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| Adrian Martin |
Editor’s Note: On Adrian Martin’s Facebook
page he often reports on Last Night’s Dream. Many of these are cinematic
and cinephiliac in their content, to say nothing of some little drollery. But this
one was something special…
Adrian writes: Last Night's Dream was an
elaborate one starring Brad Stevens & Monte Hellman! On the eve of Brad [this bit is happening in reality]
presenting in Croatia, for the Film
Mutations Film Festival, a retrospective of Monte's film work, Monte
decides to hire Brad as a special, personal assistant.
It so happens that Monte has an entire, unused fleet of buses
that he keeps idle in his large backyard. Brad's job is to test-drive each
vehicle, one by one, over and over, to make sure they are still in working
order. Brad takes to this task with such boyish enthusiasm and precision that Richard Linklater considers
making a charmingly lo-fi digital documentary about it ...
But that's not all. In Croatia, Brad has some big news for
Monte: in the dusty archives of the British Film Institute, Brad has uncovered
a whole season of STAR TREK from 1969 that was never broadcast. And every
episode is written and directed by Monte! It came about when Gene Roddenberry,
in a spot of legal trouble, briefly sold the rights to the TREK franchise to a
very young Paulo Branco (19 years old at the time), who then made a series as a
Spanish-French-Russian-Portuguese co-production.
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| The young Paulo Branco |
Brad has even found multiple 16mm prints of certain episodes
dubbed into all these different languages for various markets. In Croatia, Brad
interviews Monte at length about this amazing find, and SIGHT AND SOUND devotes
a 6-page feature to it (5 pages are Brad's introduction), with a digitally
mocked-up photo on the issue's cover of Monte circa '69 with his arms around a
green-coloured Spock.
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| Brad Stevens |
The interview begins:
BRAD: Let's work through the episodes. Ep 1 is called THE
RETURN - the Trek crew returns to earth because of certain group-psychological
problems.
MONTE: I'm sorry, I don't remember this at all.
BRAD: It's a masterpiece, I can assure of that, Monte.
Episode 2 is THE VACATION - the Trek members go on therapeutic holidays, but
they do so as a group, thereby maintaining all the simmering tensions you have
so far set up ...
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| Monte Hellman |
MONTE: I have no recollection of this whatsoever. Maybe it's
Monty Bellman, people are getting our credits confused all the time on IMDb,
it's really annoying. A nice guy, that Monty, but stupid. Couldn't direct his
way out of a paper bag. Maybe that's why the series was never broadcast ... Are
you sure it's my name on the credits, Brad? I know you have problems with your
hearing. [Monte yells:] Is your eyesight going, too?
BRAD: No need to shout, Monte. The credits are clear.
Remember, I'm the researcher who discovered, in a vault in the former
Yugoslavia, a version of ROAD TO NOWHERE re-edited chronologically, which made
perfect narrative sense ...
MONTE: I had nothing to do with that travesty of a version.
Burn it! It was that Paulo Branco guy who did that cut ...
BRAD: Whatevs. The archival evidence doesn't lie. The
re-cut of ROAD even contains full versions of scenes that appear, fleetingly
only in the trailer ...
MONTE: I don't care. Burn it, man. I'm paying you to drive
my buses, remember.
BRAD: Back to START TREK. Episode 3: THE APPEAL. Kirk is
brought to trial on sexual harassment charges. An incredibly prophetic episode,
in the light of current events ...
MONTE: I don't remember any of this. Really.
BRAD: It, too, is a masterpiece, as are all the episodes of
this extraordinary season. Moving right along to the next episode ...
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