Saturday 19th July 2008: ‘Star Trek…
…The Musical’ - now that was a bloody good laugh.
In the autumn of 2006, I ended up penning and performing a comic musical tribute to the original Star Trek series on the occasion of its 40th birthday. (Don’t ask.)
I dressed up in a very silly amalgam of Kirk’s, Spock’s, Scotty’s and McCoy’s costumes (stethoscope, kilt, plastic ears - the works) and spent a happy fortnight terrorising the South Bank and Covent Garden with a handful of songs and nutty sketches.
The SciFi Channel then filmed a few of the performances, edited them and uploaded them onto the internet. Several people from around the world emailed me with their (generally, positive!) responses to ‘Star Trek, The Musical’ and I replied to them all.
With one person, though, an ongoing correspondence developed when the other email exchanges faded away. A guy called Neil Doshi, who told me he was a PhD student in a place called Ann Arbor in the U.S., visited www.matthewjure.net and listened to a few of my songs, expecting to hear more STTM-type silliness. When he realised that most of my songs were of the non-comical variety, he emailed me to say how much he’d enjoyed listening to them, despite the fact he’d been surprised by their style.
I thanked Neil for the compliment and asked him what he was doing his PhD in - I was partly curious because, for the past couple of years, I’d been thinking about starting one myself. He replied, explaining he was focussing on the use of Brecht’s ideas about socialist theatre in Indian street performance. We then had an extended email conversation about Theatre Studies (my favourite subject at school) and performance in general. At one point, he told me that he was originally from San Francisco and only intended to be in Ann Arbor for a few more months, while he completed his thesis.
Fast forward about two years and I’m in Detroit shooting ‘Starlight and Superfish’. As I’m about to send out my first mailshot about Rex’s blog, I hear some of the ‘Starlight’ cast and crew talking about Ann Arbor, which I begin to realise isn’t very far from Detroit. It turns out it’s about a 45-minute drive. “What the hell” I think, “I’ll include Neil in the mailshot, though I’m sure he’s back in San Francisco by now”.
The next day, I get an email from Neil, saying that there’d been a death in his family, he’d postponed the completion of his thesis for some time and was now back in Ann Arbor to finish it - why didn’t I go and meet him for a drink?
So I did! As Hayes dropped me off in the high street, I marvelled again at how unlikely it was that I’d end up shooting a film so close to where my one truly dedicated STTM fan lived…
Neil was a very nice bloke and we had a great chat for about an hour.
But get this:
As we were about to say goodbye, Neil asked me to tell him a bit more about ‘Starlight and Superfish’ so he can look out for it when it comes out. I oblige. He then asks the name of the director. “Steve Kopera”, I tell him. “And it’s written by a guy called Rob Hess.”
Neil blinks at me.
“Does he work at the University of Michigan?”
“Er…yeah”, I reply.
“So do I - PhD students generally teach undergrads, and I teach a few Theatre Studies courses.”
“Oh.”
“Does he work in the Audio-Visual Department?”.
I think for a moment, “Yes…he helps students with equipment and advice for media production assignments”.
Neil blinks again. “I know him”.
Now it’s my turn to blink.
“Eh?”
“Yeah…when my Theatre Studies students need to film their performances we go to Rob for cameras and mikes.”
Bloody f***ing fandangling heck.
Would any mathematically-minded readers please be so kind as to suggest what the probability might be of my having acquired an American fan via the internet and then ending up in a Chinese restaurant two years later being told by said fan that he KNOWS the director of the American movie I’ve been cast in…via the internet.
My head hurts.
In a nice way.
Matthew Jure 19/07/08
Big sky, small world…
http://matthewjure.net
http://thetriumvirate.com/starlight