Harve Bennett

[master_q 0]

"How Harve Bennett helped 'Star Trek' live long and prosper"

By Mark Rahner

Seattle Times staff reporter

 

(Picture From Seattle Times)

 

It's a stellar occasion for time travel and a glimpse of an alternate reality — two things as common in the "Star Trek" universe as a trip to the dry-cleaner.

 

With the "Trek" TV franchise limping along on impulse power and the best of its feature films showing under the stars at the Fremont Outdoor Movies on Friday, we travel back to 1982 and further with veteran producer Harve Bennett. Our mission: To learn how he saved it all with "The Wrath of Khan," and to find out how he'd do it again today.

 

Maybe that's two missions. Complain to a Vulcan.

 

"Remember, I brought back 'The Bionic Woman,' " Bennett, 73 today, says by phone from his Pacific Palisades Highlands home. "Nobody has noticed, but I bring back the dead."

 

If "Star Trek" isn't dead (... Jim), it's critical. The 10th feature film, "Star Trek: Nemesis," performed so dismally, making less than half domestically than its $70 million budget, that it may have euthanized the big-screen series. Meanwhile, UPN's "Enterprise," the sixth "Star Trek" TV outing (don't forget to count the '70s animated one) has never clicked with audiences. Producers hope to energize its poor ratings with a major thematic overhaul in the new season. (They could start with its theme song, a ballad from 1998's "Patch Adams" so widely hated that the studio received a fan petition against it.)

 

Is it possible, after more hours of screen time than there were tribbles on Space Station K-7, that Gene Roddenberry's creation has finally been run into the ground? Recent pieces in Entertainment Weekly and on NPR's "Marketplace" have strongly suggested the series has run out of steam.

 

At the Imperial Starbase Society — aka Imperial Starbase Seattle — fan club president Collin Miller says, "I think the angle that they have taken on the current series has run its course."

 

 

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Ricardo Montalban was Khan, bearing a grudge against Capt. Kirk, in "The Wrath of Khan." According to Internet Movie Database trivia, Khan's men were Chippendale dancers.

 

 

 

Miller complains the prequel series, set a century before Capt. Kirk, violates what's been established in the other shows but could survive if good writers brought it consistency. As for the films: "Just quit while they're ahead — or just slightly behind — and go off in a new direction."

 

But he considers the second movie, "The Wrath of Khan," a high point: "They brought back one of the best characters. You just can't beat Ricardo Montalban. It had a good storyline, and for its time great effects. It's the only one I've bought on DVD to watch again and again."

 

Miller says even Trekkies (Trekkers, if you must) may not know Bennett, unless they're obsessives who also know the names of red-shirted crewmen who get snuffed in a given episode.

 

They also might not know that the longtime producer of "The Six Million Dollar Man" and Emmy winning "A Woman Called Golda" had never seen an episode of the show before he got the job, wrangled with its reluctant stars and furious creator, and forged with director Nicholas Meyer an epic of revenge and mortality. Kirk's old enemy Khan escapes his devastated exile planet with a whale of a chip on his shoulder and a Crab-Nebula mullet hairdo. He hijacks a ship and steals a "Genesis" device that can turn a planet into Eden but makes a big boom. His ensuing battle with Kirk leads to a genuinely moving sacrifice.

 

Bennett points out that his first show, "The Mod Squad," competed against "Star Trek" and knocked it into the Friday night "graveyard" time slot, where it died in 1969. So, in a sense, he helped kill it and then resurrect it.

 

"One could make that case," he says.

 

Bennett comes on board

 

 

Here's how he says it started: It's 1980, and "West Side Story" director Robert Wise's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was a financial success the previous year — even if its leaden plot earned it the nickname, "The Motionless Picture." Bennett's called to a meeting in Paramount chief Barry Diller's office. Charlie Bludhorn, the volatile Austrian head of Gulf + Western (familiar to viewers of the documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture") is there. Bludhorn asks Bennett what he thought of "ST:TMP."

 

 

 

A promotional card with a color still from "Star Trek II" depicting Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) with his phaser drawn.

 

 

 

Faced with career immolation before the bigwigs, Bennett says, "I thought it was boring."

 

Bennett recalls, "He turned on [then-production boss] Michael Eisner with a viciousness that silenced the room and he said, referring to the shaved head of that film's star Persis Khambatta 'You see? By you, bald is sexy!' "

 

Bludhorn says, "Can you make a better movie?" Bennett says yeah. Bludhorn says, "Can you make it for less than 45 (expletive) million dollars?" Bennett says he could make four or five of 'em for that. Bludhorn says, "OK, do it." There's your deal.

 

So Bennett sat in a projection room and watched all three years of the original series, taking notes. It was, he decided, essentially about the three men, Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelly), passion, reason and reconciliation — what coach Phil Jackson would call a triangle offense.

 

The 1967 episode "Space Seed," as the saying goes, found purchase. The Enterprise comes across a drifting vessel with a cargo of eugenically bred superhumans in suspended animation. Their rich-Corinthian-leather leader, Khan, matches testosterone with Kirk in an attempt to take over the Enterprise that ends in a rip-roarin' brawl — and the exile of Khan's crew.

 

"And it was great because it had such a clear-cut antagonist, because it had a man of an intellect which equaled the combined trio's intellect in a way, so it was a worthy adversary. And a man whose understandable passions — you know it was Ahab. He'd been harmed by all these folks."

 

Obstacles to making 'Khan'

 

 

Getting Montalban, then stuck on "Fantasy Island," wasn't hard. Bennett faced other obstacles:

 

Nimoy's reluctance: He was so sick of being typecast that he'd written "I Am Not Spock."

 

 

 

Bennett with some cast members, including the series originals.

 

 

 

Bennett invited him to dinner and asked, "What if I offered you the greatest death scene since 'Psycho?' "

 

That got his attention. "I said, 'Not only would that be sensational, but that would end your problem. You'd never have to come back again. You're dead.' "

 

 

Shatner's vanity: With a theme of aging in which Kirk gets bifocals and meets his adult son, Shatner pulled Bennett aside one day. "He said, 'Maybe we're going a little overboard on this age thing. It makes us look old.'

 

"I said, 'You have a quality that reminds me of what to me is the most graceful aging of an actor in the history of film."

 

That got his attention. It was Spencer Tracy. " 'Oooh,' he said, 'That's good.' He said, 'Oh yeah,' and he went off muttering about something, and he never mentioned it again."

 

 

The wrath of Roddenberry, whom Paramount had shut out: "Because bald wasn't sexy," Bennett repeats. News of Spock's death leaked to pre-Internet "Trek" fanzines with whom Roddenberry had influence and sparked a vociferous reaction.

 

That got Bennett's attention. With Nimoy now ready to bolt, he and Meyer moved the death scene to the end and tossed in a fake-out line to dispel the tension at the beginning: Kirk asks Spock after a training exercise, "Aren't you dead?"

 

Bennett shares other behind-the-scenes secrets:

 

• That really was sexagenarian Montalban's bulging chest. "You know something, I always thought it was. I was two feet from him on the set. There might have been a little push-up. It was a corsetlike thing."

 

• According to Internet Movie Database trivia, Khan's men were Chippendale dancers at the time. "I really don't know. I didn't associate much with the gang on the set except my people." Bennett says, "I definitely have no background for identifying Chippenguys."

 

His other 'Trek' movies

 

 

At any rate, "The Wrath of Khan" became a chippenhit and Bennett re-upped for the next three flicks. His recollections:

 

 

HARVE BENNETT PRODUCTIONS

Cast and crew of "Star Trek II," aka "The Wrath of Khan," on a set with Spock's coffin in the foreground. William Shatner is in the front row holding a picture of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock.

 

 

 

"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" (1984): The chance to direct lures Nimoy back, although it cheapens the greatest death scene since "Psycho." "It's special to me because I'm the sole writer, and I wrote it in five weeks. Because I had my beginning, my middle and my end in my head from the first get-go. I think for what it is, it's a swell Act Two of the trilogy that ends with ...

 

"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986): Bennett's favorite. "It was time to explore the comedy depths of these people, to really play to the camaraderie, the fun, the enjoyment of what 'Star Trek' was about when not fighting demons. And also because we did a little dramatic trick that nobody has ever much said anything about: There is no antagonist in 'Star Trek IV.'

 

"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (1989): "Five, you know, I don't care very much about. I didn't want to do it. It was Bill's turn to direct. He was passionate about trying to find God. I said from the beginning, 'Bill, you can't do this.' He said 'Why?' I said, 'Think of it as a TV log line, OK? Tonight on Star Trek the crew finds God.' He said, 'Well, yeah?' " (Bennett does participate in the special edition DVD of it, due from Paramount Oct. 14).

 

"That's the real bad one that we don't talk about," notes Imperial Starbase Seattle's Miller.

 

As for how he'd take the franchise in the new direction Miller and his pals want, his answer is a movie that almost was, called "The Academy Years." Here's what that alternate reality would have looked like:

 

"It was Kirk and Spock at Star Fleet Academy," Bennett says. "They're both 17. Spock is the first Vulcan to attend the academy. It was a story of prejudice against Spock, who almost dies in it. It's the story of Kirk's first and last love, with a cadet lady who dies heroically saving the planet or something similar. But its undertone is about racism. It's about redbloods vs. bluebloods vs. greenbloods. And at the end Kirk is alone. He and Spock part, and you understand why Kirk is going to run around the galaxy chasing illusions and skirts."

 

And there's your jumping-off point for any number of spinoffs. Approved by one Paramount suit, it was then passed on by another boss two years ago. "She said because they're planning a new series that goes back in time like this. And that turned out to be 'Enterprise.' "

 

These days, Bennett, a former "Quiz Kid" and son of one of Chicago's first female news reporters, is working on a book. What is it?

 

"You've just listened to it," he says. An autobiography.

--The Seattle Times http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/arts...25_wrath17.html

 

What do you think of his “The Academy Years” idea?

 

 

Master Q

StarTrek_Master_Q@yahoo.com

[A l t e r E g o 9]

What do you think of his “The Academy Years” idea?

 

That would be great for a Saturday morning cartoon.

 

I think if that's his big idea to save Trek then I am glad he did not do it, that idea has (or had(?) a life in the form of a Young Readers series of books, I don't see how a weekly series of episodes featuring aliens attacking Earth every week would be an improvement on what we are now getting, ENT is better than that.

[Admiral Kirk 1]

I'm glad that the Academy idea didn't sell too. For some reason I thought Spock graduated years before Kirk so how could they be in the Academy together?