Star Trek! Geekscape After Dark Reviews the Hit New Movie AND Visits the Set!
Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where not too long ago we were asked to visit the set of one of the year’s most hotly anticipated movies: Star Trek. Although we were scheduled to visit on April 1st, we would have been foolish not to take the opportunity to watch movie history. Now that the film has been released and the critical acclaim has come rushing by at Warp Nine, we can tell our story… The story of how two internet journalists – myself and Brian Gilmore – watched Captain Kirk fornicate with a Vulcan.
Oh wait, This Ain’t Star Trek. Directed by Axel Braun. (Scroll down for the official Geekscape After Dark review.)
I think it was Francois Truffaut who said that it is impossible to watch a movie shot where you live without being distracted. If so, life must be extremely frustrating for anyone living at Larry Flynt Production Studios, what with the recent spate of high quality productions from the studio over the past several months. Of course, Truffaut also said that the Film of Tomorrow will be directed by “artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.” If the makers of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX are any indication, then Truffaut is two for two.
Welcoming us with open arms to the illustrious Larry Flynt Production Studio are writer/director Axel Braun and star of over 2,000 movies Evan Stone. Evan Stone has made headlines with This Ain’t Star Trek XXX by agreeing to cut his iconic blonde locks for the role. While they could have used a wig, both Stone and Braun agreed that the effect would have been distracting, even disrespectful to fans of Star Trek. Besides, Stone wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of a dream role. “Ten years ago, if you’d asked me when I got into the business, ‘I’m doing Star Trek and I want you to play Kirk. But you’ve got to cut your hair.’ I would have said, ‘Fine, no problem! Cut it!’ And if you’d told me later, ‘Oh by the way, it’s a porn,’ I’d have ripped it out at the roots!”
Our first treat was a tour of the set by none other than Evan Stone himself, testing our geek credibility by showing us first a small room with lifepods along the walls, one containing a skeleton. When he asked if we recognized anything, Gilmore and I shared that same nod that William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones shared in Rolling Thunder. Only instead of indicating an understanding that we were, in fact, finally going to exact vengeance on the men who killed my wife and son and mutilated my hand, this nod meant only that we knew where we were: The Botany Bay. This Ain’t Star Trek XXX isn’t just an adaptation of the Star Trek original series, it’s a very close adaptation of one of the best Trek episodes ever: Space Seed, which introduced the world to the man who would turn out to be quite wrathful, Khan Noonien Singh.
Despite the remarkable accuracy to the original costume design, Luke Cage still called.
He wants the 1970’s back.
After passing through Khan’s quarters, the sick bay and the transporter room, we found ourselves on an impressive reproduction of the original bridge of the Enterprise, complete with large sparkly buttons that closer inspection revealed to be made out of tiling samples and super balls that have been cut in half. Much like George Lucas’s iconic “found art” approach to the production design of the first Star Wars, no effort was spared to make This Ain’t The Enterprise look authentically low-budget but classy, just like the original series. Evan Stone offers me the Captain’s chair, which I take (pausing only briefly to wonder what Evan Stone may have done on said chair days if not hours prior). I’m only human, and cannot resist the opportunity to say “Engage.”
Before long, we are ourselves engaged in a brief interview with superstar Evan Stone.
William Bibbiani (WB): Are you an original series or a TNG guy?
Evan Stone (ES): Original series.
WB: Did you watch the Khan episode to prepare (for this role)?
ES: Yes. re-watched it.
WB: What’s your take on Captain Kirk, as a character? What are you emphasizing in your portrayal?
ES: Some of his major mannerisms, but not all of them. I could do Shatner straight up, but that would be (too) easy…
WB: We didn’t get a chance to be here when you were filming scenes with Tony De Sergio (playing Spock), but I understand that he has a sex scene. Is he going through Pon Farr?
ES: Well, no, actually he’s drugged. He’s drugged inside the Enterprise, and he’s forced to have sex in order to get the drug out of his system.
WB: That is clever. That gets you out of sticky situation (Hindsight is 20/20 Note: And ironically, into an ever stickier one).
ES: I know, but he is half-human. He has to deal with that, and actually De Sergio, when he played the part, played it phenomenally because, it seems like he’s struggling between trying to get a grip on the emotions he’s having, and just trying to get the thing done. You see that sometimes he’s trying to get a grip on what’s going on, and I’m like… (Evan Stone smiles like a maniac).
Brian Gilmore (BG): We’ve never interviewed someone in this industry before, and I’ve always been wondering how much improvisation goes into it?
ES: It depends on what movie. If it’s a comedy, a lot more goes into improv and stuff. The serious stuff – usually, it’s the director who writes the script and they like it word for word. This movie has been straight-up script. A couple changes were made not because the storyline was weak (but because there were last minute shooting changes).
WB: How far in advance are these films usually cast? How long ago did you know you were going to be playing Kirk?
ES: Three weeks ago. They built this in two weeks. They just decided to do it, and it was “Go!” Boom-boom-boom-boom, this got done. I did a reading… and we had another meeting but I’m not sure what the meeting was for. I was late. They served coffee, so I was happy.
WB: So I was looking at the Internet Adult Film Database, which I am certain is 100% reliable, and they list you as (having) 1,002 titles as an actor.
ES: Wow. More like two thousand. I’ve done stuff out of the country, and…
WB: That’s a lot of on-camera experience. That’s more than Daniel Day Lewis.
ES: And even if I sucked when I first started, which I’m sure I did, I would have to be a little better by now.
Evan Stone’s performance is exceptional, brilliantly recreating those subtle mannerisms that
“I can’t remember now. I was fifteen, and the teacher said, ‘That was amazing, have you thought about auditioning for a college play?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, why not?’ So I went out an auditioned for Man of La Mancha, and I played Sancho and found out that I could sing… These people I worked with were the coolest people I’d ever met in my life. Everyone was an artist: people who built the sets, who did the lights, the rigging, the orchestration. Everyone gave 110%. I swore that if I ever met these people again that I would be home.
“Well, I had every other job that you could imagine, all the way from working at a slaughterhouse to working a forklift at Pepsi Cola. I went to amateur contests, became a male dancer, and the next thing you know I’m in porn. THESE were those people again. The sex is a “gimme,” obviously… but now I get to do one-act plays! People pay money to go practice this stuff, to go to acting houses and do one act plays. I get to do it for free. I’m actually getting paid for it. And the sex thing! Sometimes they’re not even one act plays. Some movies take two days, this one four, some other movies I’ve done 30.”
“Which ones took 30 days?” I ask. Evan Stone pointedly begins mumbling unintelligibly as Axel Braun enters the room, slanderously accusing both Gilmore and myself of working for Ain’t It Cool News. He quickly makes it up to us by showing some rough footage. Gilmore took this opportunity to ask a few questions.
Star Trek communicators were the model for modern cellular phone technology, from the flip case all the way to being unable to get a signal whenever it’s convenient for the plot.
BG: As a director, what made you want to stay so faithful to the original series, as opposed to just making a parody?
Axel Braun (AB): I’ve been shooting porn for over twenty years, and this is the second parody I’ve done. The first one was a month ago. I shot the parody of Happy Days, and I wanted to do Happy Days because I grew up watching the show and was a huge fan… It’s the only way that I can do it. I can’t do it any other way.
BG: (Agreeing) – When you have a fan base as strong as the Star Trek fan base, and it’s not like they’re mutually exclusive – everyone who watches Star Trek watches porn – there’s no bigger audience than the geek audience.
AB: The whole parody thing started in the eighties – Edward Penishands – they were really cheesy. I want to do movies, but the reason we’re really sticking to television right now is a budget issue… We’re not making (Star Trek) for the money. We could make the same amount of money shooting something in a day. It’s a labor of love.
Axel Braun goes on to explain that older television shows were shot predominantly on sound stages, allowing the look to be more effectively (and inexpensively) approximated by the pornographic industry. More expensive movies and television series would require prohibitively more effort for the production to pay homage faithfully. When we press him for other shows that he’s interested in adapting, he stays mum, reasonably mentioning that he doesn’t want to give the competition any ideas, but he does turn the question around, asking us, “What would you guys like to see done?”
Not missing a beat, we rush into a flurry of geek-related projects: This Ain’t Quantum Leap. This Ain’t Highlander. This Ain’t The Incredible Hulk. This Ain’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This Ain’t Jag. This Aini’t Airwolf. This Ain’t Dinosaurs. This Ain’t Land of the Lost. This Ain’t Small Wonder. Monty Python’s Flying Circus. (“How do you make something funnier than Monty Python?” Evan Stone asks me. “You have to make it really serious,” I reply. “Like Cries & Whispers.”) Finally, we come to the Holy Grail: Battlestar Galactica.
All the critics agree! The new Star Trek movie is “action-packed!”
Suddenly, AVN Award-winning director Axel Braun completely geeks out and we spend freakish amounts of time debating, criticizing and in general totally spazzing over the recently-aired finale. (I recorded the conversation, and had to fast forward for several minutes before reaching the end of our nerd-off.) Like all good-hearted people, the cast and crew of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX are BSG fans. And like all casts and crews, they spend a large portion of the day fiddling with their I-Phone applications. While Evan Stone plays the piano and listens to police band radio from Murrieta, Axel uses his handy dandy Cylon scanner to test the reporters in his midst. Brian got off Scot Free (which you’ll find ironic in a minute), but after he scans me there’s an ominous beeping noise. Suddenly he shouts, “HE’S A CYLON!!! He’s a FRAKKING CYLON! Take this ****ing skinjob out of my sight!”
At one point during The Great Porn Set Geek Out of 2009, Axel Braun looks at Gilmore funny. “Hey,” he says. “We’re shooting this scene today with Kirk and this alien girl Sasha Grey in the transporter room, and we kind of need to see the back of Scotty. Would you like to be a body double for a minute?”
Brian Gilmore: Second porn star to the right, and presumably straight on till morning.
And just like that, Brian Gilmore became a porn star, if by “porn star” you mean appearing with his back to the camera in one shot. But that doesn’t matter. Brian Gilmore is going to beam a Vulcan up to the Enterprise, and he’s going to need a porn star’s costume to do it. Fun Fact: Porn star costumes are just like regular costumes, but with one vital difference… The zippers are twice as long. Brian and I marveled at the practicality of the thing while pondering what pseudonyms we should use in the credits, should we appear in them. Is it “Middle Name plus Street You Grew Up On,” or “First Pet’s Name plus Street You Grew Up On?” Even the crew on a pornographic film cannot come to a consensus. Someone helpfully suggests “Lazarus Cunningham,” a good one, but after much debate, Gilmore finally decides on Jaimez Doohan, a Star Trek reference, while I come up with “Drake Tungsten,” an extremely obscure Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference.
While Gilmore gets ready to close his eyes and think of the Federation, I spend time with the crew, including make up designer Marianne, who herself used to be a porn star under the name of Kelly Nichols (Ten Handed Tickle Team, Great Sexpectations), who impressed me with her own geek credibility. She actually knows Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers better than I do. Before long we are ushered onto the set, ready to shoot. The scene goes off without a hitch (although granted there are a few delays), but shortly after the clothes come off the hitches suddenly appear. Gilmore and I have to leave the set, although in all fairness so does most of the crew. Still, it’s hard not to feel a little rejected. What does it say about me that I made a porn star uncomfortable? Just as importantly, what does it say about Gilmore?
As we left the set, wondering what to say, I found myself once again pondering the words of Francois Truffaut, who asked “Is cinema more important than life?” Of course not, I reply. They are one and the same.
THIS AIN’T STAR TREK XXX
Brian Gilmore makes Geekscape history as the first ‘Scapist to board the Enterprise (in canon, that is).
Every critic in the world seems to be heaping critical praise on that new Star Trek movie that’s come out. USA Today called it “an energetic sci-fi extravaganza” and the Toronto Star said, “This is the Star Trek true fans have been missing, but barely dared hope for: a return to the original characters, in all their giddy glory and with all their hilarious hubris.” I didn’t actually read any of these articles, but unless there’s some other Star Trek movie making the rounds right now that somehow escaped my attention, one thing is for certain: They liked This Ain’t Star Trek XXX as much as I did.
Space. The Ultimate Frontier. These are the journeys of the starship Enterprise. Our mission: to explore new worlds; to peacefully unite, blend and merge with strange new life forms. To boldly arrive, again and again, where no man has come before.
These stirring words set the stage for the greatest television reboot of all time. Faithful down the finest details of the performances, costumes and sets, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX masterfully re-envisions Space Seed, one of the greatest Trek episodes ever produced, with a sly and humorous bent that never belies the inherent drama. Evan Stone (Rawhide, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?) plays James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise, who stumbles across the S.S. Botany Bay, a space ship that has been stranded for hundreds of years. He revives one Khan Noonien Singh (Nick Manning – This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX, High Infidelity), a survivor of the Eugenics Wars and the perfect human being. Before long he has threatened the entire Enterprise with the PSI 2000 virus, which can only be cured by a sudden, powerful release of endorphins. Will Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the iconic crew find a way to release their endorphins powerfully? And how could they possibly do it?
There’s a joke here somewhere about taking on iconic roles and not choking, but I can’t seem to find it.
The addition of hardcore sexual activity to the Star Trek mythos is hardly new, but in Axel Braun’s latest film it certainly feels fresh. Evan Stone, perfectly cast as Captain Kirk, lends an honest but sardonic air to the proceedings with his cocksure charisma. It’s easy to think of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX as the film Zap Brannigan would make about his own life.
“Set a parabolic course that will keep us from the entering the neutral zone,” he tells Mr. Sulu.
“Sir, a straight line will do.”
“Parabolic, Mr. Sulu.” He pauses, pointedly.
“Wait,” he says, finally changing his mind.
“Elliptical.”
It’s a hilarious exchange in a film full of amusing and often tenderly awkward moments based on character. After Mr. Spock (Tony De Sergio – Bimbo Bangers from Barcelona, From Dusk Till Down), has been forced into intercourse with Uhura (Jada Fire – Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?, Inner City Black Cheerleader Search 22) alongside Kirk, he’s charmingly befuddled by the illogic of the situation, as neither he nor Uhura seemed to have been affected by the PSI-2000 virus. Kirk comforts him with the classic line, “Don’t worry, Spock. I won’t tell anyone.”
Actually, playful self-reverence abounds in This Ain’t Star Trek XXX. Much of Khan’s dialogue will seem familiar: “Go! Or stay,” he tells historian Marla MacGyvers (Aurora Snow – Not the Bradys XXX, Sexspeare). “But do so because it is what you wish to do!” The famous line from Space Seed suddenly feels new coming from the mouth of Nick Manning. He adds a disarming petulance to the character. For the first time, it feels like Khan actually needs the love he requires of his faithful subjects. When he finally meets his match in Captain Kirk, Khan seems genuinely offended that a man exists who does not recognize his greatness. It is fitting in this reboot that shortly after Evan Stone screams the timeless “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!” in a reading rivaling if not surpassing even the great William Shatner’s, Khan feels the need to steal the limelight himself with a much-needed “KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRK!!!”
This Ain’t Star Trek XXX is available on DVD from Hustler Video, and comes highly recommended from Geekscape After Dark.
Gilmore’s fingers are physically incapable of Vulcan salutations. This was his third attempt.
