Skydance Productions: Co-Producing Star Trek
Skydance Productions is an American film and television production company based at Paramount Pictures, with whom they co-produce and co-finance films such as Star Trek into Darkness & Star Trek Beyond.
I first heard of Skydance from a blurb in Variety Magazine’s issue on notable women in the male dominated entertainment business. Dana Goldberg was mentioned as being “Chief Creative Officer”, the title of a job created especially for her. Variety said, “Paramount relies on Skydance to deliver some of it’s biggest pics”. Such as Star Trek. That got my attention. So I explored.
Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison, son of the billionaire CEO of Oracle Corp. He was joined by Dana who had begun her entertainment career as an assistant at Hollywood Pictures. She then spent three years as vice president of production at Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures. From 1998 through 2010, she was a vice president and later president of production at Village Roadshow Pictures. She certainly has the experience to oversee my beloved Star Trek.
some Skydance projects
At Skydance, Ellison and Goldberg have been responsible for feature-length films including True Grit, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Star Trek Into Darkness, World War Z, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Terminator Genisys and Star Trek Beyond. In television, they have produced Manhattan (shot here in New Mexico!), Grace and Frankie (with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda), and the upcoming Condor (based on Three Days of the Condor). Not too shabby!
In a June 2015 interview connected with their Terminator Genisys premiere, Skydance founder David Ellison said, ” We’ve had an amazing relationship with J.J. Abrams, we’re making our 3rd and 4th movie together, and the 50th anniversary of Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s franchise is something that we feel the tremendous pressure of living up to that legacy, and very much hope that the movie does that for audiences when they get to see it next year.”
Dana Goldberg CCO
As CCO, Goldberg oversees all aspects of creative development and production for film and television. While film projects and properties continue to be her primary focus, Goldberg now also works with the television department. Television, eh? One of the questions asked in the interview was if there was a future for a Star Trek TV series.
ELLISON: It’s something that we would love to be involved in. As I’m sure everybody knows, the rights situation given the CBS and Paramount divorce on the Star Trek rights is very, very complicated. The exact status of it is absolutely something being worked on. We would love to be involved, but all to be determined at this time.
GOLDBERG: You’re preaching to the converted. We would love it, both as fans and as people who would want to be involved in the making of them. We would love it. Everything you just said is right. It goes with what we were talking about before with television is you can just take more time to tell very specific stories and it would be fantastic. It’s not something we control, sadly.
Phooey. Doesn’t sound like it will happen soon.
UPDATE!!! 11/2/2015 Maybe Paramount & CBS did get it together! CBS announced a new Star Trek series on their premium channel. See more here.
David Ellison founded Skydance
So what is Skydance Productions – really? How did David Ellison, a man of substantial connections and wealth, come to create the company. He talked about how Steve Jobs was a mentor.
ELLISON: I had the incredible luxury that Steve happens to my dad’s best friend, so he was like an uncle growing up. …He was a very, very close friend and truly the Thomas Edison of his time, and I was fortunate enough in building this company to be able to talk to him about it throughout the entirety of it. And a story I’ll never forget, because in irony it was actually the day they were launching the second iPhone, we were getting close to closing our deal at Paramount with Skydance, and I told Steve I wanted to talk to him about it. He said ‘why don’t you get on a plane and fly out here tomorrow?’ And I said ‘you’re launching the iPhone tomorrow.’ He was like ‘I don’t care. Get up here.’ I sat down and pitched him the entire company, the way we had been pitching everybody else on our fundraising tour, and Steve looked at me in the way that only Steve Jobs can and he goes ‘this isn’t gonna work.’ [Laughs] And I was like ‘alright, why?’ And he said ‘you know the answer, you’re just not thinking about it.’ And I didn’t, I was kind of floored at the moment in time, and he was like ‘look, why does Pixar work?’ He said ‘the biggest mistake everybody makes about Pixar is that they think we were successful because we created 3-D animation, and nothing could be further from the truth. We simply went back to a world where we found out how to make movies better than anybody else.’
Steve Jobs on why Pixar succeeded
And he talked a lot about how free agency was created because the golden age of Hollywood was when the studios had a very firm handle on the talent, but because they did not treat them appropriately, didn’t compensate them appropriately, that created the free agency, and we live in the world we exist in now. Steve adjusted that by actually making the talent his partners, and by treating everybody well both creatively and economically, and really changing the model. …he talked about the brain trust, really going to that idea where we had a core group of both executives and filmmakers that we could work with over and over and over again, because any one person can make a bad movie. Some of the greatest filmmakers of all time have made bad films, but when you get a group of people together, five really talented people will usually not miss. It doesn’t mean that on their own that would necessarily go differently, but that was really the model.
From that moment on, we went back and restructured the company and changed it, and re-pitched it to him, and he said ‘that’s gonna work better.’ I was very fortunate and truly blessed to have him as a friend and as a mentor and to be able to work with Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross and Don Granger who are these incredibly talented producers and storytellers at our company and to be able to work with filmmakers like J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird and Chris McQuarrie and Alan Taylor and writers like Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, our company is what it is because of the incredible people that we get to work with.
Sorry, they didn’t spill any details about Star Trek Beyond. There is an interesting link with Terminator Genisys. It features Brandon Stacy, who worked on the first two rebooted Star Trek films as stand-in and photo double for Spock actor Zachary Quinto. Yum!
Zach & double Brandon
Brandon Stacy & Terminator posters
The whole interview with Ellison & Goldberg is interesting. You can read it here.
Adventures of A Production Assistant con’t.: Beyond Trek to – Ellen!!
This is the third and last part of my interview with Kerry who worked as a Production Assistant in Hollywood. In Parts 1 & 2, I asked Kerry about how she got her job and what it was like working on Star Trek, both TV and movie. You can read Parts 1 & 2 here: http://www.startrekmagic.com/2013/07/06/adventures-of-a-production-assistant
I asked Kerry about working on productions other than Star Trek. You’d think that would be a hard act to follow, but she ended up on a project that helped change our world! Here’s what happened in Kerry’s own words:
Ellen Comes Out
“After the Star Treks, I did a one day gig over at Disney as a Production Assistant. I got the job through a friend of a friend, which is how you usually find work. It was working with Ellen DeGeneres on her sitcom, Ellen. I arrived at a time when the atmosphere was very hush-hush and full of fear, because the very next episode was ‘The Puppy Episode’, in which Ellen’s character came out as a lesbian. In 1997 that was a very scary and brave thing to do.
“They liked my work so I got a call a few months later offering me a job. They offered me an Office PA job, but I told them I wanted the Set PA job – I KNEW what the next season was going to be like! I myself had just come out about six months before that, and I wanted in on it all.
“What a season! It was a media circus. The Disney Studio was freaking out. The industry magazines made dire proclamations: ‘Ellen DeGeneres Will Never Work In This Town Again!’ ‘Anne Heche Has Thrown Her Career Away!’ ‘Look Out For The Queers Invading Hollywood!’ We had to evacuate the stage twice for bomb threats. Anne was mysteriously presented with a live scorpion instead of fakes while making Six Days And Seven Nights with Harrison Ford in Hawaii. Ellen and Anne had to replace the picture window on the front of their house a half dozen times because some homophobes threw bricks with hate mail through their window. It was crazy, the atmosphere of hate and fear that swirled around us all. But supporting Ellen just felt right and honest. As Ellen’s girlfriend at the time, Anne Heche, said, ‘It’s not what’s between your legs that matters when you fall in love, but what’s between your ears’.
Ian McKellan called!!
“My job as a Set PA on Ellen wasn’t complicated. I delivered scripts and pages to the cast and crew on set. I escorted guest cast around. I did some of Ellen’s personal errands. My most important job was to babysit the stage phone. One day I answered the phone while everyone was at lunch. It was a lovely sounding British gent who asked to speak with Ellen. I’m a sucker for Brits, so I humored him – people and fans occasionally found out the Set phone number and called because they were ‘close personal friends of Ellen’. Well, around the stage you have to prove it to the doorkeeper, me! So, I put him on hold after asking who was calling and went to find Ellen. I knew she was on the patio smoking, so I walked out and asked her, ‘Hey, El, do you know some guy named Ian McKellen?’ Ellen leapt out of her chair and said, ‘Oh my god! Do you KNOW who that is???’ Bewildered at her alarming behavior, I answered no. Rolling her eyes, she proclaimed I was the worst lesbian EVER, and dragged me by the front of my shirt back with her to the stage phone. ‘Hello, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir’, ‘Thank you, sir,’ followed. Who the heck was ELLEN ‘yes, sir-ing?’ Hanging up the phone and looking a bit boggled, she again shook her head at my ignorance and demanded I go find out who he is. I did. My son is named Ian in his honor.
“Ellen DeGeneres is one of the smartest actresses I’ve had the pleasure of working with. People always ask me if she is really as nice and personable as she seems to be. She is.
Emma Thompson
“Another dream come true to work with was Emma Thompson, who guest-starred in the episode conveniently titled ‘Emma’. Again, it’s the accent… or maybe that Emma is wickedly intelligent, emphatically professional, remarkably down-to-earth and prodigiously talented. She is also unusually supportive of her friends, and jumped at the chance to be able to support Ellen in that difficult year by being on her show. Also supporting Ellen were Sarah McLaughlin and the Indigo Girls in the episode ‘Womyn Fest’ and talented actress Lisa Darr, who bravely played the character Ellen’s girlfriend. Not to mention Laura Dern, who co-starred in ‘The Puppy Episode’.
www.mckellen.com-A surprise party with Ian McKellen, Ellen Degenes, Anne Hecht, Emma Thompson & others
“By the end of the season, many more Hollywood names were on that same wavelength of support after seeing how the media and our own Studio treated her. Our final episode featured a plethora of Hollywood talent who came out in support of Ellen – Linda Ellerbee, Bea Arthur, Orson Bean, Glenn Close, Tim Conway (OMG, this was funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?
“It was an interesting experience for so many reasons. One, it was the first time I worked at another Studio. They moved the Ellen show from its original stage to a stage far away in the corner… we joked that if we blew up, we wouldn’t interrupt the filming of Home Improvement with Tim Allen, Disney’s darling at the time. Second, it gave me the opportunity to work with a whole new group of people. Ellen was amazing – we’d get the scripts out on Friday night and she’d have them memorized by the time she came in on Monday morning for the Table Read. The rest of the cast struggled to keep up with her. Filming our show Friday nights was fast… it usually took only a few hours to shoot because Ellen and our two Directors, Gil Junger and Gail Mancuso, ran a tight ship and everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. It was also my first audience live show. I also got screen credit on every-other episode… yeah, me! I am actually in two episodes – once as an audience member at the music festival and then in the final episode – I’m – wait for it – the Set P.A. on the telephone! Do not ask me why I chose to wear OVERALLS that day. Look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?
“Even funnier was the episode that had Ellen in a chicken costume. The crew on stage was in tears laughing so hard, we could hardly see. I just couldn’t look at her for more than two seconds. When she walked, the duck costume butt swished from side to side and she couldn’t walk straight. Every time I did look at her, she’d turn around really fast and glare at me and I’d collapse laughing. That episode took longer to shoot than most.
Did the Lucy episode on Ellen inspire JC Penney’s ad?
“The final scene we shot was a scene where the characters Ellen, Paige, Spence are grinding coffee by foot in an I Love Lucy spoof. Check out this from 2:54 until 3:58 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?
“The pay at Disney was dismal. Since I was the Set P.A., I only got paid when we shot – which was two weeks out of every three. So, some months I only worked 2 weeks on Ellen. So like many in the entertainment business I had to find other work. When I wasn’t working at Disney, I worked full time weeks at a book store and back at Paramount in the Estimating Department, doing file work for the Accountants on Frasier and Jenny McCarthy to pay the bills. In ten months, I had three entire days off. It was tough, it was worth it and it – barely – paid the bills. Such is the life of a Production Assistant!
“From Disney, I had a couple quiet years working as a P.A. back at Paramount Pictures, which I consider home. I worked in Network Television and on a sitcom called ‘DiResta’ as a Producer’s Assistant to Line Producer Mark Ovitz. From there, I got my break into the administrative end of film making, and began working as an Executive Assistant to a Production Executive in the Feature Production Department at Paramount.
“I worked in the Paramount’s Feature Production Administration Department for nearly five years. At Paramount, there were around 25 movies made each year – large and small budget films. There were four Production Executives and a Vice President, and all those movies were divided between them. My boss was the newest Exec, so we got the ‘not so important’ movies! Oh, well. It was educational and I loved working for my boss; he is a great guy. Now, he’s also the President of Feature Production at Paramount and was the Exec on the new Trek movies, the Indiana Jones movies and Transformers. Some days it kills me that I left.
“On each movie there is an Executive Producer who oversees production. My boss at the Studio is that guy’s boss. A movie gets its start – at the Studio level – with a script and the Exec cracks out a rough budget – what the movie is estimated to cost to make – and it goes to The Powers That Be who decide if they want to make it or not. If they decide to green light it, the search is on for people to attach to the project – cast, Director, Producer, Director of Photography, Costume Designer, Editor etc. Then you have to find a location – so you send out location scouts, who send back pictures – and decision is made as to where the movie will be shot. Then you send out a partial crew on a Location Scout adventure with a Location Manager. They pave the way to get permission for the production company to shoot at that location. They make deals and contracts and generally get it all ready for the production to come in and shoot. My job in the Pre-Production phase of a movie was to make all those travel and hotel arrangements and type up the deals as my Exec and the agents representing the important crew members negotiated their wages and perks. Once the location is secured and everyone is happy, then a true budget is hammered out and the hiring begins. Once the Production Coordinator is hired and she’s completed her paperwork with me, she (and it’s usually a ‘she’) takes over the start-paperwork and on-boarding process. Then the cast, casting directors, crew, caterers, and everyone else is hired and a preliminary shooting schedule is published – this will be what shoots where and when, basically, followed by a cast list and a first draft script. When the start date is determined, that is the start of production.
“There’s so much involved in physical production I can’t even describe it, except that it HAS to run like a well-oiled machine or it’s torture. Hopefully the crew and cast and execs all know what they are doing. Call sheets tell everyone what is happening and Production Reports reflect what actually happened. Schedules are to be maintained and budgets are to be met and not exceeded – in a perfect world. When I was at Paramount, none of the movies we were in charge of actually shot in LA. They all shot elsewhere. It made for a nice office job – only 9 -10 hours a day or so instead of 12 to 16 hours a day on a film crew. I worked on Hardball, Rat Race, Against the Ropes, Down to Earth, the Perfect Score, the Fighting Temptations, Manchurian Candidate and Paycheck. But I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with what I was doing. I needed to feel like I was making a difference. While working on Star Trek and Ellen, I did feel I was contributing to making the world a better place in a small way by doing my part to the best of my ability. Things I did, mattered. But the films I was working on now were not making the world a better place. So I left film and television production.
“I never meant to get into film and television production, it just happened and I fell in love with the process. It was a wonderful experience that I was blessed to fall into. But when it was done, I wanted to have a baby – so I did. Eventually I left L.A. and Hollywood – hard to live there as a single mother with a special needs child! My life now is a far cry from my days as a single Paramount Pictures employee making good money and living the dream. But as my son’s mother and an advocate for families with special needs children, I still seek to make a difference in that special Star Trek kind of way, and make the world a better place.”
Wow! Thanks, Kerry. You certainly worked on some iconic productions. Rich – and exhausting – experiences.
Kerry’s interest in Things Trek continues. This interview has inspired her to launch her own blog at http://startrekintorelevance.blogspot.com/. Her plan is to showcase thoughtful and enlightening articles, interviews and other media by actors associated with all the various Star Treks and give fans a place to discuss profound, philosophical topics infrequently covered elsewhere online. Check it out!
How about you, fellow enthusiast? Have you yearned to work behind the scenes or in front of the camera? Or have you done so? I’d love to hear from you!
Adventures of a Production Assistant con’t.: Working On Star Trek
We’re continuing our interview with Kerry who worked as a Production Assistant in Hollywood, including working on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the First Contact movie – and some other productions as well. You can read Part 1 here: http://www.startrekmagic.com/2013/07/06/adventures-of-a-production-assistant
We asked Kerry what it was like to work on a Star Trek set. Here’s what she said:
“My time on Star Trek:Deep Space 9 was wonderful. The cast and crew were some of the most enjoyable people I have had the pleasure of working with, and this show was one of the best working experiences I had while in
“Hollywood”. We had very long hours and I loved that… film and television production is one of the few jobs I’ve held that is challenging enough for me. DS9 Production Assistants were allowed by our Unit Production Manager Bobby della Santina to work up to 16-hours per day, but the Voyager PA’s were limited by their UPM Brad Yacobian to 12 hours, which meant I also ended up very familiar with all the Voyager cast and crew and sets. That was a nice perk… especially since the Voyager craft service table (free food!) was MUCH better than the DS9 one! As someone with A.D.D., I enjoyed the physical work of the long days, but I especially liked that the energy of my life was going towards something that mattered to people. When I work, I want my
contribution to make a difference in the world.
There were two PA’s at a time on each Trek (two on DS9 and two on Voyager) and our responsibilities were varied. As the “bottom of the food chain”, we did all the “go-fer” work. The two Treks were large productions and our various departments were all over the Paramount Studio lot, so we did a lot of running and bike riding. The production office and the sets were on opposite ends of the Studio, so it was nice… I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and not gain a pound! Some days I wore a pedometer and was running/biking 15 miles per day easily. It was fun!
We divided the Studio lot into a North Half and a South Half and we switched with our partners every episode, so we covered the entire lot. Each half had about 15 – 20 stations where we 
had to deliver scripts, dailies, deliveries, mail, production reports, call sheets, and whatnot. We stayed late many nights to wait for scripts to deliver from Graphic Services (the on-lot copy shop basically) and then sent them to cast member houses by delivery drivers. We ordered, picked up and delivered lunches and dinners to crew and production people, and we stocked the office with drinks and snacks. We also gave tours of our sets to special guests – and it took a lot to get onto our sets! I have given set tours to dying children, Secret Service and CIA agents, and astronauts. That was one of the more fun aspects of the job, especially since we did DS9 AND Voyager tours. We also did cast errands occasionally and did basically whatever the production needed.
One more task was babysitting the office phones. It was usually mundane, but occasionally a “fun” call came in. I remember one call from a farmer somewhere in a fly-over state who “just wanted to borrow a big mother transporter for a few days to move some machinery from one corner of his large farm to another”. He’d return it promptly he promised! Another memorable call was from a guy who insisted quite adamantly upon speaking with Captain Kirk. We referred him to the Production Offices of “Rescue 911”, who probably didn’t really appreciate the call!
The DS9 cast and the Voyager casts were very different. Generally speaking, the DS9 actors were more introverted, retreating to their trailers after shooting, and the Voyager cast were more outgoing. After dark, when the rest of the Studio who worked more “traditional hours” went home, our little corner of the Studio woke up – we knew there weren’t tour groups going through or fans wandering around. A lot of time working in production is “hurry up and wait” so I spent a lot of time hours of down time (waiting for scripts or errands) – and I’d play football in the street with the Voyager cast or listen to the DS9 people talk about their projects, books and philosophy.
On DS9, I got along well with Sid and Nana, as you can imagine, since I met them first and they helped get me the job. Terry Farrell was a fun person to work with; I wish I could have spent more time with her. One memorable afternoon, we spent sitting on her trailer steps giving away a few dozen roses that her boyfriend had given her because she was mad at him.
The trio of Armin Shimmerman, Rene Auberjonois and Andy Robinson were a blast to work with. They are so amazingly talented! And just genuinely NICE. I loved to watch their transformations from just actors into ALIENS! Their whole personae changed in the makeup chair.
Mr. Brooks was incredibly intimidating. I think we PA’s were all a little bit scared of him. And he was always “Mr. Brooks” – not a first name. I could have listened to him talk for HOURS… what an amazing voice. And he sings. Very occasionally.
Colm Meaney was rarely casual when he was there. He was usually in his trailer when not filming. I think he’s just shy and intense. He was doing work in addition to DS9 at the time, so he was very much in “work mode” when he was filming his episodes or his scenes.
My favorite Director was LeVar Burton. LeVar taught me how to smoke cigars. One day he was directing DS9 and we were up on Stage 18 (which held the Defiant and the caves and any sets built specifically for that episode). He was standing outside the stage smoking and as I went into the stage, I caught a whiff of the smoke and told him I loved that smell. He told me to come back out after I was done inside and he’d give me one. So, I did. He taught me how to clip off the end, light it so it makes a small hot cone on the end and to not inhale. I sat out there smoking with him very companionably until my boss came riding up on his bike and did a double-take to see his PA out smoking cigars with the Director! He said incredulously, “What are you doing???” and I handed the cigar I was smoking back to LeVar, who was collapsed with laughter, and ran away as quickly as I could. I often wonder how much that cigar cost! I also loved our 1st Assistant Directors: Paul Lawrence (who taught me about call sheets and call times/scheduling), and B.C. Cameron, but my favorite was Jerry Fleck over at Voyager.
Michael Westmore at work
It was really amazing to get to work with the talented Westmore clan of makeup artists. Mike Westmore is a genius! I loved taking stuff to his office because you never knew what alien you might run into that day! I remember having more than one makeup head of some fantastic alien in my bike basket to take to Rick Berman’s office for approval… oh, the looks we got from folks on the lot!
DS9 and Trek in general has attracted such a talented group of people in every department… it was such a learning experience to work with people like Mike & Denise Okuda, Rick Sternbach, Doug Drexler, Joe Longo, Herman Zimmerman, Jonathan West, Kris Krosskove, Marvin Rush, Bob Blackman, J.P. Farrell, and Judi Brown. These folks are so talented and taught me so much about television and film production; I owe them a huge debt. They are true professionals and are wickedly good at what they do. I can’t imagine a better place to basically apprentice than on DS9 – and I knew absolutely nothing about it when I started. When I left, I had a very good basic education on how episodic drama television works. Brilliant!
The sets themselves were another character – it is impossible to talk about DS9 and all Treks without mentioning them. I firmly believe that the Promenade is one of the most beautiful sets ever built. Rumor has it that they were bulldozed at the end of the series, and that breaks my heart. It was an intricate and complicated set
with pull-apart walls and three stories! Quarks Bar was simply stunning. It was easy to imagine that it truly was a station orbiting a distant planet. You know how Jake and Nog always sat on the second floor dangling their legs and watching all that went on? Well, the PA’s did that also often enough!
The other set I really liked was Ops. It’s kind of claustrophobic, but you can believe it’s a real center of Operations. Maybe it sounds weird, but what I liked about Ops was how it sounded… the sounds of boots/shoes on the steps and the buttons etc. I also admit I have a blurry picture of myself in Sisko’s captain’s chair on the Defiant (another awesome set) somewhere in my photo boxes!
My favorite moment on the sets was the moment when I was taking a short cut from Wardrobe to the other stages and cut through Stage 4, which held Ops and the Habitat Ring and Corridors. I came in the south entrance and cut through…. And for a moment, just a moment, I was in the Habitat Ring corridor and all I could see was the station… and I was THERE. It was suddenly NOT a set, but the actual station. And then reality intruded and I had to continue to haul butt to deliver my scripts or pages and continued on, but for a split second I was actually on the Station. Remembering that moment STILL gives me goose bumps.
After the wrap of Season 4 of DS9, I found myself out of work – and extremely tired! Two years of 12–16 hour days catches up with you when you are running 15 miles each day on average. After sleeping for a couple of weeks, I was finally ready to start looking for work. The Next Generation movie “First Contact” was already filming, but they needed a PA who knew t
he Paramount lot… and that was me! Jerry Fleck, 1st AD from Voyager, hired me on as a PA for a 3-day shoot in Union Station in downtown LA, shooting a holodeck scene where Captain Picard shoots up a bunch of Borg. I’d never worked outside the studio lot before, so that was something new! It was much more challenging, especially since we had a whole bunch of Extras to wrangle.
Apparently I did a good enough job that when the show moved to the sound-stages, they invited me back to PA for the Borg portion of the show. It was to my advantage that I am an incurable morning person. A large portion of the time I worked on 1st Contact, I was the early person on set – my call time often was 2:42am. I did a lot of AD-type work, probably more than I was really supposed to, but my AD and the Trainee just could not wake up fully before 6am, so from 3 – 6am I ran the show! That was early even for me – especially since I lived in Pasadena, a 45-minute commute. Work a 16-hour day with a 45-minute morning commute and a torturous 1 ½ hour commute in afternoon rush hour traffic and it’s hard. Still, it was one of my most enjoyable experiences.
Working with the Borg was interesting and gave me different things to do than I had done as a Production Assistant on DS9 and Voyager. My jobs on this film were to get breakfast for about 35 people – makeup artists, hair stylists, AD’s, Borg, Stuntmen; get lunch for about a dozen (Jonathan, and a dozen or so production crew who viewed dailies at lunch), run scripts and pages around and do general errands. I also had a large petty cash float – $500. One day after paying for breakfast and some other things, I was 10 minutes late getting to the film accountant’s office to get the float renewed – and she refused to do it. I panicked because I had to buy lunch very soon. I went to the stage to find my 2nd AD David Ticotin, and ask for help. David didn’t know what to do, so we discussed options. While we were doing so, Jonathan Frakes, our Director, overheard us taking about it. He gallantly offered to use his credit card to pay for lunch until I could reimburse him and get my petty cash turned around. While we three were making these arrangements, the UPM Marty Hornstein overheard us. He was NOT amused. I wanted to die right there and then and sink through the floor when he yelled for SILENCE on the set while he called the production accountant assistant who had refused to renew my float. He must have yelled for 10 minutes at the top of his lungs at this poor woman. Then, he demanded my petty cash fund be doubled so it never happened again. I was the first PA at Paramount Pictures to be given a $1,000/day petty cash float. I was mortified, but it did make things easier!
Michael Dorn & Patrick Stewart in “civies”
Speaking of meals, a meal could have cost me my job my first day at the Studio. Ooops! I was required to get the cast breakfast, and had it all taken care of…until I saw Patrick Stewart walk onto set. I did not have his breakfast! He had a later call time than the rest and I had clean forgotten, and I had not tracked him down earlier to take his breakfast order. I sucked it up and walked over to him to introduce myself. “Hello, Mr. Stewart, my name is Kerry and I am your new Set PA. I also forgot your breakfast, can I go get you anything?!” And this charming man said, “Don’t worry about it, darling, I know where the Craft Service table is and will get myself a coffee and croissant. We’ll try again tomorrow, shall we?” I could have kissed his feet! He was such a gentleman – he could have made a big stink about it and gotten me fired then and there, but he didn’t. Thank you, Patrick!
Another pleasure was working with Jonathan Frakes as a Director. What a fun set we had! Even on the longest, most miserable days, it was tolerable because of his levity and compassion for everyone working with him. He never criticized and always had something positive to say. His sense of joie de vivre – the joy of living – carries over into the finished film.
I worked part of the time with the Borg, part of the time with Alice Krige the Borg Queen, and the remainder of the time with the other cast members. I was responsible for basically arriving at the Studio at 2:42am and getting 6 – 12 Borg actors and/or Stuntmen through Hair, Makeup, Wardrobe and Electronics for a 9:00am shooting call. I also had the pleasure of helping Alice Krige when she was on set. Poor Alice… I remember her trying to drink one day without getting water all over her makeup and went on a frantic search for a straw. When I found some and brought them back for her, her eyes literally got teary in gratitude! What a gracious soul. Besides Borg, I also worked primarily with “the guys” – Patrick, Jonathan, Brent, LeVar and Michael. I only worked a few days on the Bridge with Gates and Marina, so I really didn’t get to know them at all. The rest of the work was all the Borg work in the hallways and Engineering, and that was “the guys” nearly entirely. A group of Marines trained the background extras and our cast how to use the new Starfleet rifles properly, and how to go around doorways with weapons in a realistic manner etc. We also did a lot of work on that horrible deflector dish… I’m sure it tortured Patrick, Michael and Neal McDonough to be in those suits. I also remember working with Jamie Cromwell, who played Zefram Cochrane, in the small set of the Phoenix. He is incredibly tall – I come up about to his bellybutton. He is a towering presence!
“The guys” were really fun to work with. Watching them work together was seeing a well-oiled machine plow through the day and still laugh at the end of it. Each is so savvy in his craft, that it was easy to make this movie. AD Jerry Fleck and the other AD’s also made it a good experience. How lucky I was!
To be continued. In Part 3, we’ll hear about Kelly’s experience working on Ellen DeGeneres‘ tv show and others.
