Celluloid Heroes

Gentlemen, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now.

I went to high school at Servite in Anaheim, California, which was about as football crazy as a school gets in Southern California. Football crazy in California, however, is to football crazy in Texas as Presbyterians are to Pentecostals. This movie is about a little town in West Texas where, if the Second Coming happened on any given Friday night during the fall, the locals would likely say to Jesus, “Hold your horses there. Don’t You know there’s a football game on?”

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There’s a man out there I haven’t seen in 15 years who’s trying to kill me. You show me a son that’d be happy to help.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s spiralling production costs and lukewarm reviews must have left a cold feeling in pit of the Paramount brass’ collective stomachs. Fortunately the box office returns were good enough to justify at least thinking about a sequel. If nothing else, it would help amortize the production costs of the first film across more than one movie.

To keep costs in check, they assigned the film to their television production division. To direct, they hired Nicholas Meyer, whose only other directorial credit to date was the well-received thriller, Time After Time. Both decisions proved fortuitous. Literate, focused and not awed by the Star Trek legacy, Meyer proved to be just the hand to keep the film on course.

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