TrekWeb.com - Event Report: Patrick Stewart Goes TO HOLLYWOOD AND BACK at Buxton Opera House

Event Report: Patrick Stewart Goes TO HOLLYWOOD AND BACK at Buxton Opera House

By Steve Krutzler / 15:01, 26 July 2004 / People

Patrick Stewart ('Picard') appeared at the Buxton Opera House in the United Kingdom this weekend, and TrekWeb has received the following report from a visitor who attended the event.

It was a very entertaining talk, entitled TO HOLLYWOOD AND BACK, even though Stewart crammed so much into his allotted time that he barely got halfway through the material he'd prepared. The chief point of interest re: STAR TREK were Stewart's comments in answer to an audience question about John Logan's script idea for the now-never-to-happen NEMESIS sequel.

According to Stewart, Logan's idea was to have ALL the STAR TREK captains - Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer - joining forces to fight "the final battle". Stewart added: "But you'll just have to imagine it in your heads because it's never going to happen."

He described his working week on TNG as basically learning and relearning lines all the time, working between 12 and 17-and-a-half hour days, rising at 5am and only having a little time off on Saturdays, when he did his own laundry to "keep a hold on reality", went to the local market, had lunch and went out in the evenings. Sunday was entirely spent learning lines for the following week. He wasn't complaining about this, just describing it, and he emphasised how well he was compensated for the work.

He told a couple of more familiar stories, about how Bob Justman spotted him and landed him his Trek audition, about how the Enterprise bridge reminded him of a stage, etc etc. He said that Jonathan Frakes' father was an East Coast English professor and that Frakes was always nervous in the early days of TNG that all the dialogue would have to be grammtically correct, witty and original or else he'd be getting some major criticism.

Stewart also said that he'd been "blessed" that the TNG producers had allowed him some input into the scripts - they evidently let him write, or at least rewrite, some of his lines.

He said again that he couldn't see a return to Trek for the TNG cast because of what the studio called the "franchise fatigue" that greeted NEMESIS. Someone asked him if the TNG cast could work together on a different project but Stewart repled that that would be "contrived - a gimmick". Some of the cast had worked together on Stewart's stage production of Tom Stoppard's EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR, but that had been more "appropriate" because the show was still in production at that time.

However, the TNG actors were still in social contact - they had reunited in Los Angeles three months ago, he added - and were in regular touch through e-mail.

During the one-man show, Stewart (suffering from a slight cold) produced stunning performances as characters in extracts from stage plays, including Othello, Shylock, Leontes and the title chacacter in Peter Schaffer's play Yonadab as well as Captain Ahab from Moby Dick.

There was a bit of evidence that the TREK experience is fading from his memory a little, too. He thought NEMESIS was called INSURRECTION and when he was listing the captains in his answer about the NEMESIS sequel, he could only remember the names of Picard, Kirk and Janeway. Sisko was "Captain whatever-his-name-is" and when he got to Archer, he just called him "the capain from ENTERPRISE whose name I've never known...."

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RE: ? | Report this post to moderator
By: Scorpius (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:39:38 on Jul 26, 2004

I totally agree with you. Logan was not the reason it sucked. The script, which I read, before I saw the movie read really well. Obviously it needed a polish, and some aspects should have been changed and added before filming, such as a reference to Lore when they activate the B4 without even so much as a thought that he could be maniachal.

But Baird's directing had no heart. There was no Star Trek heart in Nemesis. The final scene in which Data and Geordie are together before Data jumps ship literally was very poorly directed and underplayed. Even if the dialogue wasn't there, actions can speak a thousand unwritten words.

The scenes between Shinzon and Picard in which they just talked forever, were also poorly directed. Someone like Frakes could have done a better job as he did with the several dialogue based scenes in First Contact in which he created tension and life.

I also think the casting of Hardy was a poor one. This man didn't ooze any kind of life and was wasted as a nemesis on the par with Khan. Recasting a classy actor could have avoided this. In fact I thought it would be better to have the character played by Patrick Stewart and have the clone in some sort of advanced ageing along with his degenerative condition.

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"Men don't use sex to get what they want. Sex IS what they want" - Frasier

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Agreed | Report this post to moderator
By: motionblur (Odo's file, contact) @ 17:01:39 on Aug 04, 2004

Good call Dodgy.

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By: StarFleet Captain (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:19:38 on Jul 26, 2004

That Director's name is Stuart Baird. He isn't a bad director. I actually liked Nemesis. Its failure, like Enterprise is do to a number of things, mostly regarding Paramounts's handling of the franchise in general.

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RE: ? by Dodgy @ 16:28:22 on Jul 26

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RE: ? | Report this post to moderator By: Scorpius (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:39:38 on Jul 26, 2004

Agreed | Report this post to moderator By: motionblur (Odo's file, contact) @ 17:01:39 on Aug 04, 2004

RE: ? | Report this post to moderator By: StarFleet Captain (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:19:38 on Jul 26, 2004

RE: ? | Report this post to moderator
By: Scorpius (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:39:38 on Jul 26, 2004

Agreed | Report this post to moderator
By: motionblur (Odo's file, contact) @ 17:01:39 on Aug 04, 2004

RE: ? | Report this post to moderator
By: StarFleet Captain (Odo's file, contact) @ 16:19:38 on Jul 26, 2004