The idea we had was if STAR TREK II was presented as a TV movie, no one out there selling services would get the idea that there were unlimited funds to make a gigantic movie. STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE had cost $40 million, and people thought we were throwng moncy at this thing. The handshake we had was if it’s a good script and a good picture, Paramount would make it for the big screen.”
Charles Biudhorn, the mogul who ran Gulf & Western, Paramount's parent company, didn't think “bald was sexy” (Persis Khambatta as Ilia), and brought in Bennett to fix the franchise after the failure of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979).
Bennett took on STAR TREK II with little knowledge of the franchise. In fact, THE MOD SQUAD had runagainst STAR TREK until the latter as banished to Friday nights at 10 p. m., where it languished and ultimately died during its third season. “I was too busy watching my own show to watch theirs,” said Bennett. “I ran all the episodes and let it roll over me. What I saw that I liked were the relationships between the three men, and the sense of male bonding and family and the ethics, the morality—though there are times and episodes, and I can’t trace who is responsible, when TREK was as kinky a show as ever came down the pike. It was Grand Guignol. They had Kirk play an entire episode as a woman.
“Credit for the success of the show, of course, goes to Gene Roddenberry. There's no disputing his genius. But it also goes to Gene Coon, the hardheaded re-writer who made a lot of things work. I think of myself, sometimes, as the Gene Coon of the feature movies, Fandom never understood the contribution Coon made, notwithstanding Roddenberry's genius. It’s my gut fecling, knowing all the players and the material, that whenever the name Gene Coon is on an episode as a producer, they are generally the best shows.”
Ithough Bennett sat through many episodes of the old series, he found himself stumped for a story for three or four months. He knew only that he didn't like Roddenberry’s idea, which was to have the Enterprise travel back in time to become involved inthe Kennedy assassination. “It had the same problem that Shatner’s story did on V, which is that you know you're not actually going to meet God, and you know you aren’ going to stop Oswald's bullets, so why bother?
“Space Seed’ kept haunting me. I thought it was fabulous. It was performance. I had seen [Ricardo] Montalban when I was a little boy, while visitinga sound stage at MGM, and he was doing his first dance with Cyd Charisse. | was there to interview him as a Quiz Kid reporter. He always fascinated me. And ‘Space Seed" spoke to me. | decided we had to bring him back, and I called Ricardo, who was in the midst of shooting FANTASY ISLAND. We had lunch and he was charming. ‘You write theese for me!" he said in that wonderful accent-—I mean, the guy went to school at Fairfax High.”
Bennett said he turned to David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana and various other writers who had worked on the old show. He found them too strongwilled and dogmatic. “The Hollywood screenwriter has traditionally been the victim of interceders from above. When I was a producer, I was sensitive to that because I was always writing. | do understand what that means. Good writers understand that the nature of screenwriting is the nature of architecture. The good architect understands he must take into account the desires of the client, the terrain, and all the other external factors. It is not just that I am going to write the great American classic because there is only me and the audience. Thereare also 200 people who intervene, all of whom want to be fathers of success, It is a truly cooperative committee, and it must be managed. Producers and directors are the managers.
“But STAR TREK writers came in with supreme egos. | had worked with many of them before and found them, like most science fiction writers, very unyielding to comment Harlan [Ellison] was ina class by himself. He gave me an out- line on THE MOD SQUAD that would have cost $20 million to produce. When I asked him to think reasonably, he responded as if lwere questioning Allah. | worked with D.C. Fontana on SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and had a similar experience. I said, ‘Hey, we're not doing Chekov here.”
“There is a great difficulty using the recognized science fiction writers: not just those we used on TREK, but those who have reputations, like [Isaac] Asimov. Their medium is like radio of the mind. Nick [Meyer] claims that when he taught a class at the University of lowa, he ran an episode of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE without a soundtrack, and an episode of STAR TREK without the picture, thus proving that STAR TREK was a radio show. MISSION IMPOSSI- BLE, on the other hand, was pure visual, and you could understand it without any audible context.
“As a child of radio, I have always been comfortable with that kind of material,so TREK was a natural home for me. | like to hear people talk. If I have a fault it’s that my people talk too much.
“What | found that I loved, and still do, are these three people; Kirk, Spock and McCoy, STAR TREK purists always say Spock represents intellect, Bones passion and Kirk reconciliation. | think it’s true. Lalso think—and this is where Nick [Meyer] and I part with Gene [Roddenberry}—that STAR TREK is a naval show; always was and always will be.”
Bennett said that he only began to feel like a sharecropper on someone else's plantation toward the end of his involvement with the STAR TREK features. During most of those years, however, he found TREK naively appealing, “It was very optimistic and most STAR TREK fans will tell you that. If you look to its time, most of the science fiction which preceded it is gloom and doom, very paranoid. Look at Ray Bradbury's vision. Along comes Roddenberry, who has the good sense to say, “I have the light, things are going to get better, people are going to be wonderful. We'll go to places you've never dreamed of, there’s another West to be won.”
Bennett's viewscreen cameo in STAR TREK V, as the Jewish head of Star Fleet. Voted out of office by the fans.
The “save the whales” alien probe, courtesy of ILM, reaches Earth orbit in STAR TREK IV, Bennett's framing device, written in collaboration with Nicholas Meyer.
“Also, TREK has enormous snob appeal. It purports to bea program for the bright. If you watched TREK it was like going to a Mensa meeting. If you compare the shows of the ‘60s, as to intentions and content,a STAR TREK alongside a STARSKY AND HUTCH or BONANZA, you have something that aspired to as high as TV wouldallowittogo. It was smart.”
For Bennett, as indeed for many at Paramount, STAR TREK was a gold mine not yet fully explored. STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, Bennett recalled, reminded him of a ‘30s picture in which all the stars, male and female, were shot through gauze, because the studios wanted youth to remain young. But 1980 was not a romantic, expressionistic time for filmmaking.
“My first maxim was, for God's sake, act your age. |am the same age as Shatner, and was going through my own time of change. | wouldn't have dared trying to look like! was 25, and | wasaware of how silly Bill looked radiating this gauzy look. Even Leonard had too much makeup—he had Lillian Gish lips. I decided STAR TREK II was going to be gritty, about people and how they cope with aging.”
Where Bennett and Meyer differed, in fact, was over the issue of killing off Spock permanently, Meyer was determined to be rid of the greenblooded Vulcan. Bennettdemurred for future pictures, “In STAR TREK II, we achieved theatricality by killing Spock. Nick wanted to move on to something else, We went tothe mat only when I said that as keeper of the franchise, | have to give people an ambiguous hope. He said, ‘No, the opera is over, the fat lady hassung,and Carmen is dead.”
“I think he was wrong. There wouldn't have been a STAR TREK Ill or lV, which were pretty good pictures— and IV was the best of them. I always saw a trilogy as I stumbled through THE WRATH OF KHAN. (It sounded like Chapter 13 of a Saturday serial). In hindsight, it was a trilogy. You saw people staggering out of Il. You had really killed something, and there was a real chance there wouldn't be another STAR TREK because Spock was a secret weapon. He is the pivot, the true uniqueness of the show. It gave Leonard all his clout. Leonard was to STAR TREK what David McCallum was to THE MAN FROM UNCLE.”
With the trilogy complete with STAR TREK IV, Bennett did not initially want doto a fifth film. Meyer had declined Paramount's invitation to work with Shatner on his Goddebunking movie, and Bennett appeared inclined to follow suit. Shatner went to New York for lunch with bestselling novelist Eric Van Lustbader, who agreed to write a script for $1 million. This was before Hollywood was in the habit of paying such sums for screenplays. Paramount said it wouldn't pay and Shatner threatened to bolt. It wasat this juncture that Bennett was asked to climb aboard again.
“| was offered a lot of money to control Bill’sappetites,”’said Bennett. “They were extravagant because he didnt know anything. He had spent all those years in front of the camera, and believed because he had directed T. J. HOOKER and Leonard had done it, he could too.
“The real problem with V, however, was that the premise was faulty. You pick upa TV Guide and you read the log line which says: Tonight on STAR TREK the crew goes to find God. Automatically, and unconsciously, you know they will not find God because no one hasand noone will,and no one would be so arrogant to say what they're depicting on screen is actually God because others will say, “No, it’s not.” So we know we're going toface an anticlimax, a trick. The nature of the trick is the only suspense in the story. But you'd say this to Bill and hed say, “No, no, it’s the greatest adventure of all time,” And I'd say, ‘No, it’s notan adventure, because everyone is ahead of you,” So what we have to do is make the getting there as interesting as possible,
“Bill is a very quick and bright man, but he wasnt casy to restrain. He can be conned and intellectually fooled, and that was the only weapon Ralph [Winter] and I had after a while.” Indeed, while giving a talk to film students at the University of Southern California while Shatner was mancuvering to commandeer STAR TREK V, producer Winterattested that the thought of Shatner at the helm was causing him lost sleep,
“Bill would come in and present a concept, and he thought he was discovering the wheel. And you couldn? say, “No, that shot was used in LAWRENCE OF ARA- BIA, it’s not worth $100,000 to get that shot in, and anyway, it won't prove you are a great director. “Itis funny how first-time directors try to be pioneers in craft, Nimoy, on the other hand. is three yardsanda cloud of dust. Fundamental. Here's the camera—shoota movie. Willy Wyler shot like that, It works when the actors are working well, and the TREK family adored Leonard.”
Although Roddenberry has never acknowledged him as such, Bennett regards himself as the custodian of Roddenberry’s flame. Bennett came in when the frinchise looked as if it might die and he revived it. The plaque on his wall issmall, but he isas proud of it and what it signifies, as he is of his Emmy.
“It wasa big part of my life. | was given an assignment to do and I did it very well.”