DarenDoc’s Slightly Nifty Musings Inc.

I’m sure most of you have seen the re-dubbed parodies of these original PSAs from the 80s…   I thought it would be a good time to look back, and maybe learn an important lesson.

A year or so after doing the first KirkKorner, (this was in the very early nineties), Ed Marsh and I decided it was time to do a second episode.  Keeping the spirit of the original, I donned the black turtleneck again, this time exploring the wild expanses of Vazquez Rocks, near Agua Dulce, California.  The site where Kirk Battled the Gorn.  Though this episode didn’t have the same large speech for Kirk, I was able to piece together various lines from Kirk’s recorded log, and this episode actually turned out about twice as long as the other… and far more surreal…. look for a local lizard standing in for the gorn…

Fresh off the summer high of 1977, which introduced me to Star Wars for the first time, the second part of the psychic 1-2 punch came in November when Columbia Pictures released “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”  It filled me with wonder, and the aliens scared the heck out of me.  Here’s the relation between fear and interest that I’ve mentioned before… it was another major contributor to my interest in movies and filmmaking.  Along the years that I’ve watched it, I noticed several familiar faces in the film that aren’t widely known…  When Neary and Gillian are stopped by the roadblock, and the men in environment suits capture them… the one that goes in for the “dead” birds out of the front seat of the car looks like none other than Spielberg’s buddy, George Lucas.  Lucas was on set in Alabama at times… you can see him hanging with Steven in several on set photographs that I’ve seen before.  It’s only natural that Steven would have asked him to be an extra in the movie.  I’ve never heard a confirmation that this is in face Lucas in the film… but it sure looks like him.  Also, I noticed in a screening of it last night in Santa Monica, that I recognize writer/director Willard Huyck, (American Graffiti, uncredited polish on Star Wars, and of course Howard the Duck) who was a close friend to Spielberg and Lucas.

Another face in the crowd in the end sequence is former Project Blue Book head Debunker turned researcher J. Allen Hynek, who coined the term “Close Encounters”… A small personal note, I got to meet Hynek several times when my dad was involved with producing a show on UFO research in the early 80s.  Hynek passed away about 20 years ago, but he’s immortalized in the film, with his trademark pipe and inquisitive gaze.

Everyone knows about Artoo's Cameo hanging upside down on the MotherShip

This sure looks like George Lucas to me...

Also in the gallery of guest stars, Writer/Director Willard Huyck?

Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, Director of the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston Illinois, and originator of the phrase "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

A Bob Baker Marionette in originally a lighting test shot by Doug Trumbull... it was so effective, it was cut into the picture.

Creepy, mysterious, other worldly. This puppet, nicknamed "puck", was shot after principal photography was done. The film was undercranked to make the slow moving mechanics seem normal speed.

My buddy, and geek brother, Doug Drexler put up a nice shot of the Original Series Enterprise that he and Hutzel’s team would have used had they gotten the TOS: Remastered gig…

So, naturally, not one to sit idly by and remain quiet… put forth this image that I had on my “Trek Enhanced” Site for a while…  click for bigness.