MGM Kills Trey Stokes' James Bond Fan Film

Way back in the 1970s, a teenaged Trey Stokes (yep, the guy behind Pink Five) made a James Bond fan film, Moonraker '78, that was never completed. A full 25 years later, the movie's "star," Stuart Basinger, used modern computers to finish it, and placed the result on YouTube, where it instantly became a cult hit among 007 fans--so much so that the souped-up Super 8mm movie recently caught MGM's eye....

Get the full story on the fan film blog, fancinematoday.com, at MGM Kills Historic James Bond Fan Film.

Clive

 

Well, quite a surprise to see my name in a thread title this morning...

Just to set the record straight, Moonraker was originally my friend Stuart's idea, he paid for the production and did all the organizing of shoots, etc.

Since he also played the lead and was on screen the whole time, Stuart enlisted me to do the shooting. Which made me the de facto director, and I also did the original 8mm film edit of many of the original scenes and a few other odd jobs (including acting, but the less said about THAT, the better... )

But it was also Stuart who, years later, digitized the original film footage, and did all the work of finishing the project.

So even though he gave me the title of director, Moonraker is much more a "Stuart Basinger" film than a "Trey Stokes" film. I'm not disowning the film, not at all - we did some amazing stuff with the technology and resources that were available at the time.

But I've never thought of Moonraker as my project - Stuart's the one who made it happen, got it completed, and has been its caretaker all these years. I just helped.

 

"Trey: Stuart did it! Sue THAT guy!"



Won't MGM just DIE already? For the love of God, I've never understood the idea of a fanfilm hurting a company.

 

When someone says "Historic" I think dinosaurs and toga's....

As for MGM, this doesn't surprise me. They love sending their lawyers after fan films.

 

Thanks Trey for the compliment.

It is true that I paid for the production and helped organize much of the shoot. However, Trey gets a HUGE applause for implementing many ideas and effects that otherwise would have never happened.

Trey did the initial editing on the clone factory and other action scenes. I did the final editing when I did the re-mastering. When the credits were created in 1992, Trey received the directing credit over the lesser credits of producer and editor.

To this day there is approximately 20 minutes of edited footage that never made it into the final version of MOONRAKER '78. Some of these scenes were of an additional unfinished Q-Branch scene and a unfinished car chase. Also, a fight scene with a very tall henchman and Trey fighting it out in a hallway and a disabled elevator. I chose to cut these scenes due to them slowing down the pace of the final battle and that they tended to be too silly. Perhaps one day I will transfer these scenes into a deleted section of the film.

I have mentioned this to many people in my television editing career and that is if it were not for those who dedicated their time into making MOONRAKER '78, I would have chosen another career. Despite the numerous shows and productions I have worked on, this fan film was the most fun and educational.

Stuart Basinger

 

Now I really want to see it. Darn.

 

Me too. And here's how...


Bittorrent

 

I agree...totally.

I really wanna see this now.

 

In Moonraker '78, is there a 7-foot tall guy with
aluminum foil on is teeth like Richard Kiel?

 

The history on the making of this film can be found at Dr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden.

 

Sorry, but I just find it kind of adorable that the "historical significance of the film" is that it's Trey's directorial debut. Is it on Bittorrent or are there bootleg copies out there so we can rebel against the Institution?

 

Highlight the black box in the post from DK_Force 85

 

Yes, but it's not clear if it's actually on there or just a suggestion of where it might be.

 

If I may be so bold to say that MOONRAKER '78 is not Trey's directorial debut. Trey had made several other films long before we made this epic. However, it is one of two teenage produced films we did together that has been remastered to video from Super 8mm silent film.

The other film is called MacBeth: A Love Story and it was produced for our 12th grade English class months before we began shooting Moonraker. It is also available for viewing on YouTube. You may want to hurry up and catch it before the estate of Shakespeare and Orson Welles force it off the web.

 

I'd be the first to say that I didn't do a very good job of explaining why it's historic. Sure, it's one of Trey's first fan films, but really, I found it "important" for other reasons.

For instance, there's very few fan films from the 1970s online; even fewer of them have the ambitious length and storyline of Moonraker '78; and none that I've come across are Bond-related. Then there's the aspect of how a movie made with the rough-shod technology available to consumers in the Seventies was completed with the gear of the new Millennium--it all adds up to a very unique film.

You can also throw in the odd fact, too, that considering the influence of Bond on Sixties and Seventies culture, there's surprisingly little fan film material out there featuring 007. When you consider that the biggest audience for Bond flicks is typically teenage boys, seeing how a few members of that audience tried to recreate the 007 movie experience offers a unique window into how the character was perceived by--as opposed to presented to--their portion of the audience in that era.

I'll have a small follow-up tidbit on Fancinematoday.com on Thursday, but first there's Wednesday's post, about free screenwriting and pre-production software.

 

LOL, in my 12th grade English class, we weren't allowed to do stuff that creative. I got called to repentance for choosing to do my term paper on All Quiet on the Western Front because my teacher thought it was a sign that I was a Satanist. I can't imagine what she'd have thought if I did a film on Macbeth.