VEGAS ALERT: See "The Green Girl" bio-documentary, but get tix now!

UPDATE: Wow, folks—you did it! With an hour to go, the 66-seat threshold was met. Now, there's still 30 more seats available, so don;t wait til Thursday of STLV: if you want to go, reserve it now at the same site.

Yes, I was proud to be part of this wonderful documentary "The Green Girl," about studio rebel, glass-ceiling-breaker and go-to guest star Susan "Vina" Oliver. But as an indie film, it's been hard to see on a big screen--until now: Director George Pappy Jr. has a chance to show it very near the Rio during Vegas Trek weekend!

But you have to act fast to make it happen—by THIS Monday night, July 21.

George has an IMAX showing set up a long block away from the Rio at 9-11 pm Thursday, July 31—but to make it work, the house needs to clear 66 tickets at the GATHR system online on-demand website. Go here to get your tickets now and help make sure it "makes." (Your card is not even charged until the quota is hit, and it is "for sure" happening.)

At the time I write this, the showing still needs 28 tickets sold—but surely out of the thousands pouring into the Rio for the Khhaaaann, a few dozen fans have no Thursday night plans and would love to see a rare big-screen treat about this woman we know so well, and yet so little.  A panel and giveaways, too! And once the minimum 66 sell, there will be more seats.

Best of all, no fears: Like me, you can attend this 9 p.m. event and STILL make the midnight free screening and post-panel for Star Trek Continues' "Fairest Of Them All" at the AMC Town Square 18 on the Strip.

I was pleased to join a near-full house for "The Green Girl" premiere and panel in Hollywood last spring (at left); and since then, there's been just one Gathr screening set: July 29 in L.A.—so this is indeed a rare treat as the film is just starting to get known. (I'm sure George would love to have you Like the Facebook page as well.)


Here's the invite George wrote on the Unofficial Vegas Trek Facebook page:

Hi everyone. I just wanted to introduce myself and invite you (if you’re in Vegas Thursday night, July 31) to stroll one block down from the Kahn to see my documentary about Susan Oliver (who you’ll all remember as Vina from “The Cage”/”The Menagerie.” Her Orion Slave Girl remains one of TOS’s enduring icons even 50 years after her original work on the pilot. Sadly for Susan, she died quite young and missed out on the modern convention era, so she never really got the chance to connect with all her fans like so many others continue to do even today.

This film has been a 3-year labor of love and tells the remarkable story of one of the most prolific actresses of her era, an accomplished female pilot (one of the first to ever fly the Lear Jet), and one of only a handful of women who directed television in the early 1980’s (including a M*A*S*H).

We’ve been lucky enough to get this chance to show you the movie at the IMAX just one block from the Rio on Thursday, July 31 at 9pm. I hope to have Larry Nemecek and Celeste "Yeoman MArtha Landon" Yarnall (who are both in the movie) there with me to do a Q&A afterwards, and we’ll be giving away some free Green Girl T-shirts and copies of the DVD (which is making its first public appearance at the convention).

The IMAX will only hold the theater for this screening if we can get at least 60 more fans to reserve their seats by July 21 (I know, that’s really soon!). We really hope you can come and that you’ll help us make sure the screening happens – Susan Oliver’s amazing story deserves to be seen and shared (so please tell all your friends, too)!

You can reserve your seats (AND see the movie’s trailer) here:

http://gathr.us/screening/8411

TODAY: Latest in Wired.com's doc series on ST Continues

Have you seen these? A crew from Wired.com was on-site last March to film a zillion sit-downs of Star Trek Continues cast and crew and behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot. ...all for a five-part online doc series  they are now posting almost daily. Some of me is in those digital film "cans" as well; they certainly shot enough folks and footage.

Parts 1 and 2 were released last weekend on the eve of the online premier date for "Fairest of Them All," the "Mirror, Mirror" follow-on sequel that is getting rave reviews.

With series like this as proof of its appeal and quality, I have no problem with promoting and staying in the think tank for STC, with an eye down the road for even more creative playing in the Trek TOS sandbox.

And now, Part 3 is up in the Wired series, just today! It's a tour by Vic of the incredible 1701 sets in Georgia, co-built and shared by Continues and Farragut Films.

SO—what do you think? IS the bridge your favorite--or are you in the minority?

"The Captains" poster winners from EPIX and Trekland

We have our winners!

Thanks to the offer from EPIX, promoting the release of those five new half-hour Captains' Close-Up spin-offs from William Shatner's The Captains on the eve of JJTrek II, this poster of Starfleet's finest is now en route to these trivia hounds, who are also our newest and smartest "official" Treklanders! It's a very signable print, perfect for something new to be con-graphed.

Congrats go out all over the country to:

Julie Gray
Seattle, WA

Melodie Maynor
Box Elder, SD

Christian Burris
Winston-Salem, NC

Meg Fouty
Nitro WV

Bob Slade
Grain Valley MO

J.W. Grabiak
Las Vegas, NV

Andrew Voth
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Mike Frazier
Mount Holly NC

Karen Brown
Virginia Beach, VA 

Thanks again for jumping in to enter another Trekland event, guys.

(BTW: The correct answer to the trivia question...

 "All of Star Trek's five lead captains are fictitiously said to have been born in the onetime United States of America ... except who?"

...was of course "Picard.")

Don't forget: You can still check the EPIX listings for TV repeats of, or just catch any of this Shatnerpalooza online at the site as well if EPIX is not available on your local system.

Catch the captains' solo acts on EPIX tonight—and win a poster from Trekland, too!

If you bought your tickets for Into Darkness for opening day Friday and then they moved the
debut up on you to today, don't despair: You can still celebrate "STID Eve" in your universe in a very Trekkish way AND do it for free. AND even win a poster from TREKLAND!

Or, go crash a screening any time—you've got two weeks on this deal:

From EPIX and the team that brought you William Shatner's Get a Life and The Captains documentaries, you can catch five new BONUS specials on the net: a special one-hour solo spotlight on each of Trek's five center-seaters starting at 8 p.m. ET tonight....and online for those unable to see EPIX.

The exclusive EPIX "The Captains Close-Up" series features more of those interviews conducted by Shatner with his Starfleet colleagues Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Patrick Stewart, and Scott Bakula. And the special series kicks off with a close-up interview with Shatner himself.

You can even get a free limited-edition full-size poster from The Captains (above), perfect for autographing at the next big con or two (or three) you make it to. EPIX is supplying me with 10 of these lovelies to give away to the first TEN Treklanders in the U.S. who sign up at larrynemecek.com and answer this trivia question correctly:

All of Star Trek's five lead captains are fictitiously said to have been born in the onetime United States of America ... except who?

Just hit the newsletter signup link, fill it out for name and email—but add your trivia guess (a lead captain's last name) and your full mail address after your first name in that "first name " text field. Do it quick! The first 10 correct U.S. answers win their sender a poster shipped directly from EPIX; lack of a mail address prohibits receipt of your prize. In any case, the quiz offer closes at 9 P.M. PDT / 12 AM EDT on TUESDAY, May 21. Good luck!

Meanwhile, if you can't access EPIX on your cable or dish system, all the new "solo" films are available on EpixHD.com and can be watched via a limited free trial link.

After accessing that link, here's the direct page for each captain's spotlight:


The Captains Close Up: William Shatner

The Captains Close Up: Avery Brooks

The Captains Close Up: Kate Mulgrew

The Captains Close Up: Patrick Stewart

The Captains Close Up: Scott Bakula


At any time, the entire original The Captains as produced and directed by Shatner remains on view at EpixHD.com with no limits. It is not part of tonight's special lineup, though.

New mini-teaser up for "The Con of Wrath"!

Hey—we premiered a new little teaser at Comic-Con San Diego this summer for THE CON OF WRATH to show off a few more of the early faces who have talked to us so far about “The Ultimate Fantasy” gone wrong in 1982. Only fans in that room have seen it so far—not even at Vegas.

So today we posted a version of that teaser at the conofwrath.com website—up now! You'll know a lot of those faces, too, I reckon (at right).

Our documentary on the infamous Houston "glorious failure" Trek event ... and the human spirit... is still collecting faces and moments, and I just found a couple more Survivors at Vegas. Our fan meetup-fundraisers have raised cash, spread the word and most of all been a lot of fun all year long as we add more fan donors to the screen credits and gift list. We still have a lot of funding and producing to go, though.

In the new mini-teaser, watch for a few words from the first of the original Houston crew to see daylight, in an uncredited appearance: that's Marc Dowman up in the arena catwalk—graphic artist for the event and a stage and pyro assistant for the show. He's just burning up to tell one of the best weekend stories ....

Remember, this preliminary piece we put together for big-room conventions does not feature final graphics, rendering looks and of course music score. Director of Photography Neal Hallford whipped it up in July, and edited it for this showing. So—just for fun and a little taste:

TREK NATION: First Thoughts

Wow. Didn't see that comin'.

I mean, I had not asked for a press screener for Rod Roddenberry's TrekNation, premiering Wednesday night on SCIENCE Channel. I wanted to wait and see it "live." I'd read critical positive acclaim by mainstream reviewers, though, and knew it would be pretty good.

That I knew.

I'd also known how Rod has struggled to get this project just done... to find the right voice, even as director Scott Colthrop and crew went through many iterations—originally with an eye to being a theatrical documentary. They kicked off filming back in 2002, and as the Aughts unfolded I'd hear once a year or so from Rod about the new angle or tone, until he just wanted to stop talking about it with the time lag.... which was all about finding what he wanted. Of course, in hindsight we can see how that delay allowed the doc the scope to take in the post-2005 earthquake in Trekland—from the downer of cancellation, to the vaccum of the Trek future's void, to the questions and then triumph of "JJ Trek" in 2009.

(Spoilers below. Really.)

So making the deal with Science Channel and getting a deadline and a format, albeit for TV with commercial breaks, at last provided some structure and a solid floor to get TrekNation over the finish line. As you could see in any of his recent comments, including our chat for TREKLAND, Rod was visibly relieved to be able to give birth to this baby at last.

What I didn't know ... was that a couple thoughts of my own 2002 interview, done in the first wave of filming at Creation's first Vegas convention, was actually in this. No one tipped me off... so I had an all-too-rare attack of jaw drop, right there Wednesday night on the couch: Gobsmacked, as Marina would say. I just know that I was not only in good company, but—thinking of where I thought I was—I was happy being in equally good company with all those you didn't see, in that great unused pile of footage. I know for a fact that widely different versions, and lists of speakers, have been in play over the years. I can see the time compromises made, too—including the "seated Rod" narration

But, even apart from those 45 mighty seconds, it was a grabber work. In fact, I felt TrekNation actually grew deeper as it went along. In this format there was a lot of TV exposition to get through, a lot of it handled by the "seated Rod" direct-to-camera bits which thankfully subside as it progresses. There's so much of past Trekland tales that fans know—the common history of the show, the fandom and of Gene—but this was on a mainstream channel, even among science geeksters, so a rehash with attitude is a needed, okay thing. The doc got a lot of mainstream media play as well, and I know gave a lot of varied context to the newer JJ-era fans, as well as lay viewers.

Reflecting on it now, I also think that the years-long "delay" even helped the focus—perhaps contrasted best in the highlight "icon" chats—first with George Lucas and then JJ Abrams more recently. From George to JJ you can literally see Rod grow as an interviewer, as a seeker ... especially in the comfort zone of talking about his own father/son dynamic and vibe—one which JJ picks up on, as the camera catches Rod's reaction. That fits a pattern of TrekNation's coverage of the more recent Trek years--by definition, not yet as "examined" as the older golden times past—being some of the most interesting here. Quite unintentionally, the film's personality grows even as the years go by.

Of course, there's double poignancy here for a lot of us: Too bad the mainstream TV audience isn't really informed, I believe, how many of those faces besides Gene are also gone. I wish even a tad more context could have somehow mentioned that those like Bob Justman, Michael Piller and even his own mom Majel were no longer with us—which makes their moments all the more special. Adult Rod's onscreen chat with his mom also hits home with anyone who's tried to talk to a parent as a third party about family mega-history, but can't quite get out of the "just us" family vibe. It was also an odd bird that Michael's beloved University of North Carolina "UNC" logo was CG'd off his ever-present baseball cap. (Did you notice that slightly grayer area over the bill? Legal—go figure.) Another quirk, purely in transmission: our onscreen cable TV guide had TrekNation logged as only an hour long. Don't know how widespread that was, but I hope a zillion fans didn't DVR the show and only come away with the first half!

Even with the evolving twists and turns, everyone involved with this long trek has done themselves proud, and the franchise to boot. I know there will be lots of unused bonus footage coming in the already-promised DVD, and a lot of it is already online at Colthrop's online sites. The many reels of Roddenberry home movies with young parents and little Rod was amazing, too. In fact, snapshot of the night: The original Enterprise two-footer model (now lost), snugly embracing the swaddled newborn Rod right between the nacelles like big protective arms.

I know, too, that tonight's viewing been another inspiration for my own documentary in process, The Con of Wrath, to bring along a solid layer of humanity as well as the narrative story at hand—even in a documentary. Thanks to director Scott and all of the crew for that.

Most of all, I know Rod is proud and relieved to have it out there—and I salute him for even taking on his dad's infidelities and other "warts." As long as it's taken to get here, Rod, TrekNation has been a journey of discovery worth taking. And how much more Star Trek can you get?

Thanks for sharing.

Finally! Announcing "The Con of Wrath," our first production—and how YOU can help

A blog should be more personal, don't you think? Oh wait, I said that already.

But I can't describe what it's like to finally tell the world for real about THE CON OF WRATH, the documentary we've been plotting for some time now. If the infamous Star Trek convention itself back in June 1982 was amazing, goofy, sad and uplifting all at once, this documentary now in motion as its namesake story is nothing if not serendipity.

The press releases are all sent out now, so for those of you not at cons where I "sneak-peeked" it this spring...  I'll just say here that, yes, this IS a personal story: For starters, I WAS THERE. You don't forget your first big road trip out of college, even if it was only one-tenth as infamous as this one: the first "megashow" Star Trek convention, and consequently the first big crash.... and save.

But not til just last summer, when I ran into the show's original technical director at the SoonerCon 2010 "dead dog party," did the memories really come alive, the potential loomed large, ... and the light bulb for my very first film project suddenly popped on. It was hearing Jim Parker from across the room,  telling some great and incredible stories, that sparked the aha! moment from my inner voice... and literally, as brains do in both trauma and in epiphany, set the gears in motion:
—(click) "Wow, after all this time, I've got to get these people's stories down in print."
—(click) "No, that's so '80s. I've got to get this on film."
—(click) "NO, that's so '90s. I think this will hang together as a great documentary. Let's get a big marker and connect the dots!"

And so the madness began. We have a long way to go and have only just begun filming, but we are off and running! At the very least we'll have a great archival project preserved... but with the assets already lining up, I think it will be so much more: "an incredible and yet inspiring tale of dreams, debacle and dumb/dorky devotion" in my first documentary: THE CON OF WRATH.

Hey, I should have used that in the press release!

What’s great is, I didn’t even make up the title. That was among the choice epithets making the rounds by Sunday afternoon of That Weekend, but hey—like all good traumas, it's only a matter of time before the war stories" turn into badges of honor.

The web homepage is here, yes ... complete with a video hello from me.  Of course, in 2011, I don't need to tell you (or ask politely) to please "LIKE" the Facebook page as well.

BUT YOU CAN DO MUCH MORE:

If you attended, we need your memories—"Where Were You in '82?"— and yes, we could use your grass-roots money help. The PayPal donation link is now active on the home page to take your much-appreciated gift of $10 or $25 all the way up to $1,000 (or more!) in exchange for some appropriate collectible CON OF WRATH thank-you goodies, including a screen credit for all ... details to come soon. I'm putting my name and two-decades rep and fan cred on the line here, folks, so I hope that's good enough for ya.

And, soon we'll let you "survivors" know how you can share those memories for possible inclusion in the film as well. Stay tuned for that one, too—read it here or on Facebook, too.

For now, just know that if you survived that humid Houston weekend, we want to hear from you—or if you care about preserving the most landmark moments of Trek history, we could use your help.

I couldn't think of a finer debut in film, finally, than wading hip-deep into all this! Or to the friends/professionals who have already showed faith and jumped in with me. Where will this go? We're got a roadmap, but who knows where the trip will end up!

"The Con of Wrath" movie logo by Kevin Hopkins, graphic artist

AGAIN! "The Five Captains" on Bio Channel

UPDATE: 
"The Captains" reruns Monday, March 14 at 8a & 2p ET/6a & 11a PT! Set yer DVRs!
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There IS life after Election Day hoopla...

Case in point: The very next night— Wednesday Nov. 3—there's zillions of notables on camera for The Captains of the Final Frontier, a new Biography Channel TWO-hour documentary about a quintet of fictional folks named Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer.

Check your local listing and cable channels—but it is nominally set to air at 9 p.m Eastern...and I'm proud to say I worked as consultant to the operation. Check it out for a little post-election escape:



And yes—Biography Channel is supposed to be about REAL people, sure. They tell me that past episodes of Biography on fictional characters got rave reviews and good numbers, so in the search for a follow-up....well, what fictional folk are more real than Star Trek's?

What's funny is, producer Lauri Marini contacted me to be on-camera, along with many others you'll know ... and I wound up having a great time, doing a lot more backgrounding for the show. Then, two months into my involvement last summer, one day we suddenly heard all the buzz about a "five captains special" being put together William Shatner's group. What else was I to think other than he had gotten involved in this show?—just last like time, after several of us had taped some bits that were eventually left behind on the cutting-room floor for a U.K. Star Trek doc that one day suddenly morphed into How William Shatner Changed the World.

But this time—no such merging. Bill's own captain's special is an entirely separate project and, apparently, scheduled to be seen next spring. Right now, though, the Shat does lead a one-hour special that airs just before this one, hosting his castmates and their TOS clips in Star Trek: Captain's Log. The whole package re-airs at 12 a.m./1 a.m. ET, and then again later in the week.

For these two hours, talking about the personalities and how they got there (or didn't), you can see the familiar faces of Kate Mulgrew, Tim Russ, Nana Visitor, Denise Crosby, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, and Vaughn Armstrong ... the not-so-familiar faces of producer-writers Rick Berman, Nick Meyer, Manny Coto, Ira Steven Behr, Rene Echevarria, Michael & Denise Okuda, and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens ... and authors joining me like Kirsten Beyer, Keith R.A. DeCandido, David R. George III, David Mack and Geoffrey Thorne. PLUS comics creator Ken Penders and Rod Roddenberry!   With no more canon filmic Trek for 18 months—well, here's two hours for ya.

TRIVIA TIME: In that promo video above, we see Bob Picardo and Kate Mulgrew—but who's the unseen voice at the end talking about casting? The Comments below are open for your guesses!!

STV: LA ALERT: See 'Trekkies' director's new film on... Existence!

Well, here's a departure from the usual Spirit of Star Trek format.

And then again, not so much.

Roger Nygard was a popular SOST guest as the indie director behind Trekkies and its II sequel last winter—and now he returns this Sunday, May 23 with a special treat, FREE of course—not Star Trek, but just as provocative and entertaining: his latest globe-trotting piece, The Nature of Existence, and way before its opening June 18 NYC/July 2 in L.A. Guaranteed to be a hit with Trekfans or anyone else who loves a good mind-bending survey of "why we are here," from celebs and laymen, the officious and off-beat alike. ("Wrestlers?")

The basics: Join me Sunday, May 23 at 7 p.m. in First Presybterian BIGSCREEN hall at 4963 Balboa Blvd., south of the 101; calling Amber at 818-788-1147 to RSVP is always nice. Now, take a listen: