Page Created: 09/18/10. Last Update: 10/27/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 06/30/10.
VIDEO: STAR WRECK: COMMOTION PICTURE
Bonus Short: ET TU, Q?
PANEL DISCUSSION: WRITING TREK BOOKS
John Betancourt
The author's bibliography can be found at: http://www.wildsidebooks.com/jgb.htm.
Margaret Bonanno
The author's website is: http://www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/bio.htm.
William Mc Cay
The author's website is: http://www.billmccay.com/.
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: October 9, 1993.
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 49.
Meeting Program: Panel discussion of Science Fiction. Video presentation of STAR TREK spoof.
Notes:
The Barnes & Noble store referenced below no longer exists.
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 1993 Philip J De Parto:
The October 9, 1993 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was built around a STAR TREK theme and featured a variety of approaches to its subject matter. Attendance at the evening portion of the event was quite good--the total attendance of 49 people officially there was the most we have had since the same turnout in November of 1986--though the pre-meeting turnout was only so-so.
Some of our pre-meeting activities were held at the Barnes & Noble Superstore at 504 Route 17 North in Paramus. Authors John Betancourt, Margaret Bonanno, and William Mc Cay talked about, read from, and answered questions their STAR TREK writing and other works. There were about 30 or so people who attended these readings, though people came and went, so it was hard to be precise. Not many books were sold during these sessions, but the publicity helped boost sales of the whole STAR TREK line, so they were happy about its overall effectiveness. The scheduled costume contest was aborted when no one came to participate in the event.
Activities at the Methodist Church were sparsely attended. There were not enough people who showed up for Bill Molendyk to run his AD&D Game, the Marklanders were no-shows, and just a handful of people from the Writers' Critique Group made it. Christopher Nash was in charge in the absence of the Director (who was down at Barnes & Noble) and did a commendable job in taking care of things at the Church.
Douglas Finch, Charles Garofalo, Christopher Nash and Patricia Nash comprised the Writers' Group. Chris read "The Diary of the Phantom," a whimsical short story by Doug about the day-to-day existence of the Phantom of the Opera. Turnabout being fair play, Doug read the latest chapter of Chuck's YA novel, THE THREE OLD CATS AND THEIR TERRIBLE WEEK. Chris read Chapter Sixof Pat's ongoing ILLEGAL ALIEN saga.
While things could hardly be categorized as "smoothly running," Chinese take-out and viewing STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION eventually worked out, thanks to the heroic efforts of Mary Ann Denny, Roy Greenberg, and especially Sharon Archer.
In addition to the usual preliminaries at the start of the meeting, Philip De Parto announced several items of information about bookstores. . . . He introduced Peter Dobrzynski of the Garden State Horror Writers who was present with a half-dozen other members of the group, and gave a few bits of information about the featured flick, STAR WRECK, COMMOTION PICTURE.
STAR WRECK was a spoof of the first STAR TREK movie put together by Lynne Stephens when she was in high school. Most of the humor comes from her two primary spoof tools. The first is by overdubbing music atop the soundtrack. Captain Kirk is accompanied with "Macho Man," a song by the Village People, in his first entrance. His conversations with Captain Decker are punctuated by "Dueling Banjoes." Her other technique is to splice in scenes from the original series so that when Checkov is injured, she cuts to all the other times he was hurt in the series and when the bridge tilts and sways, flashback to similar TV scenes.
There was also an unannounced five minute video shown titled, "ET TU, Q?" in which Q gives his own unique interpretation of his actions and motivations. Lynne had the active cooperation of John De Lancie with this one which gave her a lot more flexibility. Past guest speaker Paul Scrabo of the James Bond spoof, THE HELL WITH HELICALS, also worked on this one.
After a short intermission, we came back with a TREK-book panel of John Betancourt, Margaret Bonanno, and William McCay. Margaret is the author of DWELLERS IN THE CRUCIBLE and STRANGERS FROM THE SKIES, a pair of "Classic TREK" novels; John is in the process of writing DEVIL IN THE SKY, a "Deep Space 9" book co-authored by Greg Cox and due for release next year; William Mc Cay is the co-author (with Eloise Flood) of the "Next Generation" novel, CHAINS OF COMMAND.
Most people felt it was a good panel. The best line of the night came from the audience when it someone suggested that a Klingon phaser blast should have been harmlessly deflected by Kirk's ego.
William Benthake, Mary Ann Denny, Josh Ludzki, Sam Ludzki, Jeffrey Salcedo, and Robert Yeager won free books. There were 13 first time visitors, but only two were fed to us by the afternoon activities at Barnes & Noble. The majority came from the G.S.H.W. or the afternoon Chess Tournament held in the Riverside Square Mall in Hackensack.
There were about 16 of us at the Horizon Diner afterwards. Many thanks to Beth Grout, Jacqueline Hecht, Chris Wamsley, Robert Yeager, and everyone else who pitched in during the set up, clean up, and actual running of the day's events.