Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and the little known, fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your two has been sci fi stars of years gone by. Your phaser is set to stunt. I don't think we can actually say that.
Oh, legally, yes, for legal reasons, you're not really Trek.
He's telling you about a not really Star Trek movie. I'm Alex Cycle and I'm Jordan run the talk.
Wow, you put a lot into that. Yeah, that's good, and Jordan.
Today we're taking a look at one of the most adored parodies, which may be a thing of the past in recent memory, unaffectionate spoofing of Star Trek that even its famously obsessed fans gave a pass to based on its charms. That's right, We're talking about Galaxy Quest, the little sci fi comedy that could in the year of nineteen ninety nine.
So that's my first question, Jordan. Do we have Hollywood parodies anymore? Or do they have?
They just ceeded that completely to like influencers and YouTube people.
And Instagram people. Yeah, I can't think of a really solid, well done parody, certainly in the last like ten years.
I mean, I think it would be like the Coen Brothers man, like Hail Caesar or oh yeah, that's like honestly one of the most recent ones I can think of. But it's not that's that's not a parody, you know, that's like a that's just set in that world.
It's not like explicitly taking aim at one thing. I don't think it's it's sort of about the more general studio system. I don't know, man, that is a difficult question. Here. There's a there's a Wikipedia landing page for parody films by decade twenty. I'm in the twenty tens now. I see nothing that I recognize on here at all. They're all like really low budget, yeah, very obvious. Like instead of the Hunger Games, there's the Starving Games, ah My
Brother Borat and Scary Movie five. Oh yeah, I mean, I guess I would.
I think the last guys standing are probably the Zucker Brothers, right, that guys who did not another teen movie and stuff. And I did know that, I did know that the Wayans have Scary Movie five coming out but I don't know, man.
I got nothing, I think. I mean, if we were talking about this earlier too, they don't green light movies of this size anymore, this mid size quality movie. It's either huge or like indie adjacent. Yeah, exactly. And you know this one is just done with such a sweet, cute little eye. You know, it's just like it's funny.
I remember I interviewed Jason Siegel once for the Muppet movie that he did, and he got like audibly choked up talking about the Muppets because he was like, you.
Know, the Muppets are funny, but they're never mean.
Yeahah, well miss Piggy, well yeah, but he was like, you know, they don't punch down, they're not cruel.
And I think like the key to this movie's success, you know, Sorry, just the image of you talking with probably one of maybe two dozen people on the planet who was more earnest than me about the Muppets. Is I hope there's a tape of this. I would really like to see. Is this for people?
Uh no, this was from my first shows for like Nerve dot com. Oh yeah, twelve. Yeah, he was really sweet. He signed off the phone call back, going all right, talk to you later. No, we won't, but how sweet of you to say.
Yeah, So I didn't.
You know, I didn't see this movie until years later, and I think that's what happened to it on a broader scale, is exactly why I didn't see it. Yeah, in nineteen ninety nine, as you'll remember, was Star Wars Episode one, The Matrix, the Mummy and the Sixth Sense.
Uh.
And then even by the time that we were in Christmas when this movie opened, it wash it up against the talented mister Ripley. It went up three days after any given Sunday Man on the Moon and Stuart Little and stut yes of course and Stuart Little and girl interrupted.
So it's just like, uh, yeah, you know, I remember thinking after that year, of all those incredible sci fi properties, I remember thinking it looked dumb. And I remember being like that as a child, like being offended by it. How dare I know? It's like I'm twelve, but yeah, I could see that You're just a movie. I was never a sci fi guy, sorry, a Star Trek guy, I should say. I was so firmly in the Star Wars camp.
And you know, I as years gone by, it have I become more of a Star Trek guy. No, just not in any way. But I still love that this movie is so lovingly aimed towards them, and also like an astonishingly other wide selection of other sci fi properties.
As we'll get to, I think we we both have a soft spot for trekies, because even though we are not trekies, I think the people near and dear to us are. I know, your dear friend, David Long, friend of the Pod, David Long is a treky. My father actually is, which does not fit with his his kind of say it. We grew up in like central Pennsylvania. He hunted fishes, an Emerson type. He built the house that I'm in right now, let me put it that
way himself. And I just I know that that's not mutually exclusive to enjoying Star Trek, but just it doesn't fit for me.
Well, I mean, as I've tunneled ever deeper into my own niche interest as a way to block the howling screams of a world in decay.
Your own insecurities.
Yes, well done, Yes, and so I understand the Trekkies more than.
Ever I do too.
Actually, Yeah, but it's it's just a very and you know I don't use this adjective.
It's just a very sweet film. Yeah, I agree. I hadn't seen it in many, many years, probably in college, so maybe like six seven years after it came out. Yeah, exactly, charmed by it and promptly forgot about it and then started rewatching it for this and just very well done.
Yeah, I mean shot on film, you know, the sets are real or on location. It's just all this and it's really interesting too, because like you know, we were watching it and it just kept being like that's real, Like that's makeup, like the villain is Like you look at it and it's like that was sort of like the apex of practical effects, you know, and so you look at some of this stuff and you're like that's not twenty twenty five CG. And you're like, no, that's
just rubber and goo. But it's like, yeah, you know, it's Stan Winston's ILM. It's all these people, and it's also just like I think there's like a real affection in it. And that's what everybody in the ensemble cast says that they were all just like, yeah, we just had a fun time the sweet movie.
Like we all like we all you know except for Tim Allen. Oh so they were bonded against Tim Allen's You have to have a villain in any kind of social dynamic because that brings everybody else together. It's true, It's very true. Well that's my segue.
So from the amazing ensemble cast of the film, like Tim Allen, who sucks, who's not dead and in hell yet?
No? Do you think the cartels are going to get him? That would be the most incredible long game ever, is that he's like invited to some event to be honored and he shows up and it's just like a warehouse. Yeah, it's Joe Pesci seeing Good Fellows, comes in and he's like, oh he shut back. Then Matt Damon coming in at the end of the Department. Yeah, all right, sorry r O spoiler sorry. Oh yeah, yeah, spoilers for that one. See The Departed Idiots.
Yeah, to the astounding amount of sci fi references in riffs into every nook and cranny, to the sad studio meddling and mismarketing the film suffered from upon its release, to the reactions of Trekky's including William Shatner, who sucks. Here's everything you didn't know about Galaxy Quest. The story of Galaxy Quest begins with a writer named David Howard, a playwright who moved to LA to try and break into the movies. It was much more difficult than I anticipated,
Howard and told IGN in twenty twelve. One of my professors said that when you look at a play, it's seventy five percent verbal and twenty five percent visual.
In a film that's inverted, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, that's a hard truth I learned, and that's why I generally stuck the prose writing.
So while working in the sales department at a big telecommunications company, Howard had a lot of time on his hands. They spent much of it working on a script that he'd had an idea for. While seeing an Imax movie called Americans in Space narrated by Leonard Nimoy, he said, the voiceover for this trailer was Leonard Neniemoy, and it took me a few minutes to recognize his voice. Then it just struck me, Oh, that poor guy. I could see these marketing guys putting this together, saying, who who
could we get to do this? Oh, let's get William Shatner oh no, no, he's out of the country. Who else is there? Let's get Leonardie Mooy. You know, the idea of being trapped in that world struck me as something potentially very funny.
This is really weird because yesterday I was interviewing Mickey Dolan's of the Monkeys as One Does, and he talked about feeling like completely just out of the blue. He talked about feeling a real kinship with Leonard Nimoy as another guy who became defined by this one role. But he felt really bad for Niemoy because Neimo was this like classically trained actor who'd been in like Richard the Third or something. I mean, I think that that joke that Alan the Workman one, well, oh yeah, says is
and this was like based on Leonardnimoy. He was a Shakespeare actor, and then he just became Oh, it's the your guy, it's spuck, yeah, do the thing with your hand, yeah. Exactly. Mickey had a better, you know, more of a generous read on it in terms of his own career, because he was like, yeah, I was in a show before that where I had to write an elephant as a kid called Circus Boy. So this was like, at least I got to play a rock star, and that's that's cool. Do you know that he tried out to be the
Fawns in the seventies? Too short? No, he's too tall. Apparently. It's so funny. I mean, Henry Winkler is like tiny. Yeah, I know. Winkler was extremely short, and that's why he missed out on He's apparently too tall compared to the other cast members. Do you know that the Livelong and Prosper fingers is like a Jewish thing? No?
Yeah, he grew up in actually in Boston by that I didn't know, Yeah, in like Italian and Jewish neighborhood. And yes, he based it on a blessing performed and I cannot read this in Hebrew obviously, but it's very funny because it's on the cover of a Godspeed You Black Emperor record, because some of those guys are Jewish.
Yeah.
I always just thought that was funny. I was like, why are they doing the Livelong and Prosper thing? And then I looked it up and it is indeed, it is indeed a Jewish blessing.
Seeing you do it with two hands, it kind of looks more natural as a blessing. Yeah, it looks cool. It looks really cool. So sh at that angle. Don't I look cool? It's doing that?
So, screenwriter Howard continued, I just started playing with the idea of them being in this world, and all of a sudden, real aliens shown up. That was a script that in a lot of ways just wrote itself because it just seems so evident once the idea was there. We will learn later the idea had already been there. The loose plot of what was then called Captain Starshine was in place from the start. Aliens have mistakenly received broadcast the historical documents of an old sci fi show
and believe them to be real. I forgot how damn funny and Rico COLUMTONI is in this movie with all of those.
Little vocal mannerisms.
Contact the actors from the series and enlisting them to help them battle their foes. Howard continued to people ask me if I'm a Treky, and I would say that I'm a Treky once removed. I love Star Trek, and I really love Next Generation. I had a buddy who wanted to write an episode of it once, and we wrote this episode together that never went anywhere, but I got really hooked on it.
Yeah, Next Gen. Of all the Star Trek installments, that was the one that probably I was exposed to with the most around the house because I was on my dad watch when I was a little kid. But yeah, Next Gen I have a soft spot for. Is that a violence? Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, diplomacy. Where's the
fun in that? I just realized reading this that I accidentally plagiarized the entire plot of this movie for one that I wanted to do, which was basically like I used to pitch it as like a reverse contact, but like told from the alien's perspective, where there's an alien on a planet not unlike Earth, and they're scanning radio bands looking for signs of life in the universe, and then they pick up a radio broadcast from Earth of accounting Crow's song, and so they go to Earth and
try to commune with Adam Durretz. And that was a whole I wanted to write it for my friend Chris Fleming is a comedian and to give him like his his Morc role. He loves Robin Williams, and like I thought, okay, he could be like the weird sort of humanoid like alien going to Earth in search of Adam Durretz. This is all verbal copyright. By the way, I really threw you off with that one. Yeah, well, I mean it's just it's it's it is. Uh, it's a good bit.
It's funny because I guess you could it's kind of a malleable concept. You could tweak it to like any concept of American pop culture and have a solid platform to write from, because as long as you're just going with aliens, think this is more of a thing than it is pretty much.
I mean, yeah, I had almost like, you know, the spaceship Lands and everybody's there and the news cruise and all the foreign dignitaries and everything, and the door comes down and then it's like John Cusack with the boom box in say anything, just playing like mister Jones and me or something, and everyone's just like bitterly disappointed mister Jones. I mean, I've come around the Counting Crows, honestly, Oh totally.
Oh my god, yeah, they got some they got some heaters. Howard continued. Right after I got married, I started watching Star Trek for research. It was on five days a week, in syndication. So all of a sudden, I've got this star trek Habit watching it every night. An excellent move for a newlywed. It's really intended to be an homage. It's kidding, but it's kidding with respect, and that's a tone in my draft that was maintained throughout.
He continued. I almost feel.
Guilty about the success of this because it was all just waiting to happen. It's like finding a perfect artifact in the ground. You just find it. It's not like you made it. So many of the jokes were natural that it just kind of happened.
This guy is very sweet and very like I guess the sweetness originates with him.
That's something that I really like find artists talking consistently about, and I just love it. You know, this idea that like, whatever creative thing that you made is just out there and you just have to like attune yourself and then you get like as fast.
As the pen would pool. Yes, exactly exactly.
I told you that phrase, right, yeah, oh yes, yes, because I was about to repeat it and be like, uh.
You know, grateful, did a lyricist Robert Hunter.
Howard's lucky break was when He simply gave the early script for Galaxy Crest to a friend who knew someone at Beacon Pictures who knew someone at CAAA. He drolly notes in that interview, I wouldn't advise anyone to try and do that, because that's like coming out here and expecting lightning to strike you.
Yeah. Good, I mean at least he's aware. Yeah, like you know, born on third or hit a triple of the phrases. Yeah. Galaxy Quest eventual producer Mark Johnson said that very few people have ever seen the original draft of Captain Starshine, written by the really quite lovely man David Howard. The producer Mark Johnson told MTV News for their twenty fourteen Galaxy Quest oral history.
Tremendous read. By the way, huge props who wrote it. Jordan Hoffman, Oh yeah.
I remember, because that was when I was working at VH one and we worked a little bit with MTV News. Good for Jordan Hoffmann, But producer Mark Johnson told MTV News the original concept was brilliant, but still he brought in another writer, a guy named Robert Gordon, to do some punch ups. And this guy, Robert Gordon, his only credit at that point was nineteen ninety seven's Addicted to Love.
Who's in that again, Drew Barrymore, not that first appearance of a weird late nineties Drew Barrymore movie in this episode.
If any of this sounds familiar, scream, I guess, But it's Drew Barrymore, Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan, Mark Wahlberg, Kelly Preston, Jessica Biel, Freddie Prince Junior, and Luke Wilson.
That's stacked. Wow. Okay, that's a great nineties core sample. So yeah, the producer, even though he said he really liked the original Galaxy Quest Draft, brought in another writer, Robert Gordon, whose only movie credit at this point was nineteen ninety seven's Addicted to Love starring Drew Barrymore and
all those other stellar members of the nineties. Yes. Yes, he's since gone on to do Men in Black, Two Lemony, Snickets, a Series of Unfortunate Events, and he also helped produce Sky, Captain in the World of Tomorrow and also Wonder Park,
which I'm not familiar with. Yeah, this punch up. Writer Robert Gordon told them TV News, I didn't read Captain Starshine the original draft until after the film was made, which it could be read as a dickish thing to do, although maybe he intentionally avoided it so that he like came to it with his own fresh ideas. I don't know, that's so weird. Do you think it's that one and you think it's just laziness? Yeah, he added, I heard
the logline from my agent. I thought that it could be a great idea or it could be a terrible idea. I didn't take the job at first because I thought it was too hard. But I would go in with a scene like Tommy takes the ship out of the dock and scratches it on the side, and they would say that's great, you should write this, and I'd say I don't have it yet. Only when I nailed the scene where the captain has to admit he's a fraud,
then I said, okay, I've got it. Robert Gordon had an earlier love of Star Trek than David Howard, the original screenwriter, so at least he had that going for him. He'd say, I've watched them from the time I was six years old in nineteen sixty six when Start Trick was premiered, but at least he and Howard were aligned
on one thing. He'd say. I can't say I specifically had William Shatner's cadences in my head or in my dialogue, but the plight of Captain Kirk and William Shatner and his situation was certainly in the back of my head. I mean, you must have seen the the SNL sketch.
Oh yeah, yeah, because there was a when I was coming IMDb, there was a Tria factor on there that was like the scene where Tim Allen's character overhears people talking about him in a bathroom stall was something that actually happened to Shatner at a fan convoy. Oh really, yeah, But in trying to verify that, I didn't find anything about it. It might be in his book, but I'm
not going to read that. But all the results because if you do, if you just look up William Shatner nineteen eighty six, all you get is that SNL skin, the famous Get a Light skit as it has become known.
Yes, out in there for anyone who hasn't seen that, is at a fan convention and he kind of has a meltdown to all the fans and just shrieks at them to get a life, which is really kind of the first you know. Now, I think Trekki's are kind of They've been parodied so much that, as you say,
it's viewed as punching down. But I want to say, in like eighty six, that was kind of like the first time anybody, especially Shatner, took a with them, you know, yeah, I mean it was so much of a subculture before, like the HNT.
I don't think it's almost a I have to think he came in with that idea. It's so because like what, how would I mean unless someone in this on the writing staff at that point was a treky like, I don't know that you would even have been exposed to that kind of thing. And at this point, I mean, eighty six, maybe that's twenty.
I mean, I because it was before TNG launched, right, so that was eighty seven. I want to say eighty eight maybe, yeah. I mean, I'm very confused about how big Star Trek was during its initial run because it's been so course corrected in recent years of everybody saying, you know, it wasn't that big of a phenomenon when it was on the air, you know, and it was only years later. But now I almost think it's gone
too far in that direction. And it was actually bigger than like we think now, like it actually you know, it was on NBC for three years, like it was a big deal.
I think it was in syndication honestly that it became a bigger thing, because I mean, yeah, they canceled it after three seasons.
Although The Monkeys was only on the from sixty six to and the sixty eight and they were huge. Okay, man, another NBC show Man, we should do the Monkeys, although that would take forever. There's so much lore in that, so that's like Star Trek level of like fan obsession.
M yeah, no, it's crazy, okay, Yeah. Well back to Galaxy Quest producer Mark Johnson, who's best known for the string of hits he produce with Barry Levinson, including rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, The Natural, Tin Men, Toys, Young Sherlock Holmes, Avalon Diner, which we were just talking about, great movie, and Bugsy. He had a first look deal with DreamWorks at the time, and he knew that they were thirsty
for movies. As you write thirsty, I don't know why I wrote that, so he purchased Captain Starshine, and once Robert Gordon had his shot at rewriting, it passed along to the studio who green lit it. He said, I'm probably the last person to be doing science fiction. But then I read this script from David Howard. I saw the potential for humor and the concept of actors in space. Think of all these producers probably would love the idea of just blasting a bunch of actors in the space.
That's also true.
I also just I just love how like every everything ends up in space. You know, Muppets in space. Well, it's it's a joke with the horror and horror stuff. And I think it actually originates with John Carpenter because at some point somebody, as they constantly did, We're.
Like, oh, you're gonna do another Halloween? What are you gonna What would you do for Halloween if you came back and did Halloween? And at some point he was just like cranky.
John Carpenter was just like, ah, send them to space like exhales cigarette takes off his gaming headset for one second, and it was like, ah, it's just like grabs any Yeah, but no, he he made that a joke, and then I think the first one that they actually did it with was Pinhead.
There's a like the fourth.
I think hell Raiser movie is in space, and then if I and then I think in short succession, Leprechaun went to space after going to the after going to the Hood. If anyone hasn't seen Leprechaun in the Hood, it's it's it's a treat.
It's a great entry into movies.
Canvas. Yes, yes, it's certainly a movie. And then Jason Jason.
Went to space.
Yeah, Jason, x uh, this is it's the tenth one. It's I think that's also be his name in it because he gets like upgraded. They like he gets like a Nano suit. He gets like a Iron Man suit.
Starts. It's terrible.
It does have a hilarious like blink and you'll miss it. Cameo from David Cronenberg, who just like pops in as as like a random guy who gets like that random professor. But yeah, so going to space was a real concern actually for a lot of concern.
Yeah, don't don't.
Yeah, they say, what kind of a bit do you have with Freddy Krueger singing please mister Kennedy from Inside Lewin Davis.
That's a high concept.
Wow. Wow yeah, just galaxy braining out with that one. Please mister Kennedy, Older Space, that's movie.
Yeah the song isn't that really good too? Yeah? I think it's God who wrote a lot. I was just gonna ask you. Yeah, I don't think it was. I was going to say, was it t Bone? No?
I don't think he's that much of a writer. He's always credited as like curator.
Music.
Yeah, I mean some of it was just traditional T Bone Burnett. Yeah, and Marcus Mumford.
How about that? Ah that makes sense?
Oh okay, wait. Actually, the novelty song Please Mister Kennedy appears to be a fourth generation derivative of the nineteen sixty song Mister Custard about the Battle of Little Bighorn Motown put out a please mister Kennedy. I don't want to go, But that was about that was about Nam.
Wow. They were putting out protest songs about Nam before the golf of talking. That is so funny. Wow, nineteen sixty two there was another one another, So yeah, they just took it.
They just took the bit and instead of making it about Vietnam made it about going to space against your will.
Oh Man goats love him so much, so I gotta say I feel bad for the original guy who came up with this premise and wrote the first draft of the script, David Howard, the starry eyed young man who went west and worked at a telecom company and banged out a script and actually had it fly all the way up to CIA and then just get taken from him and totally rewritten. But he's very optimistic. It seemed to be too bitter about it, and it was quite funny.
He told IGN. I was there briefly in the beginning, and I worked with them for a few weeks and submitted some ideas, some of which did get fleshed out and ended up in the final script. But a lot of it is Robert Gordon's work too. I think he did a terrific job. And asked how the film changed from his first draft to the final product, sweet David Howard said, diplomatically, the easiest way to answer that is
just by saying, it's the same guy's journey. My script followed just the captain much more closely, where I was focusing on the rest of the crew a lot of that was Robert Gordon. I feel bad for him. Oh, I think he's fine. I hope you God, did he do anything else after this great question?
So this is where production got complicated in an early stage, which is never a good sign. The producer Mark Johnson had worked with this director named Dean Parasot before on this largely forgotten Drew Barrymore project called Home Fries, which was weirdly enough, written by Vince Gilligan when he was at NYU. That's right, that's right, right, future.
X Files writer and Breaking Bad show runner Vince Gillian creator. Right, he's created Breaking Bad, didn't he? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you know. Dean Parasat also seems like a nice guy. So I was looking up his career and I was like, why did this guy get handed this movie? And what else hasn't he done? Then I found out he's married to Sally Menck, who.
I don't know.
Oh, she's like one of the most famous editors of this era of a film. Menke was Quentin Tarantino's Oh Shall.
We Die recently y ten Time Isn't Real.
She was nominated twenty five times for her editing for various Awards and won twelve.
Wow.
But yeah, so Dean Parasot was married to her, and he had one Academy Award in nineteen eighty eight for a short film called The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which was a collaboration with Stephen Wright, which I think is really interesting during that brief era when when stand up comics were everyone was just rating la for whatever stand up comics they could find. That's how Sam Kinnison, I was just gonna say.
Got a career.
But yeah, he didn't do any other movies until Home Fries, which was a solid ten years after winning this Academy award.
Anyway, no other movies, no more to movies, the movies.
So Mark Johnson won a Dean parasatt but DreamWorks was understandably reluctant to handover. They were still kind of new at this point. They were reluctant to hand over a major production to guy who'd only done one feature film, which was a flop. So Variety reported in November nineteen ninety eight that legendary comedy director and actor Harold Ramis.
Spoffos comedy actor and director.
Who was then he was then completing production on analyze this. He was named for Galaxy Quest early on. I see that, so Harold Ramis did not end up directing Galaxy Quest. So what happened, Well, like a lot of things in life, this was Tim Allen's fault. So sorry to piss off anyone with an enormous attachment to buzz light Year or home improvement or I guess the Santa Claus or the remake of the Shaggy Da wasn't he didn't he also do that?
Or maybe it was that darn cat that he was one of those. Yeah, Tim Allen sucks. Yeah, I think we all accept that. I think that that's like, yeah, that's not a hot take.
I would say, all right, great, but tells well Tim Allen in fairness, he was born in Colorado, and his mom moved to Michigan after his father died in a car accident. He grew up in Detroit and eventually went first to Central Michigan University and then Western Michigan, where he met his first wife. But also while there, he developed a coke addiction, and, like so many before him, turned to dealing to fuel his habit.
Yeah, that's why I started dejaying, vented soul forty five's as I had to find out way to pay for him. Ooh, that's a hard that's the hard stuff. First one's free. But he was married to his first wife when he became a coke rat. Yes, and they stayed married until two thousand and three. It's good for him. I guess she's a better person than I am. So.
In October of nineteen seventy eight, two years after Alan graduated, he was arrested at Kalamazoo Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan in possession of more than six hundred and fifty grams of cocaine.
I just want a visual about how much six hundred and fifty grams of cocaine looks like? Well, don't they do?
I mean, so, if like your average bottle of coke has like twenty eight grams of thirty whatever, how many grams of sugar in it? And those are always registered like rendered with like sugar cubes, right, imagine six hundred and fifty sugar cubes.
Okay, Oh wow, that is Yeah, that's a lot. That's like a gallon size back. That's quite a lot.
Unfortunately for Tim Allen, Michigan had just passed a law that issued a life sentence to those in possession of six hundred and fifty grams are over war on drugs? Actually no, that's it predates the War on drugs. Michigan was just ahead of its time in draconian drug policy.
So they recently passed an ordinance or a law of the exact amount that he was caring.
It is quite funny. And he also, I mean he was, he was. It was like a full on sting operation. Like he dealt he handed it over to an undercover cop. It wasn't just like he got flagged within his bag randomly.
So I mean, is that the Do you think they were like, Okay, bring this very precise amount. Yeah.
Tim Allen in particular, so, as documented in Allan's hilariously titled biography by John F. Wukowitz called Tim Allen parentheses Overcoming Adversity Parentheses Closed Old Timmy had been set up by an undercover police officer named Michael Pifer, no relation to Michelle, who had allegedly been tracking him for months. Alan put an Adidas holdall full of cocaine in a locker and handed the key to Pifer. The next thing I observed was a gun in my face. Alan later
told the Detroit Free Press. Alan had been told he'd be getting a cool forty two thousand for the trafficking, but was now facing a possible life sentence, so naturally he tucked his little tail between his legs and started ratting people out. Now, the pigs obviously loved this, and Alan was sentenced at a federal court rather than a state one, meaning the newly passed law no longer applied
to his case. Ultimately, since to three to seven years, he served only two years and four months, probably because his information quote helped authorities indict twenty people in the drug trade and resulted in the conviction and sentencing of four major drug dealers.
It's insane to think that Tim Allen did years of prison time, Like I know, that's nowhere near what it could have been, and it didn't humble him in the slightest.
He just came out still being like I'm great, I'm Tim Allen. Yeah, And so that segues into my next point. It does not seem like he became a nicer man from there. Pamela Anderson's memoir Love Pamela, she notes that Alan flashed her on the set of Home improvement when she was twenty three years old, claiming he said it was only fair because he had seen me naked and now we were even.
I don't understand the flashing desire, the exhibitionist desire, I should say, ask Luis k Man. I, oh yeah.
Barry Sonenfelder called an incident on the set of Big Trouble when not Big Trouble in Little China.
The it was in Trouble at the pad of a Dave Barry book, I believe.
Yeah, And this is the one that was like it was like about bombing an airplane nine to.
Eleven, got right before an eleven. Yeah.
So Tim Allen met co star his co star in that movie, Renee Russo, for the first time, and Barry Sonenfeld was like, Okay, you guys need to act like your your direction in this scene is that you have instant burning chemistry, Tim, In other words, you are attracted
to Renee Russo. And Tim Allen pushed back and said, why would I be, and Sonenfeld explained that this was a movie and that Alan's job was to act, and Alan retorted acting darling, yeah, And Alan retorted I'm not attracted to her, and Russo tried to play it off by joking, I'll act attractive, Tim, I promise that's good in what Sonenfeld described.
As a Marilyn Monroe voice. But Alan, but Alan.
Declared it's hard to act attracted to someone if they're not attractive. Sounenfeld got frustrated and said, you're an actor, Tim, just act like you're attracted to one of the most beautiful women in the world. Okay, And all Alan could muster was I'll try or I'm sorry. And all Alan could muster was I can try like he's a prize. You see that mugshot with that mustache.
He looks like a non union John Holmes. Wow, yes Yes.
More recently, Casey Wilson claimed that Tim was fining rude to her and other cast and crew members on the set of Disney Pluses the Santa Clauses, which I'm just now learning existed. Tim Allen was such a bitch. It was the truly single worst experience I've ever had with a co star, she said on a December twenty twenty three episode of her podcast. Never made eye contact, never
said anything. It was so uncomfortable. It's the end of shooting, and Tim Allen goes leaving, takes his Santa Cape, takes his Santa Cape, picks it up and drops it on the floor and walks out, and they hustle in his stand in a lovely man who is much nicer to act against. And she continued, I will not say who said this. This was someone that I do not know, perhaps in the crew. They breezed past me and just go you're seeing him on a good day.
Picturing him as like James Brown taking his cape off, just like dropping it on the floor leaving. Yeah, so I'm going to end every episode now from now. Yeah, it's a good bit. Uh.
And as you may not be surprised to learn given that his Network TV show, which is like has went for like ten or eleven season, may actually is it still on the air?
I you know, he's in a new show with Kat Denning's man Standing, So I don't think he's in two sitcombs at the same time. Maybe wouldn't put it past me. He seems to have like that same like weird like Jay Leno level work ethic. Wow twenty eleven to twenty twenty one.
Jesus, anyway, that show was like just Tim Allen wondering around going.
Black people have rights. God, I hate him so much.
Yeah, I mean he's basically leaning into the whole like republicans of the really oppressed ones.
He are like the punk rockers of today. Oh my god, don't get me started on that one. I think it was to Kimmel or Fallon. He was.
He said being Republican in Hollywood was like being in nineteen thirties Germany. Just I mean, what do you say to that?
Right? No, it's not, Tim, It's just such.
A testament to like, I don't be a late night show must suck at least one where you're like under mandate to be nice to these people.
Yes, I can say to that. Okay, Tim, cut to commercial, Like what you want to do some karaoke? Tim? Okay, Well here, let's let's move on to somebody that I know. You love. Kevin Kline. You love Kevin Klin, I love Yeah. Kevin Klein was actually original Galaxy Quest writer David Howard's first choice to play the Shatner Captain Kirk Anna role Jason Nesmith. He would have been great, yeah, and knocked
it out of the park. He plays in the show within the movie, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, and that is a monkey's reference. Actually, wait, so the actor who plays the Gouxy Quest captain of the movie, the name is Jason Nesmyth. That is a reference to Mike Nest. Yeah, they did, they did.
There's like seventeen layers of name references for most of these characters, like Peter Quince. Even the fact that he's middle of the fictional character's name is Quincy is a reference to something.
Oh Quin's from Midsummer Night stream right, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, but I don't why is it being referenced because it's fun?
Oh okay, so it's what it's what we called an easter egg in the industry.
Okay, all right, read the trades. God, it's like, you don't even know what boffo is. Does the word boffo mean nothing to you anymore? I just imagine a very heated, uh conversation in the in the variety like masthead room, just like when.
We say something's boffo, that that used to mean something.
Get out of my newsroom. This is I think maybe the fourth episode we referenced boffo. We need it's like a sound like a ding or something. People. Yeah, no, uh so, okay. Kevin Kline was pretty much everybody's first choice for the Tim Allen roll. The original writer David Howard wanted it to be Kevin Klin. Original director Harold Ramis wanted Kevin Kline or Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin. All could actually those are really good, right, possibly a
better movie. It's part of it is Tim Allen's unlikeability works for him in this, which is kind of exactly in thirty Rock is the same deal.
Yeah, yeah, and I mean, uh, wouldn't have been coming off Glengarry gunn Ross, but like that was one of the things I think he would have like that Hunt for Red October would have been like his big things at this point when this was getting developed, right, yeah, oh, how for Red October I think it.
Was like ninety and then Glengarry glen Ross I think was like ninety three. But yeah, so you're right, mid mid nineties. But Disney insisted on Tim Allen, and Harold Ramis was so against this that he dropped out of the project and directed so much respect yeah I know, and director Dean Parasawt took the reins within three weeks. Although Harold Ramis later backpeddaled. He admitted that he was wrong for dropping out, and so that Tim Allen had
been great in the part. Tim Allen was great at playing a dick was how I choose to read that. Tim Allen recalled the frostiness from Harold Ramis in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in twenty nineteen. He said, I had a very peculiar lunch with Enemy of This Pod Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harold Ramis. Katzenburg pitched me the idea of the and her character in Galaxy Quest, and then they started talking and it became clear that Ramis didn't see me for the part. It was pretty uncomfortable.
I just can't imagine Harold ram Is being that like assertive or petty. But good for him, I guess, oh, come on petty.
Yeah yeah, with his thing with with Bill Murray. Yeah that's true, although I mean he was kind of mostly the victim in that, I would say, but still.
Yeah, we don't have to relitigate that now. No, No, that's so sad, so so so sad. Check out our Groundhog Day episode for more sadness.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, despite it being very apparent that at at least several high ranking members of the production didn't want him there. Tim Allen was very jazzed about this because he saw the role in Galaxy Quest as a prime way for him to break into the sci fi genre, and he ultimately chose Galaxy Quest over another movie he was up for, bi Centennial Man. He chose wisely. Yeah.
Robin William went on to star in that. It's the one where he's like a household robot who lives for and then he opts for mortality.
He becomes Forrest Gump, right like he basically just like lives through hundreds and hundreds of years of US history while still maintaining the characteristic twinkle in.
His eye we all loved so much. But then there's in the opt to like die at the end because he's, oh, probably, I don't know, because he's just like, life isn't life if it's just indefinite something like that. That's a good line. Go with that. That's a gry That's a really good line. I'm proud of that. I've had a lot. I haven't slept much this week's folks, So I'm on like so much coffee right now. I've been pitching a lot. I've been because as soon as we wrap this, I'm gonna
desperately try to finish Great Gatsby Part two. Sorry, folks, I know, Sorry, it's late. I have the bottleneck. I know. I've apologized to several friends of the pod about that, to mention that this was a reader request through.
Yeah, that's right, give us money and we'll consider your podcast was a good pitch.
We've fund a lot of great calls. Yeah, I haven't done all of them, so there was a lot of them. We'll get to them. Probably. Of his love of science fiction, Tim Allen told Starbus magazine, I love science fiction. It's my favorite thing, is it. Well, now that Cocaine's off the table, maybe wo Galaxy Quest was a baby step for me. I like other scripts that are a bit more serious, but I'm doing this first. It's really funny
right up front, then gets more serious technically. It isn't what I would want, which would be a Larry Nivens sort of thing. I don't know who that is. It isn't right on, but it's a Saturday afternoon Star Trek Deep Space nine kind of dramatic science fiction. I don't know what the Saturday Afternoon thing is I don't know that escapes my ken. Accordingly, Tim Allen didn't base his performance on anything from science fiction, he said, but I
was in that captain's chair. I was not mimicking William Shatton there with whom I'm now friends because of this movie. He told them TV News. But I like the way Yule Brenner sat in his throne in The Ten Commandments. I worked off that. I studied that well.
I rented the tape, So, I mean, you know, he's some of his quotes are funny and self effacing, but I also do believe that he uh, that's what that was the sole bit of research he did for this. It's funny hearing him position himself as a sci fi fan when like the closest he'd done was buzz light Year.
No, that was later, Oh no, you're right, ninety five was Toy Story, right, Yeah? Yeah, So I don't know, why were you lying about that, Tim app Why would you lie? Tim Allan?
In Hollywood, of all places, Alan was his usual self On the set. He annoyed Sigourney Weaver constantly to sign some piece of the alien set, to the point where when she actually did it she signed it stolen by Tim Allen love Sigourney Weaver.
He was so upset. Weaver recalled he said, why would you write that?
I was gonna put it my screening room, ah, which was such a Hollywood thing to say. In the Oral History, Allen's next comment is, she never asked me to sign anything. She doesn't care. And it just continues. The cas went to a twentieth anniversary screening of Alien, and when Sagourney Weaver is stripped down to a bronz panties in the final scene, Tim Allan yelled yeah baby in the theater, to which Sam Rockwell recalled in the Oral History, Tim
really liked saying yeah baby. Case in point, Justin Long went to see Deep Blue Sea with Tim Allen, Sam Rockwell, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, in which was must have been just a delightful evening, Sons, Tim Allen, And when Samuel Jackson's character dies in that film spoilers, Justin Long said Tim went into a whole routine in the theater. Also from Tim Allen himself, I was really rude to Justin Long when I first met him. Pretty much everyone remembers
Alan not really having an off button on. Tony Shallhoub dryly noted a lot of fart jokes with Tim. Some weren't jokes, some were actually farts. But the person Alan.
Off in the middle distance.
Yeah, The person that Alan rankled the most was the dear departed Alan Rickman.
Oh, that's unforgivable. It is.
Tim Allen used to kick the door open to the makeup trailer. He wrote in his now published diary. We would all be lined up and he would say number one is here. Sam Rockwell confirmed this MTV. If the chairs were taken, Tim would shout, that's fine, I'm first on the call sheet, but I'll go take a walk and come back when you're ready. However, the most famous quote concerning Tim Allen in Alan Rickman's diary is this, Tim Allen has this perverse need to needle, antagonize, provoke, demoralize,
takes every opportunity to belittle. That's a nice thing to write about someone. Darryl Chill Mitchell, who played the ship's pilot, told the Hollywood Reporter Tim would go on a ten minute rant, and I would look at Alan Rickman and God bless him. He was by the letter. Even though it was a comedy. Alan Rickman approached that movie like any drama.
That's where the best comedy comes from.
Peter do that too, playing it straight. Michael Caine him up at Christmas Carol.
Yeah, oh well no, that's too far. Hurt But it's not funny. I mean, it's that just hurts. But he played it straight, and that's what's so great. Well yeah, but no, But but comedy is funny when the person all the stuff's happening to is like treating it very seriously. It's Steve Martin, It's Peter Sellers as in SPECTACLEU. So no, Michael Kin and him up as Christmas Carol is just devastating. Well yeah, I mean it's Michael Kaine when he goes.
I live in constant because because you very sweetly gave me one of my prize possessions, which is a signed it by ten glossy of Michael Kaine, which is on the front door to my apartment. So every time I come and go, I see it, and I'm confronted every day with the thought of I'm confronting Michael Kaine's mortality every day.
It bothers me. I'm sorry speaking me. I feel a lot of feelings I don't.
Like like them up. It's Christmas, Carol, after all, there's only one more sleep till Christmas. Bay, there's your Kermit. That's not bad. Nice. It's Stewie the other night. Yeah, come talk to me sometimes, sweetheart. I know what it takes to be cool. Sleep deprivation looks good on you. That's a lot of caffeine. I actually feel like happier and more powerful than I have in the months sexually.
So Mitchell continued. They would call action four times and we didn't hear because we were laughing so hard, and Alan would be looking at us like really, man, Tim and I would do this dumb thing where we'd just say I am Spartacus all the time, Mitchell continued. One day out of nowhere, Alan Rickman went Spartacus and we all laughed big time. But then Tim went for another ten minutes, and you could tell that Alan was regretting that choice.
God like just such a fee. Moments like this, you remember that he got his start and stand because he just always.
Has to like top it, yep, yep, the desperate, sad thirst of a stand up comedian. Obviously, Rickman is not around, having died in twenty sixteen to give his side of this, but he was enough of a professional that he never really said anything about Alan in public, and according to Alan anyway, apologized for his standoffishness. Alan wrote in The Hollwood Reporter when Rickman died, I don't think Alan liked
me all that much. When we first started shooting Galaxy Quest, I was a stage performer, a concert comic, and I was coming into this group of very polished lesbians, Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell and Tony Shelhube and then Alan adding his English roots. All of them had this process and method, voice stretching and all that kind of prep, and it was so different from mine. I was doing Penis jokes right up to action. That's a tremendous Pool quote. But then one day on set Alan came to me
and apologized. He said he mistook my behavior for lack of commitment.
I just want to say, Hi, Tim, this actor you worked with dog, what are some memories and thoughts you have of working with them? He was not that great to me, and then apologized, Yeah, like I'm gonna use it.
I'm gonna use the death of this beloved actor to sanitize my own reputation.
Real class act there, Timmy.
Anyway, I'm gonna close with one of my absolute favorite Alan Rickman stories of all time.
Yeah uh. Director Dean Parasot recalled.
That after one emotional take, he said, quote, I turned back and Tim is just completely emotional. He says, yeah, I don't. I don't like these feelings I'm having. I'd like to go back to the trailer. And Alan Rickman said, Oh my god, I think you just experienced acting.
That's incredible.
Oh man, man, I think you just experienced I don't like these feelings I'm having.
I'd like to come out Dullard. Oh God love him. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Wow, Harold Ramis had already established a dictat. You write, what is a dictat? Like an edict or an edict? Okay, Harold Ramis had already established an edict that, in order to be considered for Galaxy Quest, actors couldn't have started anything sci fi or fantasy related up to that point.
I like that. But but Sigourney Weaver, she told Starbarus magazine in two thousand. I had heard about this movie and I asked my agent about it. He told me that they didn't want anyone from science fiction in the movie, only science fiction virgins, as it were. I said, that's silly, because if anyone can spoof science fiction, surely it's me. Then, to my surprise, I was offered the part. I love
Sigourney Weaver. You know she There's a footage of her as like a twelve year old Beatles fan in the crowd at the Beatles Hollywood Bowl concert in nineteen sixty four. I love her for other reasons too, but I especially love that there's your Beatles reference for the episode of Folksing Boffo is now rivaling Beatles for references in The Lord. Yeah. Yeah, Sigourney Weaver played the actress Gwen DeMarco in the movie.
In the movie, and DeMarco plays Lieutenant Tawny Madison in the show within a show Galaxy Quest, and it's a movie long riff on women's underserved role in the sci fi genre.
Yeah, there's a nod to that when Weaver as Gwen lampshades the fact that her character basically just repeats information that the computer already spits out a protracted gag for the computers, just saying things, and she just goes it's malfunctioning, and she's, look, I have one job in this lousy ship.
It's stupid, but I'm gonna do it. We've were elaborated to MTV News explaining it's funny considering my backgrounds, you know, Alien and everything. But I was never into science fiction. I like the Twilight Zone. That's about as close as I got. I thought Flash Gordon was stupid. I think Star Trek happened and I missed it. I was in the theater, and then suddenly I did Alien. Suddenly I
was straddling two very different worlds. But I just felt Galaxy Quest as a comedy with such a love letter to all the insecure actors in the field who had done so many wonderful and somewhat underappreciated projects. You know, that's really what this is about. It's a movie about actors who are worried what what their legacy.
Is and fans. I mean, really appreciate thing about this movie is that it hits like this crazy intersection of actor and fan that was like in place with the Trickies, but just there's no like the whole I mean whatever, I'll get to it in the end. Shut up, shut up, all of you. Let me breathe for just a second.
Night after night up here, up and down the court, carrying your ass.
So the character's blonde wig and prominent cleavage were Weavers choices. The first thing I said to Dean was that Lieutenant Tawny Madison had to be blonde and she had to have big boobs. Ever, totally Hollywood reporter. I love Tawny from the first moment I read the part. To me, she was what a lot of women feel like, including myself, in a Hollywood situation. There's a couple of things that
might have gone into the conception of this character. One is Aaron Gray, who played Colonel Wilma Deering in these short lived buck Rogers in the twenty fifth century series from like the late seventies. I think she later went on to be in Silver Spoons, but she was a natural burnette who has dyed to a blonde in the show, and she was often clad in skin tight uniforms.
I think Actually, let me check one second, because when did Deep Space nine start? Ooh, I want to say ninety four it'll be amazing if I got that ninety three to ninety Oh it ended in nineteen ninety nine. So what's her name? Seven of nine? Jerry Ryan. Yeah, she was not in this. Wait, she might have been a voyager, So this is we're having a trecky father. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, Jerry Ryan is a voyager. So yeah, nine the character seven and nine as a voyager, right.
So yeah, I think it's either the Buck Rogers riff or it's on about it's kind of on Jerry Ryan, who had been in Star Trek Voyager for two years at this point, ninety seven that launched. There's a reference for Sigourney Reaver when she goes. My TV Guide interview was forty minutes about asking how my boobs fit into
this costume? And I will point out at one point that Scarlett Johansson in one of the like an Avengers interview, was like asked about like, oh, what exercises did you do to fit into the suit, and she's like she pointed caught out the journey. She was like, you asked them about their character preparation and like what they what they enjoyed about this, and you asked me about my
suit anyway. I think that line could also be a reference to like, I believe there was an interview where Jerry Ryan like the interview was just very creepily asking about, like, how did she fit in the suit anyway. H Weaver would often leave the set still wearing her prosthetic breasts and blonde wig. Sam Rockwell said Sigourney changed with that wig, and Rickman added I remember Sigourney walking around saying she was experience a whole new world with the blonde wig.
We were confirmed that to MTV, saying blondes definitely have more fun. I loved being a starlet. I miss my breasts, I missed my blonde hair, I missed my insecurity. And she kept the wig after filming wrapped.
Huh. That's an interesting insight into Sigournny reavers Psyche. Yeah, we got to talk more about dear Sweet Alan Rickman, who plays the actor Alexander Dane, a serious thesb in a Man of the theater. Huh. Trapped in the role of doctor Lazarus, the film's spock stand in. We'll get into how productions strenuously avoided any possible grounds for legal action by star Trek A little later on Rick mattld MTV about his role. There were all these different layers
with these characters. It's such a great acting challenge. You're only as good as the script. Though. Really he did mention on the DVD commentary about the film that quote, I did grow up, as it were, inside the Royal Shakespeare Company and other similar environments, so I know what my character was going through on some level. I remember when Sigourney and I were sitting at the autograph table the convention and saying this is a bit too close
for comfort. There were constant images and moments where you just sort of thought, I have lived this. Funnily enough, Rickman saw that his character had made a night in the script, or an early version of the script, i should say, and he felt that that rang false, which is why it's not mentioned in the film, though it
appears in the final credits. It's a testament to his commitment that one of the film's defining lines, by gabthers hammer grab thar excuse me by grab thars hammer was originally a temp line, just a dumb riff on Thor's hammer, but apparently he just committed so hard to the bit and it absolutely killed the table reads and by the time the crew had made homemade T shirts with the line it was too late to make a change.
That's when you know something's locked in when the crew is made there, when they made the cruise shirts.
That's all. I'd love a coffee table book on like cruise shirts from famous movies. That'd be great.
Yeah, I mean, I think the most famous one is the is the Alien one or a blade Runner or Alien blade Runner? Yeah, the Blade Runner and the American crew was in open revolt against Redley Scott. The famous Yes Governor T shirts inspired by an interview where really Scott described the difference between working with Americans and working with British people wise just the British will often and just accept directives with yes Govna that story.
We told that story him probably like fifty percent of the TI episodes. I love it so dearly.
There were a couple of rehearsals where we rewrote some things sitting around the table, Sam Rockwell said to the Hollywood reporter Alan Rickman was very instrumental in making sure the script hit the right dramatic notes. Everything had a strong logic and reason behind it. He wanted the grab Thar's hammer moment to be set up perfectly so it had a motion when he delivered it to Patrick Breen,
who was a fantastic actor. Rickman even worked with iconic effects and makeup wizard Stan Winston on his character's prosthetic head cap that he wears constantly. He said, I thought it was important to be good enough to convince the aliens who believed were the real thing, Rickman told Starburst, but also cheesy enough to imagine that it was something he applied himself a good So when we were watching this, Low was like, why would he keep it on overnight?
And that was actually something that Alan Rickman said. He was like, he reasoned that this character, that this actor would like not want to reapply it two days in a row, and since they had two back to back appearances, one at the convention and one at the store opening, that he would have just kept it all overnight.
Great stuff. Yes, speaking of catchphrases, the never give Up, Never Surrender was writer Robert Gordon's work. He's the second guy who came on to write the script. He said it came from Winston Churchill via a super Tramp song because I was a huge super tramp fan, which is not something you hear being admitted as such. Nope, I mean, there's all. It's also the one that I remember it from is it's in uh.
I think Iron Maiden uses that speech that we shall fight them on the beaches in as like a live introt to Aces High, which is one of their best songs.
It's in a Kink song on Arthur the Rise and Fall of the Decline and Fall the British Empire. Mister Churchill says, I think the para we shall fight them on the beach is never on the course of human conflict. Has so much been owed to so few, And we'll make our British Empire a greater place for me and you, and this is our finest hour something like that narrator voice. It did not, it was not. Yeah, the sun eventually set on the British Empire after a long, painful decline.
I love the British I know you.
Do, I mean, but it is funny like I mean, you know, they were devastated by World War Two and then went into a protracted depression so.
Like from which they've not really emerged. Yeah. So Churchill was wrong.
Not the first time I've said that unsurprisingly, Yeah, well you know what, Winston, You're dead, so it's gonna say checkmate me my favorite.
We talked about the in one of the many episodes talked about Orson Wells. Did I ever tell you that the Orson Wells Winston Churchill story, I don't think so. No. I love this is very cute. So Orson Wills for reasons that I really sort of don't remember. As a very young man ran in I think as he was such a respected man of the theater that he ran in circles of like incredibly powerful men, one of whom
was Winston Churchill. And I think Churchill had seen him act in one of the many Shakespearean plays he was in, and he Churchill came backstage and visited him, and they were a little better than nodding level acquaintances, but they
weren't friends, but they were, you know. And so in the fifties, when Orson Wells was kind of on the outs with the studios and was really struggling to get his projects made, he was like having to go court wealthy businessman himself to try to raise money for these projects. And he was taking some kind of Russian oligarch to a white Russian, as he would make the distinction to a white meaning not red like white meaning like Azaris Russian,
not a communist. And it took him to lunch and Churchill happened to be there, and so they walked in Warson Wells with this Russian guy and Churchill like yeah, and the Russian guy flipped out and I was like, oh my god. You know Churchill acknowledged you, and oh my goodness, you are clearly a man. Yeah. And so the next day whatever resort they were staying at, Orson Wells was swimming in the water in the surf and Churchill happens to be swimming nearby, so he swims over
to Doggie paddles over to Winston Churchill. He's an enormous man, bobbing bobbing, and or someone else goes, you know, mister Churchill, I just want you to know what you did for me. That was really helpful, and he kind of explained. And then the next day Orson walks back into the restaurant with another guy that he's trying to get to give him money, and Winston Churchill was also there, and Churchill sees Orson walk in with this financier, and Churchill stands
up and just does a deep bow. That's got his money. Yeah, that's uh.
I mean my favorite calling someone over to the table story of all time is Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles.
Yes, yes, and I told that before. Okay, no, please tell so Rickles, Uh, Rickles is that doing? You know?
He and Frank knew each other from just doing these these the Vegas Hotel and the Vegas gigs. So he at one point, uh knows that Frank is going to be at the same restaurant with him or whatever, and he's like, Frank, you know I could I got these two girls with me and and and it would be a you know, you would be doing me a favor if you could come over and say hi to the table, you know, and and and that would really go a
long way for me. And Frank, eager to oblige him, later on, approaches the table and he goes to, you know, introduce himself, like, I'm Frank Sinatra. By the way, you know, Don Rickles is a great friend of mine. And before he gets a word out, Don rickleses not now, Frank, please meeting I classic bit great stuff. Great Stuff's Quest
has a deep bench of ensemble actors. Hube auditioned for the role that eventually went to Sam Rockwell, and we will get to Sam, but he was cast as Fred Kwan actor Fred Kwan, and Sloop called parasot, I'm not going to play an Asian guy, but I got I'll play a guy that plays an Asian And so the role evolved into a riff on late not enthusiast David Carradine's role in Kung Fu and the mid century habit of casting white dudes to play characters of Asian descent.
Who else is in that white dudes playing guys of Asian descent?
Well, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Mickey Rooney and Breakfast Tiffany's. Also famously, Genghis Khan was played by John Wayne and yellow Face.
And wasn't there a Marlon Brando movie that was a Mexican movie? Well?
Yeah, I mean it's actually funny bringing up Hoarson Welles because you know, famously Charlton Heston in brown Face in Touch of Evil, right, right, And it's really funny because I was actually I did not connect these thoughts previously, but I'm going to there's a there's a restoration of Touch of Evil that I'm going to next week. And in just like googling around, do you remember Robert Rodriguez once upon a Time in Mexico?
No, I mean I know of it that I don't.
Yeah, yeah, So Willem Dafoe is in that movie as like a cartel leader, and he is in brown face, and I want to say, it's a nod to Charton Heston's brown face because they look almost at He gave him the same mustache and they look almost identical.
Yes, Hollywood, super racist.
Anyway, Tony brought up David Carridine and Kung Fu Dean Paraso Tolt MTV, and the story goes, I don't know if it's true that David Carridine was just completely stoned all the time on that show. Dialogue would just come out of his head and people would just stare at each other and think where did that come from? So we knew we couldn't do a stoner because we need to hit a PG. Thirteen, But we basically suggested that.
Tony Shelleh continued, I'd heard Carrodine was high the entire time, and whether it was true or not, we used it as a jumping off point for Fred Kwan. It's nineteen ninety nine, fifteen years after the Galaxy Quest TV series ended, and Fred Kwan is just a burnout with one foot outside reality, and that's why he's just he's just completely unfazed by everything that happens in the movie.
He like shows up later, like for the teleportal, he's the last one there, and he's like, he's like wow, wow, guys, and he's like the only guy that goes along with Tim Allen's like, must you the space ship and he's like yeah, yeah, everyone else just like what.
The other nod that Shell who made of this was his character's habit of always having his own snacks with him in a brown paper bag. Paris Hunt said, there's a lot more of Tony eating with the munchies out of that paper bag that we had to cut. He's the tech guy. You might think he would be into gadgets and devices, but instead he just carries around this
large paper bag with his snacks. And funnily enough, we actually have the goat Steven Spielberg to thank for the subplot with Shell Hub and Missy Pile's alien character.
Missy Pile was cast relatively late.
Production was finding a hard time casting a female who could match the alien a female. When I say that a female, Pile was cast relatively late, as production was finding hard time casting a woman who could match the alien performances given by Enrico Cole and Toni Rain Wilson and Jed Rees. Casting agent Debra Zane showed Pile the first minute of Rees's audition, and she said, Missy saw
it and got it immediately. Zane continued to Backstage dot Com, she was so great that when I sent the audition tape to Dean Parasat on her picture and resume, I put a little post it that said, well, I actually made a xerox copy of my Casting Society of America membership card I said, if this is not Laliari, I will resign from the CSA. Apparently Missy Piles up against Jennifer Coolidge for this, so this.
Would have been the same year that she was Stiffler's mom in American Pie. That's interesting.
And then the character of Loy also stuck with a man of an American man of the letters John Updike in the novella Rabbit Remembered and names a character after La La Lowry.
Apparently he was a fan of this movie. Well, I'm not done with I'm not done with Jennifer Coolidge. That's an interesting Oh, it might have been inspired by Kristin Johnson in Third Rock from the Sun. This very tall blonde woman. I wonder if that was the bad of mine.
I forgot Third Rock was so big at this time. Yeah, man, whither Third Rock? Whither French Stewart Mmm?
Yeah? And whether Harlan Williams, Oh, yeah, man himself, I love rocket Man.
There's one line from that movie that I that I quote a little too much was when he slides down the safety railing and he goes.
The flesh it burns. Yeah, say that a lot. Yeah, that's a bit of a deep, deep cut for you guys. Oh that was such a good that was a great movie. It's a good movie. Yeah. Well, Spielberg, who was obviously a co owner of DreamWorks Studio making this movie. Haiti, visits the set at one point, suitably freaking everyone on the set out.
And what do you do if you're just casually filming your little star Trek purioed in Stephen Steven Spielberg, who's the head of the studio also shows up.
It's like, yeah, when we were doing uh Close Encounters, Oh, when we were doing et Like, oh.
Yeah, right, yeah he did those movies, and then he's actually what he did.
His presence on this. Yeah. Alan Rickman told MTV it was hard to have a conversation. You could hear every word coming out of your mouth and you just want to stop talking, which is an incredible way to phrase a sensation we all know far too. Yeah, exactly, Yeah. Producer Mark Johnson said, Stephen can come in even with so so many balls in the air and look at what you're shooting and cutting and get right to the heart of the matter and say why not do this?
It's awes powers too opening. Austin's like, I do have some thoughts and he just prays with his oscars. Like my friends here think it's great the way it is. M Spielberg's two suggestions were beefing up Justin Long's role in the movie He's the overly famous super fan Yes, as well as Missy Pile's pointing out that without Pile, the sole female presence of the film would have been
Sigourney Weavers. Long's role had been cut down to nothing, and Spielberg suggested correctly that in a movie poking fun at the concept of fandom, they needed to have long super fan feature. More prominently, Missy Pyle was only in two scenes until the director made his note or studio head I should say, made his note.
Yeah, not acting in capacity as director. No, acting in capacity of everyone's boss, Yes, at.
Which point the subplot between her and Tony Shaloub was added. Justin Long in his his first feature role, beat out Allan Culkin Eddie K. Thomas, speaking of American Pie, he was the guy that I used to get compared to an American pie, the pretentious do we what was his name? I don't know.
The guy I'm not huge on that movie, Paul Finch Finch, that was his name, Finch, Yes, Yes.
And Tom Everett Scott, who stars as the drummer Guy Patterson in My Beloved That Thing You Do. I can't see him as a nerd, though he's too. He's too handsome and genial. True. Yeah, just long prepared for his role by watching Trekkies, a documentary about the star Trek fandom. He said of his role, I was channeling Phil Hoffman, Philip Seymour, Hoffman from Boogie Knights mixed with the comic book guy from the Simpsons, which makes a lot of sense. That's very good. Yeah, that is.
The aliens who enlisted the cast of the show in the film are called Thermian's and you can think just shoot me star Enrico Cole and Toni for their voice. I'm sure he's done things. Towards the end of Colntoni's audition, Dean Parasat told ign I said, Rico, it seems like you've got something on your mind. Rico, Baby, what do you hold him back from me? He goes, well, I have this voice. I don't know if it works. I said, what is it?
Try it?
He did, and I just went, oh my god, that's it. As the other Thermians were added, you know, Missy Pile, Jedrees, Patrick Breen, and even Rain Wilson also in his feature film debut. They held an alien school to work on posture and mannerisms. But everyone followed col Antoni's lead with the voice as well. We it's such a pid like the fact that he came in with that already prepared. Ah, that's so damn funny. Good for him. An actor prepares.
You peasants.
It's like, none of you have read who wrote that Stanislawski. I think so none of you have read Stanislavsky.
I also have not. But it was not an auspicious debut for rain Wilson. He would later tell GN I kept forgetting my line. I couldn't get it right, especially because there were all these A list movie stars behind me. There's Tim Allens, Gourney, Weavers, Sam Rockwell, and Tony Shaloube included. Tony shalub in that I just kept blanking. I got so nervous. I remember my tinfoil suit was filled with sweat. Gross. Yeah, his biggest scene was ultimately axed from the final cut.
And we also have to mention Sam Rockwell's character, Guy Fleiegmann, who's constantly got friend of the pod, Guy Fleegman.
I am such a child for funny sounding names. I still find good fact that they pitched Vince Vaughan's character and Anchorman as Wesman Tooth simply because of the way that Will Ferrell bites into that line in the movie. Ah Man, I'm just a simple a simple boy from the country. You give a character a silly name, I'm gonna laugh at it Guy Fleiegman.
I named the character and something I was working on, John LeFarge, and it still cracks me up. It's good, it's good. It's and it's very close to Jordi LeFarge, so little Jordi Forge. Yeah, the Star Trek crept in there. Sorry to burst that bubble for you. Gas Pothier Gaston called gas for short. Gas Pothier is another one. That's good. Yeah. These are getting into like these are getting into like pinsion names. Yeah. The gas Pathier is a is a
French Canadian bass fisherman. That's the that's the character. Yeah, probably played by current age Jim Carrey in his sixties. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, thank you. John LeFarge is Will Ferrell, current age m so. Yes, Guy Fleiegmann played by Sam Rockwell, who I wholly forgot what's in this movie. He's constantly paranoid about being killed, which is a riff on Star Trek's famous Red Shirts, or the anonymous crew members who are always clad in red and are always the first
to be killed off during any altercation. It's since become a trope across the genre, but it's important to note that of the fifty five crew members, killed in the original Star Trek series. You write twenty four, we're wearing red shirts. It's a real thing.
Yeah, yeah, we love tropes that are real, at least in media.
You'd think that, like it wouldn't be red so you could see the blood, you know what I mean. Maybe it was. Maybe it was though you know, network standards and practices. Uh, that's a good point, okay, yeah, yeah. Sam Rockwall supposedly beat out Paul Rudd for the role of Say It with Me Now, Guy, and the character's name is a reference to an actor named Guy Vardaman, who'd played several no name characters in Star Trek the Next Generation and doubled for Brett Spiner as Data and
Will Wheaton as Wesley Crusher on that show. Yep, yep. Sam Rockwell has two scenes in which he emits prolonged screams. For the teleportation scene, he downed quote four cups of coffee and two etcron which is about what I'm on today, as he told MTV, and afterwards a couple of beers to calm down. Maybe that's in my future. So Gourney Weaver was not told that he was going to do this, so her shocked reaction when he screams is completely real.
Rockwell said that he wanted to quote Ennoble the coward archetype, and thought of, in his words, the best cowards in cinematic history, like John Taturo and Miller's Crossing, as well as Bill Paxton in Aliens with Michael Keaton in Night Shift. Know that one. But to me, Bill Paxton is the is the perfect coward.
Yeah, that's good. All film history. Yea, all this bravado immediately folds and starts freaking out amazing, Ah Paxton.
Yeah, yeah, I still it doesn't feel right to me that he's not here. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, In any event, we have now exiled Hollywood sexual predator Kevin Spacey, then doing the Iceman Cometh on Broadway. To thank for Sam Rockwell's role, the younger actor went to see Spacey, who encouraged him to do Galaxy Quest over another smaller movie that he'd been mulling over. Rockwell told the Hollywood Reporter, I thought about Sean Penn fast times
at Ridgemont High, as one does. I figured I could play Guy Fleegman and still do say the Deer Hunter. I can play a buffoon and then turn it around with a versatile role in the next film. What was his next film.
Let's see you're doing this out of spite to Sam Rockwall to be like nice try idiot. He was very good as Bob Fosse and uh Sam Rockwell's great.
Oh yeah, he was in Boscot too. Oh yeah, that's right, small role in basket Okay. Yeah. That year he was in A Midsummer Night's Stream, he was in The Green Mile, and he was in Galaxy Quest. And his next movie was You Ready I Am Charlie's Angels. Oh, which is not Check's Notes Dear Hunter, No, but.
You know it is the movie that kind of was his mainstream breakthrough, so he chose well.
I suppose he was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, that movie about the game show host uh Chechuck.
Barris, Yeah, claiming he was a contract killer for the CIA.
That's a great book.
I don't know if the movie is as charming, but the whole bit about that is so funny in.
A way, kind of like Galaxy Quest. Yeah.
I think that movie has been completely forgotten too, even though I think was that a George Clooney directorial.
Ooh, it might have been I think it was. That's how it got to Julia Roberts on the cheap Yeah, and he was Screamway by Charlie Coffin. Yeah, whoa wow.
I read the book before I saw the movie. Actually, I don't think the movie quite comes off, but the book, written by Chuck Barris, is pretty.
Good, suitably insane.
Galaxy Quest had a respectable forty five million dollars reported budget, which is a little over eighty six million today, which films like this do not get anymore. No, you know, this is a straight to Netflix shot on digital lit for coverage pieces that you will forget immediately after you've seen it. That's what the role of this movie would have been today, and much of it thankfully went into
the careful production design and effects. Production designer Linda Dessenna told Starlog one of the reasons that I wanted to do Galaxy Quest was because it didn't have to be real high tech and vacuu formed.
It could be, you know, kind of tacky.
We were going to use blue and violet, but we ended it up with the same color of gray, just three different values. That's hilarious because that is one of my beasts. With the next generation like Star Trek period. I'm like, I don't like sci fi that looks like clean. My ideal sci fi is like dusty Star Wars sci fi. And then like the set of Alien because like, I don't know how you would keep space so clean. You can't open the door and brush dust out.
You know, what's the deal with with the with the enterprise? Where's the dust go the window?
They probably would have immediately after building that, they would have figured out a way to find some poor immigrant to clean the enterprise for pennies on the dollar.
That's what the real Federation would have done, Folks Confederation.
When I start a movie, she said, aside from the things you would normally focus on, like how to lay out a set, et cetera, it's color. In this movie we have Sarah's world where everything is green. So in Sarah's men are aboard of the ship, they stand out because everyone else is in gray and they're green.
And then we go into the real world.
In this movie, everything stays with the steel blues and the greens. In case you doubted her, bona Fides Dessenna was a set decorator on Star Trek, the motion picture Love that like you get a real set designer from Star Trek to do your Star Trek parody.
Amazing stuff. The bad guy in the movie, General Saras, I love this so much. This is so petty, is named after film critic Andrew Saras, who was outspoken about his dislike of producer Mark Johnson's previous effort The Natural. Sarah's responded to this ignoble honor in Entertainment Weekly, equipping the Galaxy quest quote, this is pretty good. Probably won't make enough money for me to sue for ten million dollars. I mean it did, but you know he didn't. There
are also two shakespeare references made via character names. Commander Peter Quincy tag as we mentioned earlier, is named for Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Stream, which Sam Roquah had just been in, so maybe that's where that connection comes from. And Alexander Dane is a reference to Hamlet the Lonely Dane. Rickman's line I played Richard the Third is also pointed because of all the Shakespearean roles, Rickman played Richard the Third was never one of them, but
a funny coincidence. When Alan Rickman joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in nineteen seventy eight. He was an Antony and Cleopatra alongside friend of the pod really Patrick Stewart, friend of us. All. Yeah, the film's aspect ratio, this is really cool, switches from one point eight five to one to two point three eight to one when the ship lands on Thermia to give the effect of a new wider world opening up. Very Wizard of Oz, which Dean Parasat admits was him being quote a little too clever
for my own good. He added, it kind of backfired on me with projectionists. They wouldn't open the curtains wide enough.
It's funny because I actually the trick in that actually repeats twice because you're first watching a four to three ratio like old square TV size of Galaxy Quest the show, and then it's revealed.
That they're watching.
Us on the screen at the convention, and as they they they as they zoom in on it, the aspect ratio also changes to become like the window boxed widescreen. It's really, it's like really clever kind of flexes on camera work and directing that again went over everyone's head, yes, yes, or some people or projections were just too lazy to do.
Speaking of Thermia, apparently the design for the thermi I can never say it. Apparently apparently the design for the Thermian's station was influenced by Roger Dean's album cover Free Yes Songs, which is incredible. One of our younger friends of the Pod friends of the Pod, Cyrus uh has but been taking music suggestions from our shows, which I'm deeply touched by uh and and he's been a big fan of of Yes of Oh, hell yeah A roundabout So there's another is roundabout on Yes Songs. I forget.
No, I think it's on Imaginary Oceans. Possibly, don't quote me on that. No, it is, It's it's on uh Oh, it's on Yes Songs.
Yeah, hell yeah, Sorry, it's on Boat Yes Songs is the greatest hits like compilation, So it's on two things can be true.
I want to know which sci fi movie will be brave enough to recreate the armadillo tank on the cover of Emerson Lake Edward Palmer's album Tarcas.
While we're doing.
While we're doing, prog rock album covers one of the highest forms of art of the twentieth century. As I mentioned earlier, our boy, Stan Winston handed the creature effects the guy behind terminator, the guy behind aliens, the guy behind another one, another one, although one huge element of the film was nearly thrown off by his buddy Steven Spielberg's studio notes Winston crew had built five cable operated silicone puppets of the Thermians in their true form, forty
five tentacles for each one. Steen's were blocked with them lit Hurst. Two weeks before they were scheduled to be shot, though, Winston got a call from Spielberg, who decided the aliens were too weird looking and should be more humanoid like the ones in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So Winston phone his effects supervisor, Shane Maham with the news I couldn't believe it.
And this is from.
The Stan Winston School of Character Arts website, which is a wonderful like look at all of the work that he's ever done, and really detailed notes about it. He said, we'd gone through so much trouble for these things, and at this point we had two weeks to come up with something entirely new. Winston listened to man and said, let me call Stephen Spielberg back and whatever he said worked because the original designs made it into the movie.
And this is funny.
The Winston crew used technology that they were simultaneously working on for Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake for Sarah's. And this is a guy named the Winston Shop. One of the mechanics workers, Richard Landon. He says, we were testing things for Planet of the Apes and Stan came up to me one day and said, figure out a way to make a transfer mechanism so that an actor's face can actually move a prosthetic muzzle.
He said.
That was another case of Stan saying I don't know how to do this because I'm technically averse, and then exactly describing the mechanism to me.
And so it's this little linkage.
Device that made the makeup move when the actors face move, and that's what they use for Sarah's. And again, like that thing looks amazing. The prosthetics on that the character design, it looks like really amazingly excellent.
Twenty five CGI. Wasn't that the problem with the original Planet of the Apes in nineteen sixty eight, where they had these like monkey masks that just the actors couldn't move their faces because the mask would move along with it.
Yeah, it's like instead, it's the move that was like, I mean, I don't think it was precipitated by Planet of the Apes, but like, as they went from just like one piece applications to many smaller individual pieces, and I think that was largely the innovation of Dick Smith Affects Wizard.
Dick Smith, who also worked on Exorcist.
His big innovation at the time with the aging makeup for Dustin Hoffman's character and Little Big Man was multiple small pieces so that the facial features can move independently instead of just this huge chunk of rubber that just gets kind of glued onto your face or around your head. Anyway, Sarahs has a spiked eye patch, and that's supposedly an allusion to one worn by Christopher Plumber as General Chang
in Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country. I don't think I've seen any of these past Wrath of Khan, the gross pig lizard that's beamed up inside out at.
Under the pod Ping Lizard. Pig lizard was naturally a full sized costume with a dude inside it. I just love that man.
Just a big old pig lizard that a guy got in and wriggled around him, just having a big old fun time making to movies.
And there was no way for me to know this. I just can't believe I'm into movies.
I'm making my love, making a living in the movies. Crawls into sweat drenched pig lizard costume and rolls around in the dirt with Tim Allen movies, movie magic.
And there was no way for me to know this before I rehearsed this.
But the little blue guys, little blue aliens who are all cute and then suddenly become terrifying. That character art was designed by Bernie Wrightson, who's a comic book artist who created my beloved swamp thing, and they did that just for me. The film's desert planet was the iconic Goblin Valley State Park in Utah, which is the place that has all of these like round, creepily eroded rocks amidst this very red tinged desert setting, and it is
for such a cinematic location. It is really bizarre to me that Galaxy Cluster was one of the first films to shoot there. They were preceded by city slickers to the legend of Curly's Goal.
I just rewatched that recently. That movie's great. I will not real word against City Slickers one or two, okay. And then later Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, very different movie.
Speaking of Goblin Valley, as we often do, a young man's mind often turns to Goblin Valley.
This would be a great.
Place to segue into what the film is and isn't, referencing from the wider sci fi cannon and the lanes to which production went to make sure they weren't going to get sued. So Galaxy quests Rock Monster from that Goblin.
No no, no, no, no no no no no no no no no no, no no no, thank you.
Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. That is not a nod to William Shatner twos William Shatner's disastrous directorial debut, nineteen eighty nine's Star Trek five, The Final Frontier. It sounds like rock Lobster, it does. That's the bit, Follow me here on a journey. This film is notable in the Star Trek movie fandom because Star Trek four The Voyage Home had been directed by Leonard Nimoy, and that was a huge hit and so Shatner faced immense pressure to follow that with his bloated ass in.
The directorial's chair.
Four Star Trek five just so funny that everything Shatner does is like a spikee for other people towards other people. So Shatner's film introducts the character Sybock, the half brother of Spock, who hijacks the Enterprise on a quest to
find God like a golden compass. So he was apparently inspired by like the prominence of televangelists like I guess Tammy fay Baker and jam Baker would have been hitting around this time, and he wanted the film to culminate in a sequence where Kirk, Spock, and Bones are pursued by angels and demons, though.
He realized Scooby Doo, Yeah.
He realized eventually that having Star Trek characters confront Judeo Christian concepts might not have been the smartest move, and his work around for this was somehow dumber and less realistic. Shatner decided that the film's climax would feature Kirk chased by a number of rock monsters. I've read anywhere from six to twenty on the mythical planet.
Of Shaka Rie where lived.
No, it's actually anoun to Sean Connery, who Shatner wanted to play Spock's brother, Sybock.
Connery turned this down to be in the third Indiana Jones movie Say It with Me. He chose wisely so. The cost of shadow his rock Monster's concept would have come in at over three hundred thousand dollars, and Shatner had to settle for one, which was promptly cut from the film when everyone saw how shot It's out there
on YouTube you can see it. Star Trek five ended up as the lowest grossing and worst reviewed of the Star Trek movies starring the cast of the original series, and once again, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Rick been seen.
By the way, accusing Allan's character of stealing his best lines and cutting him out of episodes is a direct jab at William Shatner, who was a huge divo on the set of the original series. He would ask for additional takes and extend his lines, and allegedly ordered lines of dialogue to be written for his own character. I've also read that he demanded all of the set lighting
to be based around Kirk. Anyway, the Galaxy Quest rock Monster, which sounds like rock Lobster, was not direct was not a direct shot at Star Trek five, but screenwriter Robert Corton did allow that that entire scene of them on this desert like planet was a nod to the famous episode of the original series where Shatner fights a lizard
like creature called the Gorn in the desert. The transporter malfunction and the sequence of the ship leaving its dock were both inspired by Star Trek the Motion Picture and this is amazing. I don't know why they didn't roll with this on original draft. One of the drafts of the screenplay referred to this as Galaxy Quest the Motion Picture,
which they really should have run with. The scene on the rock planet, also where Brickman's doctor Lazarus is chided for holding his tracking device upside down, is apparently also a reference to the first scene of Star Trek, where Spock is repeatedly seen holding one of his gimmicks, Gimgauz, upside down before someone corrected him for the final time.
Other sci fi references goredon the snuck in Sigourney Weaver's character saying ducks why is it always Dunce, which, in addition to Beth definitely being some form of an Indiana Jones riff, is also obviously a reference to the as you described, ducked Heavy alien franchise. When Quelex says I'm shot, that's a direct reference to James Brolin in Westworld and
the Little Blue Aliens I actually caught. This are a nod to Barbarella, the nineteen sixty eight schlocky Roger Corman adjacent Jane Fonda starring Barbarbrella in a scene where she's waylaid by two cute children with horrible mechanical dolls with razor sharp teeth. Yes, that's that's their preferred that's their Oh yeah, god, it's so upsetting. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, see Barbarella though, Yeah, we watched it all together. That's fun.
It's a good day. The Omega thirteen device was supposedly a nod to the climax of say It beneath the Planet of the Apes. That's right, my favorite, it's my new favorite sequel format title name. Absolutely, what's beneath the planet? Guys? A moon of a like, mister show thing, Like we're gonna blow up the moon well, we what else do you do with that? We walked on it, we hit a golf ball on it. Time to kill it. We're Americans. Beneath the Planet of the Apes features a doomsday device
labeled Alpha Omega. No one could have gone back to the drawing board alpha omega omega? Which is more powerful? Alpha or omega? Well, I mean, you know, Christ is famously the beginning and end of all things, which is what I believe that was. That was fy the beginning and end. I think one of the things that the alpha and the omega is supposed to reference. But you know, it's been a long time since I got that PhD in divinities. Narrator voice, he did not have a PhD
in divinities. Uh, Universal Life Church. That's what doctor Hunter S. Thompson did. That's true. That's true. And if you get the Ordained, you get a little thing that says, like priests that you can hang from your rearview mirror and you can park anywhere you sure can, You sure can. That's gonna come in handy for you. I know what's up next. I'm just rily you don't have to, you
don't have to highlight it for me. On the outline, I'm getting the hook the planet of the Thermians Plaateau Nebula as a nod to the day the Earth stood still. That's right. The alien coming out of the spaceship is.
Plato nickto barat Yeah, which is like one of the most famous sci fi RIfS of all time. It's in It's in the Book of the Dead and all the Army of Darkness movies from the from the Raimies.
It's one of the incantations that you read in the in the Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. And there's a sort of proggy pop band of the seventies called Clatau named after that alien, and they sounded so beatlelike that there was like underground rumors of the like Paul is Dead variety that the Beatles had secretly reformed as this band Platoo. Did you know that? I didn't know that. There's not a lot of not a lot of people
know that. Yeah, there's a song called sub rosa Subway, which sounds so it sounds like Paul McCartney singing, sounds something he would have written. It's yeah, it's good stuff too. Galaxy Quest was even parrotying contemporary sci fi. The insane chompers room that the crew has to go through was riffing on nineteen ninety seven's a vent Horizon, A wonderful slice of cheese about a spaceship whose engine opens up
a portal to hell. Great movie. Another easter egg. One of the robots from The Ill Fated Toys, the Robin Williams movie. Yeah, also Barry Levinson. Oh that's right. I love that movie as a kid. Movie was nuts, which I guess producer Marke the Box I know it was not. Any one of those robots is on stage with Sam Rockwell's character at the contention Guy Fleegmanleegman. Yeah, this is nuts. It's about this like owner of a toy company dies and then leaves it in his will to his brother,
who's like a general. And Robin Williams is the son who was passed over and is rightfully sad that he didn't inherit the toy company because he's the whimsical one, damn it. Yeah, and then the general. I think he starts off by like releasing what kids think are video games and taking advantage of their like incredible hand eye coordination. But the kids think they're video games, but they're actually.
Like real things. Yeah, yeah, quite quite predictive, are very much. You know, you wouldn't be able to make that movie today because of the tariffs.
Yes, yes, too expensive. Can't get those cheap, cheap rubber crap from China anymore until he fixes it, which I'm sure he will. Director Dean Parasol told MTV everybody was afraid of being sued. Same when we made that movie. Everything we would start, the designer come up with it
couldn't help but be relevant in some way to Star Trek. Fortunately, he says, DreamWorks were more focused on Gladiator at the time, and they were able to duck too much scrutiny, though for instance, they couldn't say beam in reference to teleporting. That's so funny. Yeah, they were worried about the captain's chair, they were worried about the uniforms. Parasol continues, I ignored it, so I was actually terrified when the movie came out.
Even the protector of the spacecraft serial number NTE three one two zero stands for not the Enterprise and te that's really funny. Love it. Other Slight language adjustments included using medical quarters instead of sick bay. That's dumb. That's like a sick base, like a widely used term, is it though? Yeah? But because of Star Trek though, you know, and the transporter is referred to as the Digital conveyor, and the chief Engineer is now a X sergeant. Is this funny? Yeah?
I mean you think about all that stuff that's bled into just like the vernacular, you know, an influential show one might say Star Trek one dedicated Trekky. Though James Burrdnelli discovered that this whole thing was a farce.
He was reviewing Galaxy Quez and.
He discovered a piece of extended media, Star Trek Minutia. A short story by Ruth Boerban titled Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited Now. This was published in the nineteen seventy six anthology Star Trek The New Voyagers, and the plot of this story is that actors William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly are transported to the Real Enterprise while filming an episode of Star Trek and are pursued by Klingon's.
So defores Kelly was into movie? No? Well, defores Kelly was not into movie. No he was not, But did you got it right?
Like a short story from nineteen seventy six unnarrowingly predicted the plot of this movie in a way that no one would have found out because it was in a short story anthology in nineteen seventy six of Star Trek Extended Cannon Stories.
It's like wicked. Yeah. But the other thing, the other.
Quiet part loud about Galaxy Quest is that it is essentially Three Amigos, which starred Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short as actors invited to a Mexican village to assume their fictional roles as protective bandidos in real life.
And I want to say that they knew this because when Alan's character is watching himself in an old episode of Galaxy Quest, the monologue his character's doing resembles the rallying cry of the Three Amigos when he's like in his house and he's like in his house with the whiskey or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, wherever there's darkness, there will be And that's like the Three Amigos bit.
You know that house that Tim Allens in, like his character's house is like a very famous house in the Hollywood Hills called the Stall House. I believe it's like a lot of famous photos. It's just like beautiful mid century modern house by architect named Pierre Kanig, and it's like on the National Register it's called the Stall House s T. A. H. L. And it's a very very famous house because it's been in I want to say, it's been in its definitely and other stuff. Is it
in Longa by Oh? Well, the guy designed it designed similar houses because it reminds me, it reminds me of the one in actually the one in Charlie's Angels that Sam Rockwell, yeah, but it is not. It's been. It was in the pilot episode of Colombo, which I love. Oh that's cool. Well, that's wonderful. The Stall House, Ladies and gentlemen.
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages.
Well, for years, there's been a rumor persisting that there's an R rated cut of Galaxy Quest out there, and as you write, that's not strictly true. Writer Robert Gordon told MTV, let's talk about the so called R rated version of the film. When I originally wrote it, I wasn't thinking about a family film, just what I wanted to see. So when the ship lands in the convention hall and the original draft it decapitates a bunch of people. So there's also stuff we shot where Sigourney tries to
seduce some of the aliens. It was cut and that's why her shirt is ripped at the end. Also the worst dubbed F bomb ever. You have thoughts about this, Oh, it's the worst dubbed F bomb ever.
It's when they get into the chompers room and Sigarette A Reaver's immediate reaction is, well, that.
Wasn't this PG, at least on Amazon. It's like pg's at that.
So they cut the because you can get one F bomb in PG thirteen movie, but you can't a PGPG. And yeah, so they cut it and made the studio made them dub it is screw that and it's terrible. The director made it perfectly the end. Sigourney Weaver, she was like, I made it the worst dub I've ever done. And Dean Parasog didn't shoot any other cut of it, coverage, he shot nothing, no other safeties for that, so he was just and he was like, I dubbed it poorly,
and apparently I wasn't able to verify this. But when they restored this movie and re released it for either DVD or I'm not sure if it's got a four K yet, but DVD or Blu ray, they were like, do you want to redo that and make it and make it a better dub? And he was like, no, no, I don't.
Another cut scene was a visit to Alan Rickman's character's crew quarters, which Tim Allen described as quote a proctologist dream and nightmare, all of these sharp things around his anus.
That might also be a nod to Event Horizon, which is like some of the funniest interior ship design ever, because it's like, you know, they get this transmission that's like just all of them, like all the characters at one point in this like Horrible Blood Orgy, it's like all these weird BDSM club design things, Like it's really it's really a great film, and there is actually about that film there is supposedly like for a long time people were obsessed with like finding an unrated cut of
it that had all of this extra like graphic and horrifying footage still in it, or at least to get it recut and re released.
And Paul W. Said, Paul W. S Anderson, who has since done all the Resident Evil movies. He did the first Mortal Kombat movie, he did a bunch of other just shlock. And he is married to Milli Jovovich, which is why she's in all of the Resident Evil movies.
He was just like, He's like, no, it doesn't literally does not exist. Like all of that extra film went into like a backlot somewhere and then fell apart in like an Eastern European storage facility for the studio.
Which I'm just very sad that that is what happens. But sometimes it doesn't happen. Sometimes it just gets burnt in a fire. M M. This was an universal movie, was it? No? Oh, well Spielberg, close enough? Yeah. Writer David Howard, the guy who originally came up with this premise, told IGN I understood there were two factions. One that wanted to make the movie more edgy, make the movie more edgy and hip, and another who wanted to make it more family friendly. And I don't mean that in
a pejorative sense. This guy's too sweet for his own good. But they did make a deliberate choice to tone down some of the violence and take some of the language out. Sigourney Weaver told The Hollywood Reporter it may have been competition from another studio that nudged Galaxy Quest to the safer side of things. She said, to me, DreamWorks didn't seem particularly interested in what we were doing, which gave
us more freedom during the shoot. But then at the last minute, DreamWorks it needed a movie to go up against Stuart Little The Mouse Movie, she helpfully adds, so they chose this one and started making cuts to the film Bummer Tales Oldest Time. Yeah. I do remember when this came out, thinking like, is this a kid's movie? Like, I don't h yeah. Uh.
Dean director Dean Parast told MTV Terry Press now president of communications for Spielberg's Ambulance Entertainment, so he does indeed keep his friends close. She was the head of marketing for DreamWorks at the time and didn't believe in the movie. We had a critical screening in the Valley and Terry was pregnant with twins and couldn't go. Had she been there,
she would realize this was an audience movie. So the film was in the top ten for nine weeks in the US, but it was a very slow climb to its total gross, which was a respectable doubling of its forty five million budget, made ninety mili. Early trailers also came out, though before the post production.
VFX had been completed, so they didn't even have any of the beautiful like any of the nice CGI to show off. They just had you know, Tim Alan mugging.
They had other things made out of rubber, like Tim Allen's face, and Parasawt continued.
It became this thing where I would walk.
Into meetings and people would say, it's a shame how they marketed that movie. They looked at it as a Christmas movie for kids. They put it in theaters that were for kids, and Matt nays, our big argument was that there was a much larger audience, but they didn't believe that. By the second week, adults started showing up, which sustained the film in a very strange way.
It kept making the same amount of money each weekend for four weekends in a row, unheard of today.
Parasat maintains that even enemy of the Pod Jeffrey Katzenberg, called him on the second week of the film's release and told him I'm sorry. I think we screwed up the marketing on this, to which I say, bully for him. No, it's amazing how Jeffrey Katzenberg has multiple allegory or anecdotes about him calling up and apologizing after things that he directed or things that were under his supervision flopped.
I mean, which is that a enough to earn him a disciplinary committee hearing for TMI to see if we should be downgraded from enemy of the Pod to nuisance of the Pod. I mean, I had not believed that such a thing could be, But I love that nuisance of the Pod. I mean, that's good stuff. Self awareness, I guess would downgrade you to touse some nuisance? Yeah, self awareness, but no desire to actually affect anything demeanor? Yeah? Who among us? I do have to say one.
However, there is one thing that the marketing department did have a genius stroke of which which they again might have been a little too clever for their own good. They built Galaxy quest dot com, which was not a page about the actual movie. It took the whole fake television show to the gag to its next level.
This was like a.
Purposefully janky looking fake fan site for the show Galaxy Quest that had a giant trove of fake episode guides and it was all hosted written by a fake fan named Travis Latki, who at one point thanks his mom for paying for the hosting servers in her basement.
Great stuff. It doesn't live anymore. But you can see you can see in the way back machine. Yeah, you can see captive in the wayback machine. Nice. Speaking of fans, Trekki's love Galaxy Quest and why shouldn't they, right, there's very little mean spirited judgment in the film, and Justin Long's super fan character actually saves the entire cast of
the show via his nerd knowledge your words. Yes, In fact, one of your favorite bits of trivia about the film, Oh here, you should you should take this is this is your favorite? It is my favorite. Yeah.
One of my favorite bits about this film is that there was a Star Trek convention in Vegas and all of the attendees this was in twenty thirteen or fourteen, and all of the attendees voted on which was the best Star Trek movie, and Galaxy Quest came in at number seven. And you will note that there are far more than seven Star Trek movies, so a bunch of trekids decided that this was quote more of a Star Trek movie than several Star Trek movies on this list.
I love that. That's really great. But what is the original source material? You may ask? Yes, Patrick Stewart, who come on, do we even need to ide him? He played Captain Jean Luke Lecard on Next Gen, a.
Character name that introduced me to I want to say the concept of Jean Luke as a name in total, yes, yes, yes, yes, the most famous Jean Luke of all time. That's for the fans to decide.
He had this to say, I had originally not wanted to see Galaxy Can I read this as him I had originally I can't do it. No, he got so close. I can have a cadence, but like, don't have the tambur I had originally, No, I can't. No, it's too deep. I had originally not wanted to see Galaxy Quest because I heard it was making fun of Star Trek. This is him talking to the BBC. Then Jonathan Frank's rang me up. Oh, I almost had it there and said you must not and said you must not miss this,
you must not miss this movie. You must not miss this movie. See it on a Saturday night in a full theater. Frank's definitely did not deliver it like that. No, and I did, and of course I found it was brilliant, brilliant. No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did. Tim Russ or Tuvac on Star Trek Voyager under my name there Cat Tuvak Nice, I had flashbacks of Galaxy Quests that the many conventions I've gone to since the movie came out. I thought it was an
absolute laugh a minute. Yeah, I mean this movie for people who've been in the many Star Trek iterations, it must be like spinal tap for anybody who's ever been in a bends, Like, yeah, exactly, this is how much it can suck. I'm comfortably close. Yeah, thank you for seeing us. Will Wheaton Wesley Crusher on Next Shin had this to say, I loved Galaxy quest I thought it was brilliant satire not only of Trek but a fandom in general. Real heads call it Trek. There's a heat.
That quote continues, and I cut it, and I'm not actually sure why, because well, it's a bit inside baseball. He said, all it needed was some sweaty guy yelling at the child actor why was there a child on the Star Trek Enterprise, which is something that dogged Will Wheaaten for years. I do have to say that his character sucks and should never have been on a spaceship. But that is like the poor kid was like, you know, eleven or whatever and having grown men scream in his
face about how it was that he existed pure. I mean, so pretty could let's start on life in Hollywood and maybe life in general. It's true? Yeah, I mean they did you know, they broke his cherry early, popped his cherry early. Don't put that in. I hate that although this was the era of cherry pop. Was Will Wheaton the son of son of famous people? I know I might be getting confused with Mikey from Goonies, who was
Patty Duke's kid. Oh yeah, no, I don't know if Will Wheaton's a Will Wheaton is a NEPO baby, so I'm not sure about that. Probably not. George Takai or Sulu from the original series of Star Trek had this to say, I think it's a chillingly realistic documentary. He laughs. Also, the details in it I recognized every one of them.
It's a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking. I was rolling in the aisles and Tim Allen had that shat in the esque swaggered down at George Takai and Shatner famously been feuding probably in a series decade now, like a long long time, and I roared when the shirt came off, and Sigourney Weaver rolls her eyes and says, there goes that shirt again. How often do we hear that on set?
I have to you know, I have to mention there's another thing in this movie that Sigourney Reaver made reference to in one of these oral.
Histories, which is she said Tim Allen chickened out when it came time to kiss me. And indeed when they like embrace at the end of the movie, it does look like their characters were supposed to kiss, and there's like a very obvious like going in for the kiss,
like no, and then they just hug uh. And I think that is so funny that they decided they again decided to keep that in as something that they would all mock Tim Allen four years later and laugh about, well, didn't they like early on in like the convention scene or something when one of the fans there.
Are nots to them, like there are nots to them, like having had a relationship or something. And when he hits on her at one point, actually she delivers a great, a great line where he's like trying to like get her to come hook up with him, and she said, He says, come on, like you you know you found me, you found me beautiful once something like that, and and she says, that.
Was before I knew you. Yes, yes, yes, yes, He's a devastating thing. Yes, And speaking of devastating things, William Shatner, Yeah, I do love Shatner though Why, I've heard people say the most horrible things about him, and I've also heard people say the most wonderful things about him. No. In between, Well, there's there's a Henry Rowlands bit during one of his spoken word things. Yeah, OK, because he Henry Rowans and Bill Shatner did a spoken word piece on an album
that Ben Folds was producing. It's the William Shatner Album has been, which is actually great. And so Henry Rowans worked with him, and he said that he was just like helped him fall in love with life again. He was just so passionate, enthusiastic about like everything. They go out to dinner, and he said, just like watching William Shatner eat was just like a revelation because he's like every bite was going to be the best bite of his life. Like that was how how he described like
watching him Shatner eat. I mean, wait, joke aside, Like it was very it was very touching. So I'm sure he's a nightmare to work with.
But yeah, I mean I I the the thing that I like most about him is when he went up on Deep Blue or space X or whatever. No it wasn't space X because that would have exploded the Deep Blue something. Yeah, deep Blue, the Amazon one, the Amazon spacecraft. He went up on one of Bezos's little vanity trips and came back not wide eyed in wonder, but like genuinely horrified in a way that like Lovecrafty and Horror has tried to portray since Lovecraft wrote it, of just being like my god, we are.
Alone yeah actually.
And being like and being like why what are we doing to this planet?
Like there were alone out there, yeah, and there's so much space, and oh what are we doing?
And I was like, good for you? For like actually having a moment of genuine like recoiling horror, as I assume everyone actually does in space, and then lies about coming back and being like, how oh, it's so wonderful and beautiful horrifying.
I actually have a lot to say about this. A couple of days ago, one of the new podcasts they have been working on is called American History Hotline, and we take like, you know, listener questions and then we have various experts come in and answer them. And one of the questions was why did we stop going to
the Moon. So we had this incredible journalist and space historian and expert Andrew Chaikin, who wrote an amazing book called A Man on the Moon, which then Tom Hanks made into an HBO mini series in the late nineties I think called From the Earth to the Moon. I think something like that, but it's it's the best. It's like twelve hours long. It's like it's so long, but it's like the most thorough, amazing document of the Apollo
program that I've ever seen. It's really great. So we have this historian on and we were talking about that and he mentioned Shatner coming down. He mentioned what you said about how he phrased it slightly less lovecraft Dan. He said something like, yeah, Shatner said that going up to space, I wasn't really focused on space at all. I just kept looking back at Earth and it made me realize how beautiful Earth was, which I mean, the sentiment is true. I mean, Earth is a lifeboat basically
in the vast blackness of space. And there's also a phenomenon called the overview effect. And there's a book called the overview Effect that's been written about this, where basically studying the psychological effect of going into space, especially the people in the Apollo program, how it changed them in profound ways about how they just viewed life and humanity and you know, in ways you could probably expect but not truly internalize, which is like, you know, it's just
the ultimate perspective check. He's going to the moon and looking back at everything you knew, everyone you knew, everyone you've ever, everything that you know about existence is just like you can stand on the moon and put your thumb up and like completely cover it with your thumb. Yeah, I would like to.
I mean, just in case people thought I'm misrepresenting lovecrafting horror, I would like to read.
From the op ed that William Shatner wrote, oh please please about the experience. I'm not going to do it in his voice, although maybe I should, I should try it. Yeah. I love the mystery of the universe. I love the mystery of it, all of the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses.
That's annoying, stars exploding years ago, They're light traveling to us, blah blah blah, etc. All that has throwed me for years. But when I looked in the opposite direction into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold.
All I saw was death.
I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness, unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home, the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white clouds, the.
Blue of the sky. Everything I had thought was wrong, Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate Catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things, that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. My trip, Yes this is the pool quote. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth
below filled me with overwhelming sadness. My trip to Space was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it felt like a funeral. Wow. I mean okay, first of all, yes, as a profound sentiment and very interesting, but also sure, he's probably a nightmare to work with. But to actually have that awareness and be able to articulate it so beautifully, yeah, I mean. Also, you know, the original series or whatever it was decades ago, and he was a young a
younger man. I'm sure that there's been some life's beating him down enough. Yeah. I although I think him and like Spack had a weird or him and nimoy I had a weird thing towards because.
Weren't they like, well, yeah, that's like cannot stand him. Yeah, has made it like a pillar of his personality in later years.
Yeah. Like I hate Bill Shatner in a way that I sort of find off putting. Okay, Well, you know you hate a guy, you hate a guy, I mean, I think that's noble. I hate people I hate people I've worked with, and yeah, I never mind. Don't you want to carry that with you for the rest of
your life. My stepbrother, he was graduating from UMass. Lowell and Shatner came to speak at the commencement, and my dad always talks about how moving the speech was, about how I don't remember all of the part that I always remember my dad especially being moved by was I think it was right after Nimoy had died and he was talking about friendship and loss, and he said that the weirdest thing and the toughest thing about losing but getting you in age, when you're starting to lose your
friends in sure, you know, in rapid succession, was you lose somebody to like fact check your memories with, which I thought was a very small but poignant but also that's really devastating. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah, And
I thought that was very touching. And I think about that from time to time, that you know people that you had these really intimate experiences with that there no longer there, and then suddenly it's like you're kind of left hoping you have it right in a sense, Yeah, this is making you feel a lot of feelings that you don't like. Do you want to go back to your trailer? No? I mean I just think as much as he's probably as a gigantic egon, as much as he's probably not going to work with, I feel like
he has a rich inner life. And I mean you'd have to to think spoken word was an art form. But sure that was great? Is incredible? You say that you would actually like it. It's called has been and it's.
Where I know of the record because he has Joe Jackson, Joe Jackson and he covers a pulpse common Sorry. Yeah, it's a great performance from Joe Jackson. Oh yeah, Joe Jackson whips So Jackson's incredible.
Not that Joe Jackson, not not no, no, yeah. The English guy contemporary of Elvis Costello, who did go out with him, Yes, and the rest. I'm shocked. You know him, he doesn't seem like something. He's English. So that's one reason why I'm shocking, you know. I you know what it was, dude. It was one of the g TA soundtracks. Had had one of his songs on one of the rings look Sharp or something like that, or stepping out, stepping out, stepping out and it was just got stuck
in my head and I was like, who is this song? Rules? That sounds?
And the second I found that he has a song called Everybody's.
Everything gives You Cancer? There's no kill, There's no answer. Yeah, A seven out whips. Yeah. That whole album's great night and day or no day and night. Great album. Wow we went we ventured far off anyway. Oh, we never actually said what William Shattener had to say about Galaxy Quest. Okay, this is what William Shattner had to say about Galaxy Quest. I thought it was very funny, and I thought the audience that they portrayed was totally real, but the actors
that they were pretending to be were totally unrecognizable. And he said that with a laugh.
So good for him, I say, bully for him. Yes, in a rare moment of self awareness. Okay, so ever, since the success of the film, you know, doubled its budget. That's not nothing. People have been talking about a sequel. Tim Allen mentioned in the MTV Oral History, this was published in twenty fourteen that there was a script already written in Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell mentioned that they
would both be interested in returning A year later. In April twenty fifteen, Paramount Television, along with the movie's co writer Robert Gordon, director Dean Parasat, and the OG executive producers, announced they were looking to develop a television series based on Galaxy Quest, positioned similarly to Paramount's revivals of Minority Report and School of Rock as television series, but because
no one takes Paramount seriously. By August of twenty fifteen, it was announced that the series was off Paramount and on at Amazon Studios. However, Alan Rickman's death in January of twenty sixteen shut that down. On the nerdst podcast in April twenty sixteen, Sam Rockwell revealed that the cast had been about ready to sign on for a follow up with Amazon, but Rickman's death, together with Allen's television schedule,
proved to be insurmountable obstacles. A year after that, in November of twenty seventeen, Paul Sheer was announced as the writer, and he said that his first drafts for Amazon had been delivered. However, after Amy Powell's exit as president of Paramount Television in July twenty eighteen, Sheer said that the Galaxy Quest series had been put on hold while Paramount
Management was being re established. As recently as early twenty twenty one, Tim Allen said that a film sequel script was nearly ready to go, having been heavily reworked following Rickman's death. The world was understandably not as interested at
this point in US history. In June of twenty twenty one, Georgia Pritchett claimed that she had she and Simon Pegg were working on developing Galaxy Quest television series, and most relatively recently, in April of twenty twenty three, Paramount said that they were in the early stage of developing a Galaxy Quest series for their streaming service, with production overseen by Galaxy Quest's original producer Mark Johnson. You know, like I mentioned, I completely forgot how good this movie is
until we got a pitch for it. And Sam Rockwall, I think, really hit it on the head in the MTV Oral History. He said, somebody must have sprinkled fairy dust on that movie, because everything just clicked into place somehow in the long run. And I agree, every single thing about it works. And this movie, like you said, like you said earlier, you on this idea of a mid budget parody with you know, actual sets and actors and everything. Those movies are gone, they are phased out
and Star Trek reference. But of them, I think Galaxy Quest has like serious legs. It might be one of the most influential of any of these movies. For starters, It's lightly irreverent, more gentle, comedic tone towards Star Trek basically anticipated the tone that noted hack jj Abram that would take with his two thousand and nine reboot of Star Trek and then later years following not one but two shows Star Trek Lower Decks and Seth MacFarlane series.
The Orville took this whole parody with love approach to Star Trek, and I think more trenchantly, Galaxy Quest basically predicted how twenty first century fandom would evolve. You know, fan conventions have gone from the opening scene in this movie, which are depicted as quasi sad, to these huge tent pole features every year, with major studios debuting trailers and
making cast announcements. An entire online ecosystem of coverage has cropped up specifically around cons now with like costumes and all the you go to the celebrity panels, and every single minute quote from that is overanalyzed, and even just the very power that fan bases would have is somewhat depicted by this movie. You know, Family Guy was canceled like two years later, and fan campaigns brought it back.
Same thing that happened with Firefly. Firefly was canceled and then they made a movie about it, spurred by the reaction of the fans to it, and coming out six months after The Phantom Menace, Galaxy Quest offered this very rosy eyed view of the power of fandom, especially on the Internet with all of these niche message boards and fan sites, and it was a very positive model for cinematic fandom that hadn't even gotten underway yet, that would only gain steam with the success of Lord of the
Rings franchise. The Fellowship came out in two thousand and one Harry Potter, and then of course the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and now we're at this stage where fandom has started
to curdle. As I mentioned in a different podcast, you know, you're at this point where fan reaction on Reddit can dictate the entire direction of a remake series, as famously happened with the Last Jedi, and then that direct that film's director Ryan Johnson being booted from the Star Trek franchise in favor of jj Abrams, who made the essentially remake of a New Hope that is called The Force Awakens, and then the absolute steaming pile of dog called Rise
of Skywalker third film. Anyway, I could get sappy about all this. I could have a finely crafted kicker that explored the impact of what it means to truly love a piece of media and how that can curdle into obsession. But instead I'm just going to quote Sigourney Weaver's character Gwen DeMarco. Whoever wrote this episode should die. Thank you, folks, this has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tag. We'll catch you next time.
Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard. Please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.