Thank you all, as always, for your responses to my latest update! The time has come for me to give my replies to those responses...
(But first, I would like to note that marks the
3,500th post to this thread!
)
Well, you could take Gene Roddenberry's idea of a "young race" (the initial "hat" for the Ferengi until the profit motive took over), mix it with the personality of stereotypical Orcs and give it to the new Klingon makeup design. Just spit-ballin'.
Another idea could be that Roddenberry ends up using the ridged forehead Klingon design idea for an alien species in Deep Space.
These are all worthy possibilities - thank you both for suggesting them
Once again, you continue to surprise us! TTL's Tucker is a combination of elements of Heaven's Gate and At Long Last Love. Wonder what happens to Cimino's pet project ITTL? It would be ironic if it was named one of the greatest films never made.
And
One from the Heart. But yes. Cimino never gained the cachet to direct
Heaven's Gate ITTL, because nobody was interested in making the film that earned him that cachet,
The Deer Hunter (a film about the overseas quagmire). This also prevents Russian Roulette from entering the popular consciousness, which is probably a good thing.
Shame. I liked OTL's Tucker.
I certainly have nothing against
Tucker in principle (far from it, I've always had a soft spot for automotive entrepreneurs), but even
today, after all of the humbling he's suffered, Francis Ford Coppola retains his
titanic ego and his massively overblown sense of self-importance. In the early 1980s? He would have been (and
was) an unstoppable monument to his own hubris. Unfortunately, this attitude was endemic amongst the New Hollywood set (as was rampant drug abuse, which didn't help).
Orville_third said:
Oddly, I only heard of Transamerica when I was a kid from a Fisher-Price hand-cranked cartoon player which had a Pink Panther cartoon. Transamerica owned UA who released the Pink Panther cartoons at the time.
Yes, those heady days of the conglomerates. I should point out that, IOTL at about this same time, UA was sold... to MGM (another studio in a fairly bad way IOTL, though fortunately it's doing just fine, all things considered, ITTL) and the two were effectively merged and branded as MGM-UA.
You've certainly butterflied away
Ishtar (of "no, only a
blind camel will do!") fame... but I suppose it is still possible that the eldritch gods inflict
Howard the Duck upon this TL
Well, I must remind you once again that
I never promised I was writing a utopia!
Andrew T said:
Another fantastic update as usual, Brainbin.
Thank you, Andrew!
So you made one of the biggest studios in Hollywood Canadian? The studio happy to produce X-rated content? I suspect that in your Timeline the critics and media watchdogs will no longer talk about yellow peril. They instead would be warning of incoming Glacial Period.
Glacial Period... I like that. But I wouldn't write off the Yellow Peril
just yet. For one thing, as I've mentioned before, Canadians have been disproportionately involved in the American motion picture industry since its infancy - and Asper is in fact not even the only Canadian studio chief (as Edgar Bronfman is in charge at MGM).
Mefisto said:
Ah, I think I see what it is about. By making the Canadian Mogul an owner of the Hollywood studio you just created a niche for certain auteur who cannot make any film because of boycott from the industry. An even better, this mogul ended the Hollywood Accounting practice in this studio which made said auteur locking horns with another studio...
Perhaps, perhaps...
He's going to take inspiration from your TL's treatment of the
E.T. video game and make it an Oscar-winning, Palme d'Or-winning international blockbuster.
Way to burden me with your unrealistic expectations, vultan
I found the part about movie studios forcing reductions in films lengths to be interesting--I remember that attitude myself, whereas now it seems as though 2 to 3 hours has become the standard, and some films actually suffer as a result of it from obvious padding, the reverse problem. One wonders if there will be special cuts in the 2040s of 2010s films based on an edited down version.
Indeed. I believe that Michael Bay deserves the lion's share of the blame;
Bad Boys, his first film, was also his shortest, and the only one which clocked in under the two-hour mark (barely, at 118 minutes). Nowadays, one struggles to find a movie of his that's under
two-and-a-half hours long - filled to the brim with explosions and rapid-fire cuts.
Thande said:
Of course even in an era of very long films you still get many cases of book adaptations becoming incoherent messes through compression, which brings us neatly to your
other project
Yes, indeed so - and fortunately, projects like
Game of Thrones and
The Walking Dead have helped to validate the legitimacy of the television adaptation.
Thande said:
I wonder if this will lead to a change in Canada's global image as well as its image in the USA: it might dent the whole "Like Americans but nicer" stereotype if Canada becomes associated with controversial films.
Well, to an extent, Canada is
already associated with controversial (or at least
challenging) films IOTL, especially through the National Film Board, or through the works of directors such as Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg, among others. (Even our lightweight material tends to be risque:
Porky's, anyone?). But you raise a good point. A backlash against "true" adult films is likelier to emerge than the OTL compromise that eventually resulted in the PG-13 rating.
God knows the Hobbit movies, much as I like them, would benefit from that.
Well, although I've not seen them, I really must say that's to be expected -
The Hobbit was just
one book, after all, which they're stretching into
three movies (the same number as the entire
Lord of the Rings saga!) for purely avaricious reasons. You and I are definitely simpatico on this one, though - when Thande made that suggestion, my first thought was somebody editing the three
Hobbit films into a single, three-hour movie. I imagine it would knock all our socks off
Oh, boy, an update!
Yes, I do my best to come out with those every now and again
Plumber said:
I believe the whole phenomena actually started with the success of the Lord of the Rings, so weird full circle thing there.
No doubt that certainly played a part, especially the extended editions sold on DVD - and Peter Jackson couldn't even keep
King Kong under three hours.
You're welcome. I don't know if I can realistically help since it's obvious that you have
DoneTheResearch. Consequently I shall limit myself to reading the timeline on the Wiki (unless you actually do need research on an obscure point, in which case shout out...
)
Well, thank you for the compliment, and for the offer. I hope you will continue to enjoy reading - I update the Wiki within five to ten minutes of posting each update.
Sorry for this "blast from the past" reply, all, but I'm catching up to the timeline after neglecting it for some months--for reference, nixonshead posted this pic of the updated Enterprise model back on January 1.
I always appreciate comments, regardless of their punctuality
Shevek23 said:
Having seen the earlier portrait and six-views, I wanted to just say for the record I'm in love with this revision of the classic TOS Constellation type. I was never entirely pleased with the OTL movie version (adopting what looked to me like Klingon nacelles, forsooth!
).
Well, as nixonshead explained, those nacelles were just about the first thing I wanted to be changed ITTL.
Shevek23 said:
I can't see any changes whatsoever in the primary and secondary hulls. And of course I like it that way. What you've done with the nacelles and struts is just genius though; very subtle and understated but pure improvement as far as it goes. I like how you put just a little bit of sweepback in the struts but kept them uniform in cross-section, and the gentle, aerodynamic tapering of the nacelles is gorgeous.
Well, the saucer borrowed a few of the changes planned for
Phase II (and implemented in TMP), such as the double turbolift to the bridge. But otherwies, a very good eye: nixonshead suggested the sweeping nacelle "arms" very early on, and the tapering nacelles were one of the two alternate styles he drafted for me to replace the boxy, rectangular ones which prevailed IOTL. I also liked the radial fins, at rear - the "ring" was added in later revisions.
Shevek23 said:
God (and you and Brainbin, perhaps) knows what function they are supposed to serve in TTL Treknobabble, but the old ones looked good and these look better, as one would expect from incremental engineering improvements. Presumably they are blueish instead of orangy because they function at a higher power--in universe.
This was certainly my line of thinking - based on the classic "blue flames are hotter than orange flames" principle.
Shevek23 said:
In terms of the tastes of the viewing audience and hence production staff, the old ones looked like cigarettes (Roddenberry held out against an amazingly pro-cigarette culture--I'm currently watching the first season of Bewitched, another show that came out in 1966, and there are smokers and ashtrays
everywhere --but the imagery was too ubiquitous to be totally evaded apparently).
Shevek, sometimes a nacelle is just a nacelle
Shevek23 said:
Just gorgeous, you two! Thank you for that.
I think I can speak of nixonshead's behalf as well as my own when I say thank you, Shevek! We really appreciate your enthusiasm for the design
Love this timeline and some very interesting stuff. I always find the end of New Hollywood to be very interesting and would love to see some of those movies some day.
Thank you very much for the compliment, and welcome aboard! I'd love to
make some of those movies someday, but until then, at least I have this timeline
GoukaRyuu said:
I had
read an article, by Peter Bogdanovich himself, that went on how At Long Last Love was destroyed by the fact that it had been rushed out and not with the best cut of the film. It turns out, a guy at Fox who loved the Nat Cole songs and the movie made his own cut of the film and that was what was in the Fox archives. That was the film everyone saw on TV and later Netflix. Bogdanovich later found this out when he watched it on Netflix and then went to the studio to investigate. It was a changed film for him.
Goes to show how important editing for a movie can be; the difference between a flop and a success.
I really want to thank you for linking to this article - a fascinating story, straight from the horse's mouth, that really speaks to the power and precision of film editing. I've touched on it before in the Marcia Lucas scenes, but it's hard to illustrate effectively unless you have a real example, which
At Long Last Love provides.