SLEEK, GEEK, CHIC
‘Star Trek’ fans go where few have gone before with new movie
by Mark Volpe

Once there was an Elvis impersonator who wanted to be a part of the original “Star Trek” universe. Seriously. You can’t make this up.

Using the original series blueprints (acquired via his role as a costumer on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), James “Kirk” Cawley and his friends rented a studio flat to construct their scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701’s bridge and began shooting a fourth season of the original “Star Trek” as if the show had never been cancelled in 1969. Under the title “Star Trek: New Voyages,” their pointillist, pointed-eared attention to detail caused a Trekkie sensation. Cawley’s gamble that the original series characters could be personified by fresh faces paid off, producing the finest “Star Trek” fan films (fan-produced tributes) to date. The four films to date are greatly ambitious in their production design and perfect in their homage to the original, so professional and well-produced, in fact, that many original cast members of “Star Trek” rekindled their old stereotyping roles to beam aboard.

Tonight, Cawley gets to play Kirk opposite original series stars George Takei (”Captain Hikaru Sulu”), Grace Lee Whitney (”Commander Janice Rand”) and Majel Barrett Roddenberry (”Computer Voice”). Rod Roddenberry (son of Gene) is onboard as Consulting Producer, and veteran television writer Marc Scott Zicree directed and wrote “World Enough And Time.” Walter Koenig (”Chekov”) is also here to lend his support to the “New Voyages,” having appeared as Ensign Chekov in the previous episode feature-length episode, “To Serve All My Days.” And all this because a group of fans’ will to hit the sky trail again was so strong? Strange new worlds, indeed.

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LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE SKY
Talking with stellar Stardust star Claire Danes
Interview by Robert Newton

At 28, Claire Danes would seem far too young to have two dozen films in her filmography already, but it is true, statistical tables be damned. From her debut as Beth March in Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation of Little Women to her dreamy turn as the fair Capulet in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet to recent stalwart leading roles in films like Lajos Koltai’s Evening, the blonde beauty makes memorable most any part she plays. In the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s dark bedtime story, Stardust, in theatres Friday, the New York City native lights up the screen in every way…playing an actual fallen star, and opposite heavies like Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Even though Danes has been in a number of sci-fi and fantasy films lately, like It’s All About Love, Princess Mononoke and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, she says she does not have a special interest in the genre.

“I don’t know many people who make a habit of making fantasy movies,” she notes. “It would be pretty limiting if that was your only strength.”

Despite the many fantasy elements that Stardust boasts, like flying ships, magical spells and wicked witches, Danes’s role did not require cruel stints in the make-up chair or talking to a tennis ball on the end of a stick and pretending it is a creature to be animated later.

“Stardust was surprisingly realistic for me, in that I didn’t have to incorporate many fantasy elements into the character,” she says. “I did have to learn how to speak like and English person and capture that sense of humor.”

Danes add that she was not unfamiliar with English writer Neil Gaiman’s work, as she had provided the voice for the character of San in the English translation of Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke that the MirrorMask scribe penned.

“I love the writing,” she beams, then noting how it easily passed her personal test of making her want to read past the 15th page. “The story is charming, witty, wry and crackling. My character Yvaine changes, which is always appealing. I liked her — she is knowing, wise and ancient, but at the same time, naïve. It’s a nice paradox.”

Though Danes got to spend the shoot in the UK at Pinewood Studios outside London, and on location in Scotland, Wales and the English countryside, it wasn’t the scenery that impressed her the most.

“I love [co-star] Charlie [Cox], and working with him was the most rewarding part,” she recalls. “He’s a very special guy. I was not familiar with his acting before this, and I was so impressed with his talent. He’s so appealing and expressive and honest — he’s just a really great person.”

Yvaine ends up playing muse to Cox’s character, a poor farm boy hoping to win the heart of the girl he thinks is his true love, but in stories like this, there is always a rub, and the one in Stardust is a sweet one, made all that more believable by Danes’s real-life affection for Cox.

At any given time, there are a handful of “types” in Hollywood that casting agents look for. Fortunately for Danes, there is a “Claire Danes type,” and it has kept her working for the last dozen years.

“Roles usually seek me out,” she says. “Acting is usually pretty passive in that respect.”

She auditioned for the role in Stardust, though, as she did for another high-profile role — that of Rose in James Cameron’s titanic Titanic.

“I don’t regret turning it down,” she says confidently, noting how she had just wrapped another epic romance with Leonardo DiCaprio — Romeo + Juliet.

A role that she did not turn down was that of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway revival of Pygmalion.

“It’s exciting and very daunting,” she says of the show, which starts in September and opens officially in October at the American Airlines Theatre, “because I’ve never acted on stage before, though I have danced. I was in a play in my freshman year in high school — I played an old lady — but I don’t think that counts.”

While it is not likely that Danes will give up her film work any time soon, she is focusing on the very different business of live theatre with the same dedication.

“It’s been a fantasy of mine to perform on stage for a while now,” she says. “I’m kind of scared with it looming. I think that it’ll be really interesting at the very least. I might dread it, I might love it, who knows?”•••

WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOL?
Talking with Sunshine director Danny Boyle
Interview by Robert Newton

Danny Boyle really knows how to get people talking. Whether he is creeping us out with dead babies crawling on the ceiling in a junkie’s waking nightmare in Trainspotting, scaring the hell out of us in the apocalyptic ‘nad-blow 28 Days Later or pondering the innocence of childhood so simply and beautifully in Millions, his efforts never pass quietly as footnotes. Now, in Sunshine, the 50-year-old English director (who once turned down a chance to direct an installment of Harry Potter) takes on another genre — science fiction — with a story by frequent collaborator Alex Garland about a mission to jump-start our dying sun with a bomb the size of Manhattan. Boyle never loses sight of the “what if?” of any story fantastical or mundane, and always follows it up with the kind of detail that makes the worlds in which he plays so believable and complete. That dedication and vision is in full effect here.

“I prefer not to hamper around stars egos and not work around star schedules,” Boyle says of his non-celestial employees. “I’d rather take a bit less money and create a world of extreme scenarios, in which the individual within it is trying to remain sane. That’s what appeals to me.”

The cast, which includes the regal Michelle Yeoh, the chronically pretty Cillian Murphy and rugged Sudbury native Chris Evans, hailed from all over the globe, so Boyle had to affect some kind of familiarity between them, all within the budget and shooting schedule.

“We put them in student housing for two weeks, and through a mini training camp,” Boyle explains. “We had to make it seem like they’d been together for 16 months, so you pummel them with information and experience until the ‘actor’s bubble’ bursts. It was quite claustrophobic, with the same actors on the same sets for so long, but we had no problems.” (more…)

In 1981, Ken Tipton was living the American Dream. He and his wife Carol had just opened Video Library, the first video rental store in St. Louis, and business was booming. Throughout the 1980s, the chain expanded through franchising, with stores in Missouri, Illinois and Texas.

Trouble was brewing, though. From the start, the Tiptons’ high-profile stores were the targets of the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s fundamentalist Christian organization, the National Federation for Decency (NFD). The NFD insisted that Video Library remove from its inventory movies that they deemed “…obscene or a detriment to the community and its children.” Among the ranks of these moral spine-benders were Hail Mary, Taxi Driver, Agnes of God, Blazing Saddles, Animal House, Mr. Mom and Splash.

Splash, a silly little fish movie, a ticket to Hell? According to Vesta Ward, one of the leaders of the NFD, it was a movie that promoted sex with animals…because Tom Hanks gets it on with a mermaid.

That particular incident became a hilarious scene in Tipton’s film, Heart Of The Beholder, a personal passion play over a decade in the making that details the entrepreneur’s unbelievable struggle, from his humble beginnings as an idea guy in search of the right opportunity to his loss of everything to “Reverend Brewer’s” misguided moral crusaders.

“My main mission in making this movie was to show what was really going on behind the scenes,” says Tipton, an occasional actor who served as John Candy’s stand-in on Planes, Trains and Automobiles. “Most people see the picket lines on TV, and that’s it. Really, the harassment techniques that groups like this use can get very creative.”

One of the most effective methods that the NFD used at the time was filling out thousands of magazine subscription cards in Tipton’s name.

“It worked, because it really pissed us off,” Tipton recalls, “like the constant phone calls with people reciting Biblical scripture, and the people following us around and just pointing. It sounds like goofy intimidation, but it freaks you out, especially if you have small kids like we did.”

A scene in the movie that one might chalk up to dramatic license for the sake of entertainment is the one in which the main character’s young daughter is kidnapped by a mentally unwell zealot intent on sending her “back to God to be reborn to parents who worship the Lord.” This was a depiction of the heated weeks after Tipton decided to rent Martin Scorsese’s controversial 1988 film, The Last Temptation Of Christ. But it really happened.

“About 80% of the movie was as it happened,” Tipton explains. “The biggest change was the length, as my original script came in at 500 pages [one page being one minute of screen time].”

Tipton’s mentor, Hollywood legend Robert Wise, inspired Tipton to streamline the script to a manageable shooting length.

“He talked with me a lot about the amount of truth,” Tipton notes, “and told me that only 15% of his The Sound of Music was reality. In our case, we took it as close as we could, but with people hocking their houses to fund the film, you have to make sure they get that entertainment value, too.”

And it is an entertaining, polished little movie. While there are no big stars, as the film had a very modest $500,000 budget, there are familiar faces, like Anne Ramsay (”Six Feet Under”), Michael Dorn (”Star Trek: The Next Generation”) and “MADtv” sweetie Arden Myrin. The story (which Tipton points out is about the abuse of power and not dissing Christians), is easy to relate to, and should serve as a touchstone for free-thinkers everywhere.

Just as the NFD has morphed into the American Family Association, so too has the group’s methods of harassing Tipton.

“They’ve gotten smart about it,” he says. “They’ve learned that pickets and protests only create curiosity, so they sign up on the website to find out when the film will be showing at festivals. They show up at the festivals and give the film the lowest vote possible.”

While this kind of passive-aggressive badgering may, according to Tipton, be keeping the film from getting a theatrical or video distributor, he takes it in stride, confidently readying the story of the film’s long journey to the screen in Heart Of The Beholder - The Sequel: Virgin Territory.

“My attitude toward the whole thing is best summed up on my license plate,” Tipton says, brightly. “‘TBRIS,’ it says: ‘The Best Revenge Is Success.’”•••

Learn more about Heart Of The Beholder (and even download it) at www.Beholder.com.

Turn off, tune in, drop out:
The American drive-in meets the 21st century
By Robert Newton

Ever since Richard Hollingshead opened the first drive-in movie theatre in Camden, New Jersey in 1933, the concept has resonated with car nuts and movie fans alike. Like any industry, the drive-in business has seen its ups and downs, and while only a fraction of the thousands of outdoor screens once in operation in the drive-in’s 1950s heyday are open today, their numbers remain steady. Now, the biggest enemy of the drive-in is not a trend toward anti-social alternatives, but the real estate developer, who typically eyes such large tracts of land as the perfect location for a wholesale outlet or home supply store (because surely, we don’t have quite enough of either of those).

Just as Hollingshead propped up a movie projector on the hood of his car, so go the innovators of the 21st century, but cheaper and more portable. The worldwide “guerilla drive-in” movement is keeping vital the proud, communal concept of open-air cinema, an army comprised of movie fans and amateur techies who take inexpensive video and audio gear and go mobile with it. Their venues are public parks, parking lots with large adjoining buildings and anywhere else they can gather until the police show up.

Not that this kind of thing is illegal. Bylaws regulating public gathering vary, as do sound ordinances. However, just like most drive-ins use an unused FM frequency to simulcast the movie, so does the GDI set with low-cost, low-power radio transmitters. This is a good way to make moot the “there have been complaints about the noise” excuse for the local constable tossing a well-meaning group of community builders from an otherwise unused public space.

They publicize their events via the Internet, on the fly, and usually to just their membership base to avoid public licensing fees (which some outfits pay anyway to stay friendly with the studios who could make a stink if they wanted to). Some GDI clubs even embrace the film festival format, showing shorts and PSA’s in addition to a feature or two. It is a true DIY (do it yourself) effort, and its rewards — at least the ones that cannot be measured in dollars and cents — can be great. While Worcester area folk have to rely on the real thing (we have three of the four remaining drive-ins in the state), there are several GDI groups in and around Boston.

Anyone who wants to start their own GDI club can, and groups like GuerillaDriveIn.org and MobMov.org offer detailed primers as to how to get started, from the technical specs on projectors to tricking out your car to provide the proper juice to choosing (and licensing) programming. Anyone who has ever attended one of these portable pictures shows will tell you what a blast it is, not to mention all the like-minded friends you will make in the process.•••

For a listing of Greater Worcester’s drive-ins, check our MOVIE SHOWTIMES PAGE.