TMP: Robert Wise's 1980/81 Edit Ideas VS. DE Version

[Firebird]

It's been debated on this board in various forms over the years of the validity of the editorial changes in the Director's Edition of TMP, and whether they reflected Robert Wise's true intentions. Several times, I've seen people mention the changes Wise would've wanted to make to the film had he the time in 1980/1981 interviews, but I've not found any of these articles. Might anyone be able to share these, or mention what he said in the interviews? I've always been curious about it.

 

[Damian]

I couldn't find anything about any interview from 1980-81. But you could check his article on Memory Alpha. It has a lot of info there about his work on TMP along with some references. I didn't see anything that matched what you were looking for but maybe you'll see something that rings a bell. The article there is pretty extensive (some of it from William Shatners 1995 Star Trek Memories book).

 

[Maurice]

If dunno if you searched the site for threads with Robert Wise in the title, but if you did you should have found this topic... in the first post of which I identified a source:

There's been many a discussion here about the TMP DE over the years, but one thing that interests me is what Wise's own intentions were for a cut of the film versus what we got.

So, I'm curious if anyone has access to any old old interviews with Wise (and maybe some of the other crew members) wherein they discuss what they wanted for the film at or around the time the film was released. And by old I mean within a few years after the film was released, not decades later.

I dug into my morgue and found one. Here's a few salient quotes from that interview titled "A Very Sloppy Way to Make a Movie" (Best of Starlog Vol. VI), which is described in the introduction as having been conducted "In 1980, a few months after the release of the 1979 film."

STARLOG: The film's final cut is two hours and ten minutes...don't you think that the present cut is also a bit long at times?
WISE: Sure do!
STARLOG: There's the scene when Kirk is being taken by Scotty around the Enterprise in that spacepod shuttle.
WISE: That is one minute and 30 seconds [too] long, and the flight inside V'ger is about two minutes too long.*

WISE: ...One of the reservations I have about the film is that I didn't have time to fine tune it. I think we could have trimmed it by six-and-a-half minutes--at least! I was planning to do more cuts on the version which would be released overseas, but I found out later that Paramount had already made 150 prints, so it would have been too costly to go back an re-edit it...

Emphasis (underlines) mine.
* One can assume this means the V'ger cloud and flyover
​

So, right here, months after the film hit the theaters, Wise talks about two sequences he thought should be cut down, and how much he thought at minimum the film should have been trimmed back by. It's interesting that the DE makers chose not to touch the drydock flyaround at all, yet Wise himself said it was too long by a minute and a half.
​

I've not been able to find the Best of Starlog Vol. 6 online, but the article is in my morgue. I could scan it.

The best best source would be to read the definitive Return To Tomorrow tome, which contains extensive comments by Wise made during post-production on the film. Wise aside, that book nails that a lot of the stuff we've been told about the film's production is bunk, e.g. the sound effects weren't unfinished, rather, the sound mix was deliberately spare, and Trumbull is behind the abortions that are the Vulcan matte shots, deciding the Mike Minor designed landscape was too Earthlike and wanting to weird it up.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It's interesting that the DE makers chose not to touch the drydock flyaround at all, yet Wise himself said it was too long by a minute and a half.

I think that's a sequence that was pretty much saved by the Jerry Goldsmith score. If Goldsmith didn't have definite edit points in his music for that scene, it would've been really tough to cut it down.

 

[Maurice]

I couldn't find anything about any interview from 1980-81. But you could check his article on Memory Alpha. It has a lot of info there about his work on TMP along with some references. I didn't see anything that matched what you were looking for but maybe you'll see something that rings a bell. The article there is pretty extensive (some of it from William Shatners 1995 Star Trek Memories book).

Shatner's Star Trek Memories books are to history what Cash Markman's films are to cinema.

 

[Damian]

Shatner's Star Trek Memories books are to history what Cash Markman's films are to cinema.

Probably true. Though he does provide some quotes so those at least should be accurate.

I think that's a sequence that was pretty much saved by the Jerry Goldsmith score. If Goldsmith didn't have definite edit points in his music for that scene, it would've been really tough to cut it down.

Yeah, and that scene has since become an iconic scene of the movies. I don't think he really could have cut it down now without an uproar.

I figured the DE was actually a new cut done many years later. I figured what he would have considered a final cut in 1979 has changed over the years, the Enterprise flyby being one of them. Probably the V'ger flyby too. Still I did think the DE did flow much better. I never minded the flyby too much, I have to admire the special effects (a lot of which were untouched even in the DE). They were really ahead of their time in 1979. And like the Enterprise flyby Goldsmith's melody during the V'ger flyby is a classic as well.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, and that scene has since become an iconic scene of the movies. I don't think he really could have cut it down now without an uproar.

I mostly agree, but I would've been willing to sacrifice that long dull bit with the travel pod slowwwwly arcing around before the big forward-view reveal of the Enterprise. I mean, you want to leave some suspense in there to build to the big moment, but the length of that shot could probably have been shortened by half.

I have to admire the special effects (a lot of which were untouched even in the DE). They were really ahead of their time in 1979.

The goal was never to "upgrade" the 1979 effects, but to create as close an approximation as possible as how the film would've looked in 1979 if it had been completed to (the restorers' interpretation of) Wise's and Roddenberry's specifications. So the few shots that got replaced were mostly temp fill-ins for unfinished shots (like that long close-up of the Starfleet seal on the HQ floor), or matte shots that didn't quite work and would've ideally been replaced given time (like the inaccurate matte painting of the saucer at the start of the "wing walk" sequence) or shots that were compromised/simplified from the original intentions due to time or budget (like the already-assembled surface of hex cells, as opposed to the original plan of showing the cells assemble). But they tried to do it in a way that was consistent with 1979 technology and capabilities, for instance, animating the lights of the assembling hex cells in 2D and at 12 fps to simulate hand animation, and sampling film grain from the original stock in order to replicate it in the CG shots.

As for the FX being ahead of their time for 1979, I don't know about that. They were state-of-the-art for that time, but on a par with recent films like Star Wars (from Dykstra) and Close Encounters (from Trumbull). That whole general period was a time of great advancement in VFX.

 

[Damian]

I mostly agree, but I would've been willing to sacrifice that long dull bit with the travel pod slowwwwly arcing around before the big forward-view reveal of the Enterprise. I mean, you want to leave some suspense in there to build to the big moment, but the length of that shot could probably have been shortened by half.

Yeah, I guess that was a bit 2001'ish. I guess they figured they didn't want to mess with it, but it was a few seconds too long.

The goal was never to "upgrade" the 1979 effects, but to create as close an approximation as possible as how the film would've looked in 1979 if it had been completed to (the restorers' interpretation of) Wise's and Roddenberry's specifications.

I thought they did a good job with that. They left a lot intact and just cleaned it up a bit. The only updated scene I didn't care for was the one where V'ger was launching it's weapons toward Earth. I liked that they decided the show the entire ship (the old scene reminded me of porch lamps flying over a pumpkin face), but it didn't feel quite up to par like the rest of the movie. It felt too CGI-like (whereas much of the film used real models and so forth).

As for the FX being ahead of their time for 1979, I don't know about that. They were state-of-the-art for that time, but on a par with recent films like Star Wars (from Dykstra) and Close Encounters (from Trumbull). That whole general period was a time of great advancement in VFX.

Yeah, I was probably overstating it. The effects were top notch and I was glad Paramount gave it that sort of treatment, but it was on par with other high budget movies of the time.

 

[Maurice]

Probably true. Though he does provide some quotes so those at least should be accurate.

Trouble is, quotes how many years removed from the events? Over time people tend to rewrite events in their heads. As Nolan Bushnell said, "The stories get better the more I tell them."

 

[Galileo7]

I mostly agree, but I would've been willing to sacrifice that long dull bit with the travel pod slowwwwly arcing around before the big forward-view reveal of the Enterprise. I mean, you want to leave some suspense in there to build to the big moment, but the length of that shot could probably have been shortened by half....

I think the travel pod flyover of the 1701-Refit is perfect for all of us that waited the decade for TMP to premiere with the Enterprise reveal with Jerry Goldsmith's score. Two examples of a much needed edit would be IMHO 2OO1(1968) with both the early man unending beginning scene and the Bowman star gate flight ending.

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[David cgc]

I thought they did a good job with that. They left a lot intact and just cleaned it up a bit. The only updated scene I didn't care for was the one where V'ger was launching it's weapons toward Earth. I liked that they decided the show the entire ship (the old scene reminded me of porch lamps flying over a pumpkin face), but it didn't feel quite up to par like the rest of the movie. It felt too CGI-like (whereas much of the film used real models and so forth).

I'm very fond of the DE (aside from the sound mix and cutting out all of Bones's one-liners from the SLV), but there are a few shots where I feel like the CG recreations were a little off. They didn't match the Earth model/paintings used in the original film, so any new shot including the planet looks weird, and there are a couple that didn't fit in with the style of the VFX elsewhere. The V'Ger reveal has a camera pan and move, which wasn't used on any of the existing shots but one, where it was motivated, and while I love the extra final tunnel inside V'Ger, and I think the exterior shot looks good in a vacuum, I don't think it would've been technically possible to create it in 1979, no matter what their budget and timeframe was. Oh, and the sparkles that form the hex bridge being animated on twos... well, their heart was in the wrong place, but all of the other animated effects were at full resolution, and I'm not sure they would've resorted to hand-animating the bridge forming, anyway (I can think of one interesting way to film it that could've worked).

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure they would've resorted to hand-animating the bridge forming, anyway (I can think of one interesting way to film it that could've worked).

Film a model of it falling apart and run the film backward in slow motion?

 

[David cgc]

Film a model of it falling apart and run the film backward in slow motion?

Yeah, pretty much. To get the effect of little sparks of light, I was thinking they could have some sort of slow-burning material in the shape of the bridge and then use a fan to blow it up and away, and then cross-dissolve the assembling bridge on top of it. Maybe burning steel wool? ILM loved using that for space fire effects.

 

[Maurice]

Re the walkway formation, they probably would have just used the same moire slot gags they used elsewhere in the V'ger finale to show the paths assembling. Yeah, shooting animation on twos was just dumb, and shows a lack of understanding of what they were working on. They confused the standard for cartoon animation with VFX animation, the latter almost invariably being shot on ones.

The Earth DOES look off in the DE. They probably used photos of the Earth rather than original artwork as was used back in 1979. I've got photos of the artwork of the Earth from when V'ger goes poof, and it's a flat down-looking painting of islands on water that was projected onto a hemisphere painted white. (A separate transparency of clouds was photographed the same way.) Et voila...

The drydock scene always suffered because they spend too much time circling around the outside at first teasing, but showing too much. By the time we get the big reveal, it's not such a big deal. Most of the shots even afterwards are typically 23% too long.

As to San Francisco, it's another case where the DE team either didn't do their homework or changed stuff against the original intent. This is the tram station as designed, and that's San Francisco as designed. Smaller city, more green, lower profile, perhaps inspired from the murals of Arthur F. Mathews, and rather Paolo Soleri-esque, the only recognizable structures being Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid. The station exterior here illustrates why the interior wall is shaped like it is: the one reflects the other. No room for TOS shuttle platforms, as designed. The city and the station match what's seen in the long shot past the bridge that did make it into the film. The SF of the DE isn't anything like what Gene wanted; it's what the effects artists wanted, retconning it to fit with the later movies and their own tastes ("A shot Mike Okuda and I put together for Star Trek: TMP – The Director’s Cut, while working at Foundation Imaging. How many 64 [New York World's Fair] buildings can you spot?" —Doug Drexler).

And this is no matte concept. I asked TMP matte painter Rocco Gioffre about it and he said the painting was Matt Yuricich's work. This is reinforced by the matte line around the tram, which tells you it's an effects composite. It might have been an imperfect composite, possibly a work-in-prpgress, but there's no way of knowing what stage of the process this particular frame was from, as most matte shots were composited, reviewed, and reprinted with adjustments to exposure, etc.

OH! And the hillside isn't a painting. It's the cliff to the west side of Kirby Cove. I've photographed it. See? (The image of the painting is a tad scrunched, and crops off the lower part of the cliff and the rocks in the water, which are a perfect match. Sorry about the backlight, the time of day was very different than when the matte plate was shot.)

The brief shot of the seal was simply to tell you where you were without the damned chyron they added to the DE to tell you the same thing. I'd have to look for the exact quote, but I'm pretty sure it's in Return To Tomorrow that there's mention that they shortened the San Francisco intro to pick up the pace. The book is pretty straightforward about other things they changed for budget and time reasons, so I'm inclined to believe it over after-the-fact accounts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri

 

[Maurice]

Yeah, I was probably overstating it. The effects were top notch and I was glad Paramount gave it that sort of treatment, but it was on par with other high budget movies of the time.

Many of the effects were cutting edge, some more complex than anything done in Star Wars or CE3K. They were using real lasers in smoke rooms, even running them over models. Trumbull came up with the whole "Compsy" system for shooting the V'ger cloud interiors, which is like the Starchild to the Moonwalker that was the 2001 Slit-scan machine.

 

[DeepSpaceYorks]

The brief shot of the seal was simply to tell you where you were without the damned chyron they added to the DE to tell you the same thing. I'd have to look for the exact quote, but I'm pretty sure it's in Return To Tomorrow that there's mention that they shortened the San Francisco intro to pick up the pace. The book is pretty straightforward about other things they changed for budget and time reasons, so I'm inclined to believe it over after-the-fact accounts.

I wish they did that as an ebook I'd love to read it. As it is it's too expensive for me to import.

 

[pfontaine2]

The Earth DOES look off in the DE. They probably used photos of the Earth rather than original artwork as was used back in 1979. I've got photos of the artwork of the Earth from when V'ger goes poof, and it's a flat down-looking painting of islands on water that was projected onto a hemisphere painted white. (A separate transparency of clouds was photographed the same way.) Et voila...

OH! And the hillside isn't a painting. It's the cliff to the west side of Kirby Cove. I've photographed it. See? (The image of the painting is a tad scrunched, and crops off the lower part of the cliff and the rocks in the water, which are a perfect match. Sorry about the backlight, the time of day was very different than when the matte plate was shot.)

Wow! Thanks for all this fantastic information. I'd seen the Tram image before but you've provided a lot of great context for it, including the photograph of the "real" location used to create the matte shot.

I knew that Trumbull liked to project artwork onto spheres to create planetary images (he did the same for some shots in 2001 according to the "Space Odyssey" book recently released) but to see the actual artwork against a screen grab is really informative. Thank you so much for passing this information along!

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I think that's a sequence that was pretty much saved by the Jerry Goldsmith score. If Goldsmith didn't have definite edit points in his music for that scene, it would've been really tough to cut it down.

Yeah, in some cases Goldsmith intentionally made his score repetitive so that the editors could have an easy time making trims if necessary, as I think the DE made a good demonstration of during the Klingon attack and the V'Ger flyby. The drydock scene doesn't really have that kind of repetition. I'm sure if it did the editors of the DE would have easily done a few trims, because it's frankly needed. I don't care much for starship porn. There's already so much footage of the ship it doesn't matter if you lose a minute and 30 seconds like Wise wanted trimmed.

Whether the DE was successful in being faithful or not, I pick it any day over the theatrical cut because of better pacing and moments like Spock's tear scene. The only thing I don't like about the DE is the credits dissolve effect. I do like the starfield in the background, even in the unnecessary overture.

 

[Christopher]

I don't care much for starship porn.

Well, it's so much more common today. For those of us who saw it in theaters back in 1979, seeing our beloved Enterprise on a huge screen and in such detail and realism for the first time ever, getting to soar around it with a moving camera and see it from every angle and come up really close to its hull and see detail down to the individual plates... man, that was world-changing. I mean, sure, there had been a couple of earlier starship FX sequences that were visually revolutionary -- the Star Destroyer opening of Star Wars, the Mothership in Close Encounters -- but those were just ships. The Enterprise was a character. The Enterprise was home. And we'd never gotten to tour it so immersively, to feel like it was really there waiting for us to step aboard it. Six minutes of that hardly felt like enough.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

That's the thing, there were going to be so many beauty shots of the ship AFTER that scene anyway, so that's why I don't feel it would have been such a loss to trim some parts of the approach.With the reuse o f footage in TWOK, was Kirk's "I hate inspections" line something inserted by Meyer to poke fun of the scene in TMP? I always interpreted it that way, but never knew if that was the intention.

As far as shuttles approaching hero ships go, I actually like ST09's better, and I'm not even a fan of that film. Plenty of beauty shots and a souring score. I criticize Abrams' films for always feeling like they were rushing things way too much out of fear of boring audiences, but I thought that moment was paced well.