Up Till Now: The Autobiography

only after the movie was completed and I’d made the first of many compromises was that I’d already destroyed my concept. It was no longer God and the devil; it’s a psycho alien who is a devil worshipper. Every step of the way in making a movie there are compromises and this was my first one. But at least I had my basic plot.
    And then I created my Big Bang ending. Now this was really going to be spectacular. Kirk was going to be running up a mountain to escape and the alien-devil’s minions were going to come out of Hades in pursuit. What a concept! I knew they couldn’t simply come out of the ground—they would be thrust out like rocks from a volcano.Yes! Smoke and fire streaming out of their mouths. I could see it. I described it to the special-effects people. They loved it. Smoke and fire! Everybody loved it. “How many rock people can I have?” I asked.
    “We’ll get you ten,” they said.
    Unbelievable! That’s better than the Furies. They’re smoking and flames are shooting out of their mouths and they’re chasing Kirk. They’re four-legged animals. I drew up some sketches of these rock men exploding. This finale was going to be bigger and better than anything ever seen on Star Trek . So I’ve got a great beginning, a strong story, and a great ending. I know I can fill in the rest. And I’m going to direct it. This is going to be the start of the next phase of my career.
    I was enthralled with the entire process of directing a $30 million major motion picture. On a film set the director isn’t God—he’s the one who tells God to run across the parking lot, leap onto the hood, and grab hold of the wipers and hold on.
    Until we actually began filming I don’t think I ever imagined how different it is directing a television program and a motion picture. When I directed Hooker, for example, I had to move in close; if I widened my frame more of the background was included, meaning it had to be lit or cleared, all the traffic had to be stopped, people on foot had to be held back. It meant getting permits and releases, staying away from identifiable product signs. Instead, we’ll put the camera right here and do a close-up.
    Let me give you an example: imagine a very simple scene. Romeo says to Juliet, “I love you.” Juliet looks at him angrily and replies, “Oh please. Do you think I’m a fool?” Good dialogue. If we were shooting it for television we’d put Romeo and Juliet a few feet apart, get a two-shot of the quarreling lovers together, and then shoot close-ups of each of them separately. Simple and quick.
    But the director of a big-budget film would do it very differently. “To symbolize the distance between them let’s go to Switzerland and put each of them on the summit of a mountain in the Alps. We’ll shoot it peak-to-peak at sunset. Let’s make it 70mm. And let’s getBrad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Then we’ll hire John Williams to do the original music.” And the producers are in awe of his brilliance. The Alps! Why didn’t we think of that? And they will move five hundred people to Switzerland to get that shot. For a director the sense of power in incredible. Whatever you conceive in your imagination, whatever you dream, five hundred people are ready to make it happen.
    Unfortunately, that was not my experience on this film. The plot was somewhat complex: it takes place in Stardate 8454.130. Kirk is on vacation, climbing El Capitan mountain in Yosemite when the Enterprise is dispatched on an emergency mission to rescue hostages on a desolate planet. The kidnapper is a Vulcan, Spock’s half-brother, who is using the hostages to lure a starship to Nimbus III so he can use it to cross the Great Barrier—the final frontier—and reach the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree, which is inhabited by a Godlike entity. Perhaps it even is God. Kirk agrees to travel there with him, and on that planet they encounter this entity. Eventually Kirk battles this alien—this is the battle with the rock men from hell— which is destroyed with the help of a Klingon commander who followed the Enterprise there to kill Kirk.
    A week before we started shooting I still hadn’t seen the rock men suits. This was my big ending, the whole film was building to that scene, I wanted to see them. Don’t worry, I was told, they’re coming. And then I got a cost breakdown. They were going to cost $350,000 a suit. Three-point-five million dollars for ten suits? We didn’t have $3.5 million for anything.