The amiable and entertaining documentary Trekkies offers a fond Vulcan salute to a certain sci-fi show's most passionate fans.
by Naomi Pfefferman
How do you make a documentary with virtually no money, then sell it to Paramount Pictures for $1.25 million, an almost unheard-of sum? Ask Trekkies director/editor Roger Nygard and cinematographer Harris Done, who have boldly gone where few filmmakers have gone before.
Trekkies is an affectionate look at the devotees of the Star Trek television series and its various incarnations. The titular cult is the only fan group listed by name in the Oxford English Dictionary, and one of the largest phenomenons in pop-culture history. Every day, some-where in the world, millions of people are watching Star Trek.
In this genial documentary, executive producer and host Denise Crosby (who played Lieutenant Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation) takes the audience on a tour of the Trekkie galaxy: the conventions, the costumes, the fan clubs, the fanzine writers, even the "slash" writers who have penned "adult" Trek-themed publications featuring homoerotic liaisons between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.
Along the way, we meet Barbara Adams, the Whitewater juror who arrived in court wearing her Starfleet commanding-officer uniform, communicator badge, rank pips, phaser and tricorder. We also visit an Orlando, Florida dentist whose office, Starbase Dental, is crammed with Trek treasures; a 14-year-old from Bakersfield who has already attended 28 conventions; and a man who admits, despite his wife's vehement protests, that he would like to have his ears surgically altered to resemble Vulcan points.
Viewers also tour a 31' replica of the starship Enterprise at the entrance of the city of Vulcan, in Alberta, Canada; a Klingon language class at the Intersteller Language School in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota; and a Trek-themed parade in Riverside, Iowa (population 826), which touts itself as the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.
Although these highlights could easily be satirized with sarcastic humor, the filmmakers sought to avoid turning Trekkies into a "mockumentary." Says Nygard, "Going into the movie, my expectations of the fans were influenced by the popular stereotype: that Trekkies are losers. It was a refreshing surprise to discover that the fans are so upbeat and positive. I mean, they are obsessed with their pastime, but there are worse things to be obsessed with than improving the future of mankind, which is what the fans really take from Star Trek."
The 36-year-old Nygard, who lives in Santa Monica, California, admits that he is not a Trekkie, although he enjoyed watching the series, along with Land of the Giants and Time Tunnel, when he was a kid. His true obsession is filmmaking. While growing up in Long Lake, Minnesota, Nygard appropriated his father's Super 8 camera and began directing his three younger siblings in amateur action flicks. With a hearty laugh, he recalls that the special effects in these epics consisted of throwing homemade dummies off the roof. Nygard also spent a lot of time watching suspense thrillers and science-fiction films (he can tell you, for example, that Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is worth seeing just for the disco scenes).
While attending the University of Minnesota, Nygard saved about $10,000 in student loans by living at his grandmother's house near campus. Ultimately, he used the money to help finance his first film, a horror comedy entitled Warped, which won the top award at the 1990 Houston International Film Festival. Nygard went on to direct the HBO premiere Back to Back and the 1991 low-budget action/comedy High Strung, which starred Steve Oedekerk and featured an unbilled Jim Carrey.
High Strung also featured an actress named Denise Crosby, who had just completed her first season on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Crosby kept telling Nygard about the Trekkies who had overwhelmed and amazed her at assorted conventions. She and Nygard agreed that the fans would make a terrific documentary subject; when producer Keith Border and his company Neo Art & Logic agreed to finance the endeavor in the summer of 1996, they were off and running.
The filmmakers started by contacting Richard Arnold, Gene Roddenberry's former assistant and head researcher, to get as much information as possible on the movement. "We then began our list of famous Trekkies to track down," says the director, who also prepared by watching a dozen classic documentaries, including Michael Apted's 35 Up, the Maysles brothers' Salesman, and Les Blank's Gap-Toothed Women.
In plotting out a visual style for Trekkies, Nygard decided on "a cross between MTV and the Maysles brothers." He wanted the playful, energetic, handheld, always-roving camera work of MTV shows like The Real World, plus the intuitive portraiture of the famed cinema verité filmmakers. "I really like point-of-view shots," adds Nygard, who first needed to find a cinematographer willing to work for free up front.
Enter Harris Done, 35, who had shot second unit on Back to Back, impressing Nygard and Border with some vibrant documentary footage of the New York Stock Exchange. "I was the guy with the free camera," quips Done, who has also contributed second-unit work to such films as Casper and The Cable Guy. Conveniently enough, he even lives a block away from Nygard in Santa Monica.
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