Star Trek: Generations Cast Reunites at Montreal Comic Con 2012

Saturday night at the 2012 Montreal Comic Con featured an unexpected on stage reunion of the cast of Star Trek: Generations.

Well, at least part of it was unexpected, anyway.

The 1994 Star Trek movie featured William Shatner, as the original series' Captain Kirk, and Patrick Stewart, as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain Picard, together on screen for the first time. The Saturday night Comic Con event, entitled Reunion of the Generations,  featured  Shatner and Stewart on stage together.

The two legendary Star Trek Captains took fans' questions and riffed off of each other for close to an hour,  often whipping the capacity crowd up into a frenzy of applause and laughter.

The two cultural icons regaled the crowd with, among other things, an amusing rant about constantly being asked "What's your favourite episode?" and how they would both love to be in a "J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie". Shatner also added that he, interestingly, is currently working on a documentary film about the making of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series.

About three quarters of the way through the show, a fan  asked question about about who Captains Kirk and Picard's greatest nemesis was.  Just then, a voice was heard quoting the line "Time is the fire in which we burn".


The line, of course, was uttered by the film's villain, Dr. Tollian Soran, played by none other than Malcolm McDowell (who was scheduled to appear at Comic Con the next day).

While the audience was still contemplating the fact the fan appeared to have just delivered the best McDowell impersonation they had ever heard, McDowell then quickly emerged from backstage to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. 

McDowell and Stewart have,  it turns out, known each other since their days with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stewart pointed out that McDowell first appeared on stage with him as a "spear carrier" in a mid 1960's production of William Shakespeare's Henry The VIII, Part One. There was some controversy amongst the two about the actual year they met. McDowell saying it was '65 and Stewart '66 (though another online source puts their first meeting in 1964).

Messrs Shatner, Stewart and McDowell then went on to lament the death of Captain Kirk in Generations. McDowell pointed out that "[Star Trek Generations producer and co-writer] Rick Berman could have written you a better death". "They had you shot in the behind", Stewart quickly aware of much of the fan dissatisfaction with the onscreen death of Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations.

Throughout the onstage Generations cast reunion, there was no mention of some recent controversial comments McDowell made about the Trek franchise. Appearing at Hero Complex, an event hosted by the Los Angeles Times last June, McDowell said that in Star Trek Generations, he "got to be the guy who shut Shatner up.”, adding, in reference to the Star Trek movie franchise, that he "did them a favor,”.  In the same interview, McDowell continued his unabashed criticism of Trek, "...you have Patrick Stewart spouting off for another 40 minutes. If you find that exciting, hey, go watch paint dry", he said. He then went on to praise J.J. Abrams for "actually making some good [Star Trek] movies".


 

However, as McDowell and Stewart hugged each other on stage Saturday night, it seemed that, apparently, all had been forgiven, or at least, forgotten.

Ernest Borgnine's Top Nine

Sorry, Ernie, I just could not resist that title.

Ernest Borgnine has always been one of my favourite actors. He's one of my few faves who have stood the both the test of time of my learning something about the craft of acting.

Above all, the man had presence.  He also had an amazing ability to make just about any line of dialogue his own, no matter how badly written it may have been. It's no surprise that Borgnine had a 61 year career in which he racked up -get this- 203 IMDB screen credits.

He didn't even appear in his first film until he was 34 years old. In fact, he didn't even take up acting until after leaving the US Navy at the end of World War II.

Mr. Borgnine kept working right up till the end. He was nominated for an Emmy at the age of 92 for his performance in the final episode of ER. He's still got one more movie,  The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez, coming out later this year. 

On top of that, how many actors do you know of whose obituaries read "Star of From Here to Eternity and SpongeBob SquarePants Dies"?

These are nine of my Ernest Borgnine faves.


9. The Devil's Rain (1975)

Ernest Borgnine is The Devil.

Okay, I'm going to admit to a bit of bias here.Any movie that's got Borgnine and William Shatner  in it can't be all bad, right?

Um, well, not so much.

This is where that part about Borgnine being able to own even badly written dialogue comes in. More than anything else, though, I just love the idea of Borgnine as The Devil.

I know. I know. Typecasting, right?

Well, in fact, Borgnine plays more of a centuries old warlock who leads this coven of witches. The Devil thing comes later. Oh, and along the way, he transforms Shatner into an unwilling servant of Satan.

In his 2008 autobiography, Ernie, Borgnine talks about working with Shatner: "Bill Shatner is a hoot. He has a kind of florid style, as do I, and he's just so entertaining to watch on the set and on the screen."





8. McHale's Navy (1962-66)

There are not a lot of actors who could pull off the kind of career move Ernest Borgnine made with McHale's Navy. He had a successful career as an Oscar winning dramatic actor but Borgnine basically set all that aside for four years. From 1962-66, he starred in McHale's Navy, a half hour TV comedy series about a wacky US Navy PT boat during World War II.


The show contained some pretty over-the-top and dated comedy. Borgnine starred alongside future Carol Burnett Show and Dorf star, Tim Conway. 


Such a move may well have killed the careers of many actors (especially back in the days when there was little or no star crossover from TV to movies),  but not Borgnine. Once the series was cancelled, he managed to pick up his dramatic career once again with roles in big movies like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra. 






7.Willard (1971)

Borgnine was often typecast in the likable sidekick role. Every once in a while, though, he'd get to play the heavy (no pun intended, seriously). 


In Willard, Borgnine plays the boss of the titular character. It seems this boss is attempting to take control of Willard's deceased father's company and squeeze Willard out of the business completely. Complicating things is the fact that Willard is an oddball social misfit whose only friends in life are rats. 


Willard trains his rats to become lean mean killing machine rodents. Borgnine is so perfectly unlikable in the role that (SPOILER ALERT) the audience is not really all that broken up to see him get eaten alive by a pack of viscous attack rats while falling out a window. 

In those pre-CGI days, you just know that at some point Ernie had to deal with real rats crawling all over him during shooting.





Remade in 2003 with Crispin Glover as Willard and R. Lee Ermey in Borgnine's role.






6. SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-2011)

Around the mid 90's, when Ernie was still a spritely young man in his late 70's, he began doing animation voice-over work. In his book, Borgnine describes voice work as "almost like stealing money, to put it bluntly." He's right. It can pay very well sometimes; better than TV or movie roles, in some cases, and under decidedly less demanding circumstances.


Aside from the allegedly easy cash, Borgnine suddenly found a whole new audience in animation. There is a whole generation who only know him as the voice of the superhero Mermaid Man from extremely popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants.  Borgnine voices the aged version of Mermaid Man, a character that is clearly a satirical take on the DC comics superhero, Aquaman (and 1960's TV series of the same name). Mermaid Man's sidekick, Barnacle Boy, is voiced by Borgnine's old co-star from McHale's Navy, Tim Conway.




5. The Dirty Dozen(1967)

The Dirty Dozen is something of a legend in the category of classic "guy" movies. It also boasts quite the impressive cast: Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, John Cassevetes, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy and, of course, Ernie.

His role is not really that big. He plays General Worden, the man who concocts a plan to recruit a team of military prisoners for a suicide mission in Nazi occupied Europe during WWII. The General then hands it all over to a reluctant Lee Marvin. Borgnine doesn't get to do any running around or fighting in this one but, nonetheless, he is very effective in the part of the seemingly blundering General. And, man, he certainly holds his own in those scenes with Lee Marvin.

A made-for-TV sequel, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission, was made in 1986. Borgnine reprized his role as General Worden. The events of that movie take place shortly after the end of the original Dirty Dozen. One thing that I could not get over while watching the sequel was how the poor General seemed to have aged almost 20 years in just a matter of weeks.


 




4.From Here to Eternity (1953)

By the time From Here to Eternity made it to the screen, James Jones' hard hitting novel about US military life just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was pretty watered down. Much of the sex, violence and the existential lack of morality that made the book memorable was either toned way down or cut out altogether.

In the "toned way down" department, that included the character of the violently abusive Sgt "Fatso" Judson. Nonetheless, Borgnine's performance as "Fatso" did put him on the map in Hollywood. From Here to Eternity was his first real outing into the "big leagues", as he called it. He co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra. Borgnine's character was, well, was not so nice to the latter.  


Ernie was apparently complimented by James Jones himself during a visit to the set. Jones felt that Borgnine was, despite the script adjustments, very authentic to the spirit of the original character in his book.

3. The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Wild Bunch is a lot of things. In its day, it was one of the most violent movies ever released. Today, it is still considered one of the greatest Westerns ever made (and, really, kinda tame in the violence department by today's standards). The Wild Bunch is also seen as part of the beginning of the end of the genre of the Western.

Even in 1969, Borgnine was considered one of the older guys in these ensemble pieces.  In The Wild Bunch, he fit in a bit better age wise. He plays Dutch Engstrom, one of a group of aging outlaws that also consists of William Holden and Robert Ryan. He was 51 at the time and it was his most physically demanding role to date. In Borgnine's words, "it was not much fun to make." 


I bet. That final 12 minute gun battle is grueling just watching it. I can't even imagine what it woulda been like shooting that sucker.









2. The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Speaking of movies that "weren't much fun to make", Borgnine speaks similarly of The Poseidon Adventure. "Fourteen weeks of backbreaking work", he called it. The result, though, turned out to be Borgnine's biggest box office success. Once again, he was part of an ensemble cast including Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowell, and starring as Borgnine's wife, Stella Stevens. 


The Poseidon Adventure is one my personal faves of the 70's disaster movies. It's a pretty simple plot, really. Right at midnight on New Year's Eve, a tidal wave hits a big luxury ocean liner and turns it upside down. A group of surviving passengers try and find their way to the top/bottom of the ship before it sinks. 


Borgnine is great in this movie. He's saddled with some really cheesy dialogue in places but, boy, he nails that shit anyway. I just remember the way he stares down Gene Hackman (playing a Reverend who is attempting to lead the rescue effort) with the line "And who the hell are you? God?!".

Another favourite scene of mine is where Borgnine's wife has lost a good part of her evening gown so Borgnine takes off his shirt so she can cover herself. Clearly, this was a cheap exploitative ploy on the part of producer Irwin Allen to gratuitously make Ernie to spend the bulk of the film in his undershirt.





1. Marty (1955)

Marty is a film based on the teleplay of the same name by Paddy Chayefsky and it's the movie that Ernest Borgnine won his Best Actor Oscar for.

And it is quite a performance too. As the 34 year old socially awkward unmarried man still living with his mother, Ernie maintains an understated charm and grace. Back in 1955, apparently, a single man in his 30's' only option was, of course, to continue living with his mom.

In addition to the Oscar for Best Actor, the movie also won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The Academy tends to swing three ways for Best Picture: epics, small character driven films and films that deal with social/political issues that may or may not fit into the first two categories. Marty is part of that small character driven films category. That's why Borgnine is crucial to its success.

Up against James Cagney, James Dean, Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, Borgnine did not expect to win the Oscar. He was so sure of it, in fact, that at the time his name was announced during the Academy Awards, he had fallen asleep in his chair.


Fair enough. The Oscar ceremony can get seriously dull sometimes.

 


Thanks for all the fun, Ernie!

Ernest Borgnine 1917-2012

RIP

My Adventures in YouTube Land

In the roughly year and a half that I have been blogging and article writing, I have found that, as a relatively new contributor to the land of Internet discourse, the general tone of discussions and debates that I've been involved in have been surprisingly reasonable. The comments I've gotten on "He Had on a Hat" and on my articles for other online writing have, while often in disagreement with my ideas and opinions, remained relatively positive and reasonable.

All that seemed to change, though, once I started posting videos on YouTube. For some reason, on YoutTube, unlike blogs and web articles, the member comments are much more raw and the opinions more unbridled. I began posting videos on YouTube innocently enough. There was some stuff I was kinda expecting certain types of reactions to. Like, for instance, the responses to this scene from the 1972 movie Catlow, in which Leonard Nimoy lets it all hang out...




Typical comments from other YouTubers went something like this:

 "To see Leonard fighting naked is the hottest thing ever! O.o"

And so on and so forth...but even in this case, there were a few comments that surprised me:


"oh man, you don't really see anything important. So disappointed :( lol "

Then there was this little edit I made featuring a montage of Chuck Heston's religious epic roles set to Johnny Cash covering a Depeche Mode song



There were several potential sources of outrage there from fans of either Heston, Cash, Depeche Mode, Jesus or all four but, nope, not a single comment.

Interesting.

Even when I called the fan classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on its lack of originality....



Nothin'. Trekkies? Trekkers? Geeks? Nope.

No contest on that one either.

Then I dug up this little gem featuring a very young Christopher Walken on an episode of the original 1960's version of the TV series, Hawaii Five-0:




While many of the comments I received either praised Walken or commented on how young the guy looked (many of them bringing, not surprisingly for YouTube comments, Walken's "ass" into the discussion), a couple of commentators took issue with the text I wrote accompanying the clip in which I referred to lead H50 actor Jack Lord as "stiff".

They opened by quoting my own words:

"'Lord, an actor whose performances could sometimes be as stiff as his hairpiece, is just a little better than usual working with the young Walken.' That shows how much the writer who wrote that piece knows about Jack. Copying the 'stiff' label is ignorant and shows he doesn't know the difference between serious acting and stiff acting." 

I quickly pointed out to this poster that implying that I knew nothing about acting or of Jack Lord's work was, to put it mildly, a majorly erroneous a assumption, most especially in my case. Anyone who knows me or reads "He Had on a Hat" regularly knows what I'm talking about.

Even on that heated discussion, though, I was later able to make peace with the Lord fans who clearly misinterpreted  me as being a Jack hater.

The YouTube comments, though, really seriously heated up when it came to this clip of William Shatner interviewing controversial radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Shatner's talk show, Raw Nerve.

While I quickly received a number of Rush bashing and Shatner praising comments, the Limbugh fans out there (and, yeah, there are a lot of them) soon took notice of what they perceived as a one sided discussion.

Here's one of the more colourful additions to the conversation:

"Rush is the best. I want to tell you little pinhead libtards who are clueless which looks like most of the people in here are. Since we are talking health care, I've had type 1 Diabetes all of my life WITHOUT INSURANCE FOR MOST OF MY LIFE. During the Clinton admin, I went to the gov health clinics that Clinton shut down after 2 years in his term. It was the worst health care I have ever seen. The medicine was low grade, doctors were clueless about the disease, and it was full of racist brainwashed blacks...you pinhead liberals complaining you don't have anything BOOO HOOOO. Get a job you stupid stinky idiots. If you don't like what you have find something else and work hard. Stop thinking the gov should do everything for you. Stupid lazy idiots. Celestial Woodway is a racist. You people don't know shit. I have the experience and I know what I'm talking about. So stick your Obama dildo up you ass."

Woah, okay...I, in no uncertain terms, absolutely object to the use of the term, "stinky".

Seriously, though, a great many responses to these highly objectionable words went through my head. I felt that engaging the guy (and, yeah, I'm assuming it's a guy) would just dredge out more and more of the same extreme rhetorical hyperbole. So I cut right to what I felt was the real heart of the matter by saying:

"I am glad to see that the discourse remains civil and reasonable."

After that, I never heard another word from that person ever again.

Yep, that's how the Internet and YouTube comment section debates seems to work. You can call people "racists", "libtards" and even go so far as to label them "stupid stinky idiots". You can respond to these kinds of statements in kind and inevitably escalate the hate even further. But, if you take on a calm and moderate tone, well, that just stops everything cold. Some things are simply just not tolerated on the Internet.

Until next week, have fun out there in cyber debate land, all you stinkies...

Horatio Hornblower vs James T. Kirk

There is nothing original in popular culture. Virtually every big movie or TV show out there is derivative of some previous movie, book, comic, play, myth, opera or any number of other pre-established cultural archetypes. You may think a movie is fresh and original  but look into it and you'll find that the whole thing is, to some degree or another, a total rip-off.

For example, I remember seeing the Montreal premiere of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was a CHOM-FM hosted event held at the old Imperial Theatre way back in 1982. I remember really enjoying it. The whole movie seemed like a fresh and original take on the whole Trek thing (unlike the first Trek film but that's another blog).  About 15 years later, I was killing time watching TV between improv shows in the green room at The Comedyworks. History Television was running some old 50's sea adventure epic. I was half watching it out of the corner of my eye when I noticed there was a naval battle scene. In seconds I was exclaiming, "Holy crap, this is Wrath of Khan!" (Trek fandom runs high in stand-up comedy so most everyone in the room at the time concurred with observation). Turns out that movie they were showing that night was the 1951 film, Captain Horatio Hornblower.

The character of Captain James T. Kirk is often said to be based on C.S. Forester's 19th century navel hero, Captain Horatio Hornblower.  Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry reportedly used the term "Hornblower in space" to describe Kirk as part of his original network pitch for the first Star Trek TV series. Though he also used the term "Wagon Train to the stars", so you can take that with a grain of salt. Roddenberry later claimed that Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain Jean-Luc Picard is really the guy who is based on Hornblower. Roddenberry is up there with George Lucas as one of The Greatest Revisionist Bullshitters of All Time so it's hard to be sure of the veracity of any of his statements.

There is much less ambiguity when it comes to the Hornblower connection to the second Trek motion picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Director Nicolas Meyer openly credits the Hornblower influence on the Trek II DVD director's commentary track.

Captain Horatio Hornblower is the lead character of a series of novels written by C.S. Forester between 1937-67. Hornblower commanded a number of different ships in the British Royal Navy in the 19th century. While a skilled and courageous Captain, Hornblower is described as "unhappy and lonely".  He is a character that is plagued with self doubt and introspection. Hardly the kinda guy you 'd want to bring up in a pitch meeting with TV execs who are already skeptical about your whole "Enterprise".

In Star Trek II, Kirk, now promoted from Captain to Admiral, has to deal with, among other things, the prospect of aging, an estranged son, the kid's mom (one of his ex's from way back, also estranged, natch) and a bad guy he sent up the galactic river many years ago who is now bent on revenge. All that leads Kirk down the road of self doubt and introspection (but only during breaks between the action packed scenes of starship warfare).

The Hornblower influence on the Trek universe can be seen quite clearly in the aforementioned 1951 film adaptation Captain Horatio Hornblower. Starring Gregory Peck in the title role, the movie was co-written by Forester and adapted from three of the original Hornblower novels. With Greg Peck as the illustrious captain you get only to see a token amount of unhappiness, loneliness, self doubt and introspection (but it is there nonetheless).  In fact, you see much more of those characteristics from William Shatner as Admiral Kirk in Star Trek II. However, it's not just the character development that the film version of Hornblower and Trek II have in common.

It's the battle scenes.

Star Trek II has got some of the most exciting space battle scenes this side of the Millennium Falcon. Much of the excitement is owed directly to the naval battle scenes in Captain Horatio Hornblower. Myer was being a bit coy when he sited the Hornblower "movies" as an "influence" on Star Trek II. Hornblower director Raoul Walsh should share the screen credit on the Trek II. Many of the action scenes from Hornblower are recreated almost beat-for-beat in Wrath of Khan.

In Star Trek II Admiral James T. Kirk, along with dealing with personal matters, squares off against crazed warlord Khan who has commandeered a Federation space vessel. In Captain Horatio Hornblower, Captain Hornblower, along with dealing with personal matters, squares of against crazed Spanish warlord El Supremo who has commandeered a Spanish naval vessel.

To use a term coined by my sketch troupe, The Vestibules, nothing makes the similaritoid case more clearly than this little montage I put together.

Enjoy.

There is a scene in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories where Woody, playing a comedian turned serious film director (how does he come up with this stuff?) is attending a film festival retrospective on his work. During a Q&A, a cinephile in the audiences asks him if a horror parody scene from one his "earlier funny movies" was an homage to the 50's horror film, House of Wax. The cinephile winks to his buddy as he asks the question. Woody looks out to the guy in the audience and replies, "A homage? No. We stole it outright."

Mr. Meyer?