[…continued from Wednesday.]

The Goddess and the Temptress: We Finally Get Some Females to Act In Our Stuff

Here is where the comparison to the monomyth breaks down a little bit. We didn’t have a goddess or a temptress, per se. But we did get some girls to agree to act for us. In the sense that this is the part in the monomyth where the women show up, it turns out this is exactly what happened to us.

The first female we had sign on was Aaron’s sister Kathie, who was basically the only girl we knew at the time who might have been willing to help us. We wrote X-files knowing full well we’d need a female co-lead—and that it would be Kathie. Fortunately, she agreed to do it. It helped us avoid pulling a Monty Python, anyway.

Along those lines, one thing that’s worth mentioning at this point is a side project that Dave and I worked on periodically through high school. It always seemed to be that we were doing a video project for our English and Humanities classes. Eventually we came to call ourselves the Humanity Piece Players, as the majority of these projects were for our AP Humanities class. Like the TTT, these started simple, but got longer and more complex through high school. Unlike the TTT, however, we never had girls help out with any of these, meaning all those mythical love stories from Greek and Roman times were illustrated with one of us in drag.

Anyway, that’s a story for a different day.

Through high school, Dave, Graham and I were in marching band. (Graham and I quit our senior year, I believe Dave trudged through four years of marching.) The lunch-table discussions of middle school would turn, each fall, into “standing around during band” discussions. It was during one of the band cavalcade championships when we hammered out the main details for Trek Wars. At the time, I thought it would be awesome if we could actually do that, but mainly I thought we were joking.

The lead character from Trek Wars was taken straight from that early script we had way back in fourth grade: Captain Retard. Rhyming with Picard, it’s pronounced with the accent on the second syllable—Captain reTARD—the running gag being that everyone pronounces it the way it looks. Retard. I couldn’t tell you the specific creative processes that led to the other characters. Number 2053 was obviously a play on the way Captain Picard would call Riker, “Number One”, but there wasn’t any other joke there. Now that I’m thinking about it, it could have been funny to have made 2053 a generic red-shirt, with the backstory that the first 2052 guys in his position had been killed on various away missions. Instead, he’s basically just like Number One, but with a bigger number. Word seems like such an obvious Worf parody that I’m surprised I’ve never seen it done before. Basically he’s always waving a gun around and talking in ghetto slang. This is made even more ludicrous by the fact that he was played by Graham—probably the whitest white-guy in the TTT. The medical officer isn’t named, but she doesn’t need to be because she’s just a Guy #2 who exists solely to talk to the Princess about the Princess’s ancestry.

So we had always wanted to do a Star Trek parody. Who hasn’t? But the crew of the Entersurprise (their ship, natch) needed someone to fight. Taking an alien race from Star Trek was the obvious choice. Why not make them fight a Darth Vader like character? Dave had a voice changer and I had a gas mask, so that was as good as done. Then we threw in a Princess character and Luke Skawalker for no other reason than it seemed like we should round out the Star Wars side of things.

Regarding the Entersurprise itself, it was designed by me on a 3×5 notecard. We knew from the very first day that we wanted to make this look as cheesy as possible, which lead to the selection of the fattest yarn we could find to suspend the ship in front of our “space” backdrop. Space itself was a black piece of foamcore with holes punched in it and a light shining in from behind. The ship design is a combination the death star from Star Wars, and the Enterprise from Star Trek (a design that we later found out actually does exist in the Star Trek universe. Figures)—and I think we just used the name “Entersurprise” because it sounded funny. I build the model out of balsa wood and styrofoam and painted it flat gray. The supplies for the model and associated backdrop comprised the entire budget of the movie, which came to exactly $10.24.

Somewhere along the lines, we also had the idea to do a parody of the civil war drama, Gettysburg. I think this went as far back as eighth grade where some of us in the TTT had a history teacher who was an extra in the movie. The idea was kicked around (as in, “we should really do a Gettysburg parody”) but never realized into something tangible.

Over the fall of 1998 these things were discussed, dissected and, eventually, dumped together. The Star Trek and Star Wars elements—being the space borne science fiction stories that they are—flowed easily enough into each other. Gettysburg, not so much. But we didn’t try to explain it. No, it just made sense that, like in the real Star Treks, there needed to be a reason to beam down to planet and fight someone there. Why not the Confederates? Also because these scripts were combined without much thought as to actually rounding them out and making them good stories by themselves, many of the characters in Trek Wars aren’t named. You’ve got the Evil Guy, the Princess, the Medical Officer. It was basically like: if we couldn’t think of a good, solid character name in two minutes, they didn’t get one. This is reoccuring theme throughout all of the TTT’s history. We never came up with a good name for the X-Files spoof. Badamir’s Aid in Hydro is just known as “The Trooper”. But Trek Wars really got the brunt of this laziness.

Using the lessons garnered from X-files, we knew a script was in order. Dave wrote one up—a copy of which I’ve got around here somewhere—and from what I remember, I don’t think any major changes were instituted. The one thing I can think of off the top of my head is the cantina scene. There was supposed to be a short scene making fun of the cantina scene in Star Wars. Retard beams down to the planet, gets in a fight there, and General Lee makes his entrance and suggests they take it outside, which they then do.

I wasn’t able to stay over at Dave’s that night; everyone else was. I figured after a long day of shooting on Saturday, that nobody would stay up to the wee hours of the morning shooting the next thing on the list, which was the cantina scene. I was wrong. When I got to the set on Sunday, everyone was telling me how ridiculous the cantina scene turned out. “Ridiculous?” I asked. “Ridiculous like how?”

It turns out the cantina scene morphed from being a simple two or thee line exchange to being like some sort of music video: one line delivered, then there was a clip from Metallica. The next line was followed by a clip from Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Another line, then Rage Against the Machine. It was ridiculous. I later said—and I think everyone agreed with me—that had I been there, the cantina scene wouldn’t have happened like that. But over the years it’s really grown on me, and now, it’s one of my favorite TTT moments. The point is: for the most part, I believe we stuck to the script, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t get interpreted loosely every once in a while.

In screenwriting, the rule of thumb is that one page equals one minute of screen time. When Dave finished the final script for Trek Wars, it came in to somewhere around a hefty 25 pages. Needless to say, that wasn’t what I had had in mind. We were supposed to be going shorter. I made some half-hearted attempt at telling everyone that we should just split it into three parodies, and focusing on rounding those out a bit more, but no one was having it. This wasn’t just going to be the longest thing the TTT had ever done—it was going to be longer than everything we had ever done put together. Trek Wars would be twenty five minutes long, and we were going to shoot it or die trying.

Trek Wars is also notable for having not only the largest cast, but also the cast with the most women: three. In addition to Kathie—who more than proved her worth with X-Files—my sister, Daphne also makes a one-scene appearance as an extra. She wasn’t there because we necessarily needed another girl, but mostly because my parents were bugging me about including my siblings in the TTT. Just to make everyone happy I threw Daphne in as an extra. Despite the short screen time, it was enough to get everyone off my back about it, which surprised me, actually.

But we needed another female character to play the Princess. I don’t recall why Kathie wasn’t made the Princess and we just used someone else as the medical officer. It could just have been that the person who played the princess—Alexis—was interested in what we were doing, was always hanging around during homeroom giving us ideas, and she lived close enough to Dave’s to walk. In any case, she played her completely superfluous character with aplomb.

Alexis never returned for anything else that we released, but then again, we never ran into a scripting situation where we needed to have two female actors. It seemed like once we got Kathie, she would adequately fill any female role we need, and so we just used her. We did actually shoot a scene with Alexis in late 2002 for a project called Taking A Left. This was never finished, so Trek Wars remains Alexis’ only appearance with the TTT.

To this day, it amazes me how we were able to turn this monumental script into an actual film, however crude. None of us were old enough to drive—we were fifteen and sixteen, or younger. We relied on our parents to haul us around. Fortunately Dave’s mom had an entire basement which we could take over. We used every square inch of that basement at one point or another in Trek Wars—all the rooms, the closets, storage space under the stairs. I don’t remember us destroying the place, but things would get out of hand, and I’m pretty sure Dave got chewed out a couple of times. But the show went on.

I think the secret to Trek Wars was that we just did it. (Also having a dedicated basement that we didn’t have to clean up helped.) I don’t know how else to say it without being trite. It just became this thing we did—a habit—that every weekend we were shooting. In a few months time it was spring of 1999 (only two years after our humble beginnings), and we released Trek Wars, much to the amusement of our parents.

Rather than twenty five minutes that the script suggested, Trek Wars clocked in at thirty seven minutes. This made it, without a doubt, longer than everything else we had done combined.

Of course I never wanted to show it to anyone. The thing I always had with Trek Wars was that even though I really liked it—I definitely had guilty pleasure watching it—I realized it was bad enough that I didn’t want anyone else to see it. Most people who knew us also liked it, but I always figured they were enjoying watching us make idiots of ourselves more than they liked the actual movie. What is interesting, though, is that Trek Wars is our second-to-most passed around movie after From Beyond. My sibling’s friends were borrowing it, and watching it—and liking it, from what I heard. Even after this positive feedback, I’m loath to subject anyone to it. I think the hype is always a lot greater than the movie itself.

But I still think it’s hilarious.

Atonement with The Father: What Our Parents Thought About This Mess

The TTT didn’t have any sort of event or production that corresponds to this stage of the monomyth, but it makes for a good interlude. I want to take the time to talk about what our parents thought of the whole thing. I think that my parents thought that each production would be the last. That is to say, they were pretty sure that nothing major would come of it, and that after the first few commercials we did in middle school and the summer after would be the last of it.

But even when we didn’t quit, my parents never complained about it, or told me I was spending too much time on it, or anything along those lines. I suppose I could have been out there getting drunk or high, so the fact that I was not only not getting into trouble, but actually recording my actions to be seen later was not a past time which caused my parents great concern. I’m not sure my dad ever understood what the appeal was either to doing the movies, or to the movies themselves. If there’s any “atonement” there, it’s coming from the fact that I’m a video producer today—and I love it—so whatever sort of video nonsense I did in high school obviously paid off somehow. My mom really liked the stuff.

My friend’s parents reactions were generally positive, I believe. Because Dave had the camera, the vast majority of productions were shot at Dave’s house (two houses, really, as he moved somewhere during high school), so a special thanks is due to his mom for putting up with us for way more than any person ever should, ever. Aaron and Kathie’s mom, like my mom, never saw very much of us since we were usually shooting elsewhere. But we did shoot a significant portion of Taking A Left at her place, so there were a few weekends we were over there. I think she got a kick out of the TTT stuff like everyone else—and like my parents, I get the feeling that she was glad it kept her kids from going off and getting arrested or something.

It’s a high school cliché that in any given group of friends, there’s one person who has the cool parents. For the TTT, this was Graham and Even whose parents, for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on, were just damn cool. A lot of the earlier TTT stuff was shot at their place—and they would actually agree to be in the productions. How cool is that? Graham and Evan’s dad, Robert, gave us one of the most memorable performances in the history of the TTT in WIOA: Special Edition. Graham’s mom, Shawn, made her debut as early as Purple Stuff in which she played the mom. We got her to act again in WIOA: Special Edition, as well, playing a backpack conservationist who doesn’t quite have her facts straight. Unbeknownst to us, she was hung over at the time, and the last thing she wanted was to be shoved in front of a camera. And still, she played the part for us. So cool.

Now that I’m older, I can say that all our parents were cool towards the TTT. The one thing we never got was hostility toward the movie making itself. Everyone’s heard the stories of parents who tell their kids not to indulge in some artistic pursuit because, “you’ll never make anything of yourself with that crap.” Well, there might have been bewilderment at our excitement toward the projects, but never—that I ever heard—did we get scolded for playing this way.

That deserves the biggest thanks of all.

[Coming up next week: Our Apotheosis borne of Trek Wars‘ lengthy runtime leads to longer and more complex productions—eventually approaching feature length! Will we be successful in our quest to make a feature length film? Where will it end!? How did we use our developing video production powers as the ultimate boon, at one point actually winning money for our school? What happens after we all graduate high school—crossing the return threshold to a life devoid of TTT meetings? Will this spell the end of the TTT entirely!? And how, exactly, do I take this bizarre hobby and turn it into a paying job, thereby mastering the two worlds of amature and professional video production?

All this and more, beginning Monday!]