 Trekkies (1997) Granted, these rose-colored glasses are usually obliterated once you stop reading Janice814's lusty Ric Ocasek fan fiction and meet her in person, and your slight interest or amusement more often than not melt away to a cream-filled center of sheer terror. But maybe it's all about some sort of subverted superiority complex, where you don't start feeling so bad about your action figure collection. "Remember, geeks more often than not don't tend to think of themselves as 'geeks'," once warned a young Kimberly Fields on a vintage "One to Grow On". Trekkies follows a small, specific handful of devout fans, punctuating the proceedings with interviews of people who worked on the shows, as they give a sincere-to-the-point-of-awkwardness walkthrough testimonial of how the Star Trek franchise affects their lives, to different degrees for each case. We go from Gabriel Koerner, a precocious high school geek who it turns out is quite a digital FX whiz working on his own sci-fi movie, to Denis Bourguignon, a Floridian dentist (as opposed to a Fluoridian dentist? Heh heh hey, ouch!, stop hitting me, you bastard!) who has remodeled his offices in full ST shrineage. Ultimately, these folks appear to gravitate towards normalcy as you're introduced to the infamous Whitewater juror who showed up to trial in her ST uniform, to the transgender who claims to be Captain Kirk as a woman, but for all practical purposes just seemed to be a trangender who likes Star Trek. Don't forget about the couple who dress their pets up in ST uniforms and the man of the house who had considered plastic surgery to "vulcanize" his ears. We're only allowed small glimpes (that's good, I think) of the "fringe" elements of fandom, including the legendary gay Kirk/Spock story subculture, and fans sending Denise Crosby many a nude still-life of her character with Data. So after a while, it's all relative, and you ALMOST begin to both sympathize with and/or rationalize some of the more harmless aspects of the culture. Meanwhile, earlier in the day, I had stopped on the way to the Loud Bassoon offices to see if a local K-Mart had gotten in an exclusive Mick Foley action pack, so I can no longer point at, judge, or laugh at others like back in the day. *sigh* I've been told by passive Star Trek-fan friends that trailers and snippets of Trekkies were screened at many a ST convention throughout its production, which makes complete sense, seeing that it was necessary for Trekkies narrator/interviewer Denise Crosby (the one-time "Next Generation" cast member Tasha Yar) to work within and cozy up to the world of the Trekkie, not to come off against it. Purportedly, Denise still regularly works the sci-fi convention circuit, so Trekkies' objective view, hinging on the nuturing of it's subject is unsurprising. "Oh, she ain't crapping in her drinking water," said fellow staffer ICE as we walked out of the theater. Or even if he didn't say that, he's getting quoted as such, since it's such a pleasing sentence to read. This "just the facts, ma'am" approach is seemingly the best way to attack a documentary such as this, as there's nothing particularly difficult nor congratulatory about blatantly making fun of sci-fi fans. Add to the fact that the movie, even at a short 86 minutes, is stretched out a scad overlong. Admittedly, there's probably a small part of me that would like to see the eventual Trekkies DVD contain an audio narrative track by Insane Clown Posse, but the movie is already awkward enough. Besides, ICP will probably make a similiar cash-in about their "juggalo" fans one day – an actualy recent local news story in where a fan says he likes ICP because "They're a bunch of insane clowns, and they've got a posse" should blast off that show. Hmm, hate to admit it, but at least he's kickin' it real.
Review by AAA |