Dropping Names ...and other things

When Terry Matalas first walked into Alex Kurtzman's company, the show about bringing Jean Luc Picard back was already spoken for, and he was politely told to go away, kid. He ended up running Star Trek Picard season three anyway, and on Dropping Names he tells Brent and Jonny how it came together in about eight weeks, why the character we know as Data was very nearly called Datum until somebody worked out that data is already plural, and what Brent said to him on the phone that changed his mind. Jonathan Frakes remembers being asked if he was ready for a lot more Riker and answering that he would need to lose thirty pounds first. Terry also explains the last shot of the poker game, where he asked the cast to stop acting and simply deal, ran the cameras and let the credits roll over the real thing. Mary Howard, the producer who hired him as a production assistant and became his first boss, sat in the room for part of this one, which makes his stories about Rick Berman, firing shoes with tassels and the last Star Trek that ever came in on budget land even harder.There is a lot more here than the Enterprise D, though Brent has plenty to say about how much smaller it felt the second time around and about hitting Patrick Stewart with a car. Terry talks about running 12 Monkeys for four seasons on Syfy after writing a time travel spec called Splinter, meeting Aaron Stanford and most of his crew on Nikita, working on Terra Nova and MacGyver with Henry Winkler giving notes in the edit bay, and the day Brannon Braga's assistant job put him at a sushi lunch where Ron Moore pitched the entire Battlestar Galactica reboot to him before anyone had made it. He is currently finishing the Marvel series Vision Quest with Paul Bettany, James Spader, Todd Stashwick and Orla Brady, and he refuses to name the one actor in it he is most excited about. Also covered: Christopher Lloyd shaving his own eyebrows on day one, the life sized Darth Vader that would not fit in the basement, the DeLorean time machine parts in Terry's garage, and Brent's very short career in the Star Wars radio drama.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Leonard Maltin once walked Red Buttons over to say hello to Paramount's goodwill ambassador AC Lyles at Spago, and Red looked up and asked if he hadn't just been wondering whether AC was still alive. That is the register of this whole conversation, which finds Leonard and his daughter and podcast partner Jessie Maltin on Dropping Names with Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes, trading stories that only a man who reviewed films on Entertainment Tonight for thirty years and put his name on Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide could actually have. The centrepiece is the night Sammy Davis Jr. invited the Maltins up to Tower Road after a charity dinner, the gate swung open, a man at the door told them to let themselves in, and Leonard spent hours alone in Sammy's den studying the autographed photos, the Pac Man machine and the hole cut for the projection booth while the house stayed empty until nearly midnight.There is also Katharine Hepburn in her Turtle Bay brownstone, talking freely about twenty seven years of never being seen in public with Spencer Tracy while an NBC publicist fumed off camera because nobody was discussing the television movie. Leonard describes being thirteen and finding Buster Keaton reading a newspaper in the back of a car near the Brooklyn Bridge on the Samuel Beckett shoot, getting a still signed and learning it was from Parlor Bedroom and Bath. He explains the strange on again off again decades with Burt Reynolds, who was convinced the bad reviews of Stroker Ace and Cannonball Run were personal, and Jessie remembers Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman shouting at Clint Eastwood through a junket door because he would not stop talking. Dale Evans came to Jessie's bat mitzvah in a wheelchair, Gloria Stuart came too, Fayard Nicholas taught her to dance, and the two of them close by talking about their new book, Family Movie Night, the first one credited to Maltin and Maltin.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wil Wheaton joins Brent Spiner and Jonny Frakes on Dropping Names and starts with the movie everyone knows him for, Stand By Me, then keeps going to the part nobody talks about. He explains how a memo from David Gerrold about the kid from Stand By Me is the reason Wesley Crusher exists at all, and how narrating the Stephen King novella The Body four decades later triggered a full five senses flashback to the day they shot the Gordie and Chris scene, right down to River Phoenix in his eyeline and the boom operator in powder blue corduroy shorts. He also talks about the touring anniversary screenings with Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman, losing Rob Reiner, and standing in a tiny green room at the Oscars trying not to fall apart while telling Meg Ryan what Joe Versus the Volcano and When Harry Met Sally meant to him.There is a lot more here than Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wil tells the story of meeting his hero Henry Rollins, recognising the Black Flag tattoo on the back of his neck, and then failing to get out of a locked recording studio door. He talks about the Family Ties job he lost to Star Trek, the director on The Buddy System who moved him around by the elbow while Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss looked after him, and the on set teacher Marion Fife who asked him what he wanted to do with his life when nobody else would. There is LeVar Burton blessing the podcast It's Story Time with Wil Wheaton, Ready Player One possibly being the best selling audiobook ever recorded, celebrity Jeopardy against Ike Barinholtz and Patton Oswalt, a public apology to Ken Jennings, his son Ryan growing wheat in the desert, and the line about Jonathan Frakes used to be cool that has followed Jonny around for thirty five years.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.