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Site created 12/15/97.
page created: 5/3/00
From Trekkies to Six Days in Roswell
An Interview with Filmmaker Roger Nygard
 Rich Kronfeld and friend from Six Days in Roswell |
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A few weeks ago, I happened to be looking over a flyer for the Newport Beach Film Festival with some friends, trying to decide which inde flicks we wanted to see. As we flipped through the pages, we came across a listing that immediately intrigued us, for a film called Six Days in Roswell. The listing featured the photograph you see above, along with the following description of the film: "SIX DAYS IN ROSWELL documents the hilarious pilgrimage of UFO enthusiast Richard Kronfeld to Roswell, New Mexico for the 50th Anniversary of the infamous (and alleged) Roswell UFO crash. Leaving Minneapolis for the first time in his life, Kronfeld undertakes his journey obsessed with finding answers - even hoping to pick up tips on how to be abducted!" Now, those clues should have been enough. Certainly, they were enough to convince all of us that this was clearly a film that demanded our attention. Amid the usual plethora of snooty-tooty, high-brow, film festival shorts (and don't get me wrong - we love those too), here was a film that stood out as different. But what I mean to say, is that the clues in hand should have been enough to make the connection. Call me dense. |
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Trekkies is laugh-out-loud funny, revealing to the outside world exactly what happens at those mysterious and strange Star Trek conventions. It follows a handful of fans as they get into costume for the big show, and talk about why they love Star Trek so much. You'll see the real Trek-themed dentist's office (Star Base Dental) and the woman who went to jury duty on the Whitewater case in Starfleet uniform ("The Commander"). Trekkies is also narrated by actress Denise Crosby (from Star Trek: The Next Generation), and includes interviews with practically the entire cast of the original show, along with cast members from the follow-up series as well. But one of the funniest things about Trekkies, is a guy named Richard Kronfeld. Rich builds props from the show. Not the typical props mind you - you'll find no phasers and tricorders here. No… Rich builds stuff like the electronic wheelchair that Captain Pike rode around in. And yes… Rich does ride around in it, frightening and mystifying all those around him. Rich stood out so much in Trekkies, in fact, that he's the star of Six Days in Roswell. |
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| Bill
Hunt (The Digital Bits): So how did you find yourself
getting involved in filmmaking? Roger Nygard: Well, I've been making films since I was seven, when I found my Dad's 8mm camera sitting around. There was a half a roll of film left on it, so I shot it. And when he got it developed, I heard ,"Who wasted my film?!" (laughs) It was all out of focus birds and trees and stuff. So that was the beginning. And I've been making videos all though college - that's all I've ever wanted to do. Bill Hunt: You went to the University of Minnesota? Roger Nygard: (nods) University of Minnesota, and I graduated with a degree in Speech Communications, which as you know is the closest thing they had to filmmaking. Bill Hunt: Yeah… I went to Wisconsin for that exact reason. Roger Nygard: I'm glad I didn't study filmmaking per se, because I think it's more important for a filmmaker to learn a broad perspective about the world, as opposed to learning how to load a camera. I mean - you hire people to load the camera for you. Bill Hunt: It's funny that you mention that, because I know lots of people here in L.A. who have expensive film degrees, but they end up sort of stamped out of the cookie cutter - working on sitcoms or something. Film school isn't always like they expect it's going to be. Roger Nygard: Exactly. I always tell people to study literature. If I had it to do over again, I'd study literature. Because you need to know how to tell a story more than you need to know how to light a scene. More than anything else, you need to know how to write in good English and to communicate. Speech Com is pretty good, because you have to learn how to manage and deal with people - persuasion and interpersonal relationships and group dynamics - all of which is extremely important when you're trying to manage a team of people to make a movie. Bill Hunt: And a lot of people don't think about that aspect of it. You might know everything there is to know about the films of Orson Wells, but if you can't work well with others, you'll make a lousy filmmaker. Roger Nygard: (nods) You have to get people to understand your vision. They have to understand it so well, that they can help you to make it happen. That's the most important thing really. But there are a lot of movies that have been made where people didn't respect the director, and that means you'll probably make a bad film. Or an over-budget film. It all comes from the top when you're making a movie. The director really has to set the tone. Bill Hunt: Let's talk about Trekkies. A lot of it takes place here in L.A., but some of it was shot in Minneapolis - is that right? Roger Nygard: Yeah, we shot at two conventions in Minneapolis, and also at the Klingon Language Camp - the school where people learn to speak Klingon - which is in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. And we also shot in Iowa, as well as here in Los Angeles. Timothy B. Johnson was my second unit director on Trekkies - he directed Six Days in Roswell. He lives in Minnesota. He shot the Rich Kronfeld scenes and all the Minnesota stuff. So I would send him these assignments to go shoot footage in his area. And he went out and bought a wind-up camera - a Krasnagorsk - a Russian-made, standard 16mm camera. They cost like $500. You wind it up and you have like twenty seconds to shoot (laughs). So all these clips and sound bytes had to be twenty seconds or under. And he just did wild sync sound with a DAT machine, and I had to sync it all up by hand in the editing room later. Bill Hunt: Where did the idea for Trekkies come from? Roger Nygard: It was actually Denise Crosby who had the idea. She had wanted to do it for years. She starred in my first film in 1991, which was called High Strung - a one-room comedy starring a comedian named Steve Oedekerk, who also wrote it. And Denise played his evil boss. She was great, and we became friends and stayed in touch. She'd been doing Star Trek conventions, and had seen the sorts of interesting people who are out there in the Star Trek world. And she always thought that someone should do a documentary about it. And about five years later, we started shooting. That was in 1996. So almost just to shut her up (laughs), I went ahead and shot some footage with her. And the footage was so great that we never stopped, until a year later… we had the film done. The people were just so great - they were hilarious, they were funny, they were interesting and unusual. They're just great people. Bill Hunt: They're largely misunderstood too, wouldn't you say? Roger Nygard: Well, just like… I remember growing up in high school, the intelligent "geeks" always were sort of the outcasts. But they're the ones who have the last laugh - who are starting all the dot-coms, you know? So things seem to have a reversal in life. The misunderstood misfits tend to become the power brokers of the future. Bill Hunt: Well, look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs… Roger Nygard: (nods) Gates is a Trekkie. One of the stories goes that he wore his Spock ears to a board meeting at Microsoft once. Bill Hunt: (laughs) So because of Denise's involvement, you were able to get that much more leverage with Paramount, and get some of the other cast members to participate in Trekkies… Roger Nygard: Yeah, because of Denise's involvement, we were seen as "one of them" by the other actors. She was asking them - she would approach the other actors at conventions and say, "May we interview you?" And they would always say yes, whenever we found them in our ambush style. Going through an agent or a manager, we would never get anywhere - it was fruitless. But when Denise called them personally, we'd end up going to their homes. People like Brent Spiner and John de Lancie - Denise has a personal relationship with them. But most of them, we got because we just ran into them at conventions. Shatner was the hardest, and he was also the most impossible to capture. Bill Hunt: But as I recall, you did finally get him… Roger Nygard: He agreed to be on film, but he wouldn't sit down to give us an interview. He just wants to be paid for whatever he does. And his fee is $50,000 per appearance or whatever you want him for. That's his minimum fee. Bill Hunt: Wow - no wonder there's so much bad blood between him and the rest of the original cast. Roger Nygard: Nimoy, on the other hand, was the greatest. He was the most gracious, insightful - just the nicest guy. He welcomed us into his office, and let us ask as many questions as we wanted. He answered every question. He was just great. Bill Hunt: Nimoy was the one who had the John Wayne story in the film, is that right? Roger Nygard: Yeah - he had so many stories. Bill Hunt: People don't realize that he was an accomplished actor long before Star Trek came along. He was in Mission Impossible and lots of films. Roger Nygard: Oh, yeah. I loved Mission Impossible when I was a kid. DeForest Kelley was also very nice. Just a gentlemen. It was a pleasure to have had the opportunity to spend time chatting with him. Bill Hunt: Now what kind of resources did you have to make the film with? Roger Nygard: We paid as we went along. Our producer put up a lot of the money. Denise and I put money in as well. By the time it was over, it cost us $120,000 in hard cash. Once we sold the film, and we paid off all our bills and deferments, the final budget was about $375,000. Roswell was about the same… maybe about $10,000 more because that included a 35mm film blow-up. Trekkies did not. We didn't blow that up until Paramount paid for the blow-up. Bill Hunt: One of the highlights of Trekkies is a fellow by the name of Richard Kronfeld. Whenever I've talked with people, he's the guy who always stands out in their minds. Where did you find him? Roger Nygard: Rich Kronfeld, like myself, grew up in Minnesota. He's been part of the circle of people there doing theater and commercial work - performing. But he's also a Star Trek geek, and he's the first to admit it. You could name of an episode of the original series, and he'd give you a line of dialogue from it. And vise versa. So I'd known Rich for several years. And when I was shooting Trekkies, Rich happened to be in Los Angeles, and so I called him up, along with everybody else I knew, 'cause we needed free labor. And I asked him if he wanted to help out on the shoot, and he said sure. Because, being a Trekkie - almost our whole crew was willing to work for free just so they could meet the cast members when were interviewing them. Bill Hunt: (laughing) That's funny. Roger Nygard: (smiling) So Rich helped out on the very first shoot, the weekend we shot at a convention called Fantasticon at the LAX Hilton, back in August of 1996. Rich was a production assistant on the shoot, helping to get releases signed, getting people for us to interview - whatever needed to be done. About eight months later, I was talking to Rich on the phone back in Minneapolis, telling him how the shooting was going, and he said, "You know what - I made this Captain Pike's chair a few years ago…" (we're both laughing at this point) And I said, "What do you mean you have a Captain Pike's chair?!" He said, "Yeah, I made one." "Well why did you tell me this before?!" It's like going to the doctor, and after the examination, saying, "Oh by the way, I vomited blood this morning. Is that important?" Yes - it's important! So we quickly whipped together a shoot. One of the last things we shot was Rich Kronfeld in his Captain Pike's chair. It just barely made it into the movie. |
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 Rich Kronfeld and his Captain Pike wheelchair |
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Bill Hunt: How ironic that the funniest part of the movie almost didn't happen. Roger Nygard: It is funny. Well then Rich mentioned that he was thinking of going down to Roswell, New Mexico, for this big 50th Anniversary that was coming up, of the alleged crash of an alien spaceship. So Tim suggested to me that we should go down there and shoot some footage - he figured there would be a lot of Star Trek fans, and we could get some more footage for Trekkies. And the more I thought about it, I started to realize that there's a whole other movie in itself here - Rich and his pilgrimage down to Roswell. Which is what we decided to do. Bill Hunt: Now the whole Roswell thing was a week-long event, so did you just follow Rich around for a week to see what happened? Roger Nygard: Yeah. There were events going on all six days, and we just tried to cover as much as we could. There was media there from all over the world - tons of people… Bill Hunt: Along with everyone in the world who's into flying saucers… Roger Nygard: Absolutely - all the experts too. We filmed everything we could, but we missed a lot of stuff, because you just couldn't be everywhere at once. So I cut together the footage we had, while I was working on another film called Suckers, and about nine months later I had a finished cut. And that time frame meant that in about three more months, there was going to be another week-long event in Roswell, because it's a yearly thing. So we decided to go back, and shoot everything we missed - try to get some of the experts we missed the first time - and finish the movie. And we did. We shot two years in a row. And the best part of that, is that there was something new happening when we went back: Roswell: The Musical. And that alone was enough to interest us. Bill Hunt: It was definitely priceless… (we're both laughing again) Roger Nygard: There was nothing that could top it. So we put it toward the end of the movie. Bill Hunt: Well, Roswell the city is really interesting, because the whole place has developed a sort of cottage industry around this crash, that no one can really prove happened. But everyone and their dog there has a personal story has a story about - how their grandfather's best friend met someone who saw an alien body or something. And all these experts and UFO researchers are looking into this supposed event, and since people are trying to make money on it, there's no way anyone is ever going to know for sure what really happened. Roger Nygard: The good news is also the bad news. The good news is that the event is finally getting all this attention, and the bad news is that it's all the kooks who are flocking there. But that's what makes it interesting to me. Human beings are kooky and weird. It's classic Americana. It's what we're all about. Like Rich says in the movie, every third off-ramp on the freeway has some kind of goofy museum. No matter where you stopped on the trip, there'd be a Mustard Museum or a Horse Museum… Bill Hunt: Or stuff like the World's Biggest Ball of Twine. Roger Nygard: (laughing) Exactly. The Outhouse Museum or something. And in Roswell, there's a UFO Museum that gets more visitors yearly than many highly-funded traditional museums. They're the third most visited museum in New Mexico. And that tells you something about people, I think. Bill Hunt: It's interesting the way people here in America - and everywhere I suppose - sort of buy into stuff, no matter how off-center it may seem on the surface. The UFO phenomenon is particularly interesting in that way, because there's just no evidence at all for any of it, but people still flock to the subject. Roger Nygard: People want to believe. Bill Hunt: Sure. And it's fascinating to see these self-proclaimed experts on UFOs, some of which you interviewed in the movie. Every one of them has a different theory on what happened, and none of them jive, so they end up endlessly bickering back and forth refuting each other - "There were two crash sites, not just one! And there weren't five alien bodies, there were seven!" And they make a pretty good living writing books and lecturing about it all. Roger Nygard: (laughing) Believe me, there are factions within factions. It's definitely become a meal ticket for them. And who can blame them? But people definitely want to believe them. And I say, buyer beware. You shouldn't always believe everything you hear or see or are told on faith, just because you want to. Human beings have agendas. Always be skeptical. Bill Hunt: Wasn't there some poll recently that like 60% of Americas believe we're not alone in the Universe, and some 40% of them believe aliens are visiting us right now? Roger Nygard: And aliens may very well really be here. But in the absence of proof - for me at least - I'd love to believe it. But I need more. Bill Hunt: That gets me to the subject of the name of your production company - I'm guessing it stems from that skepticism? Roger Nygard: Benevolent Authority? (laughs) Yeah.. it's kind of my response to Big Brother. There never has been a benevolent authority has there? The term is an oxymoron. Bill Hunt: So tell me what kind of success you've had with Trekkies and Six Days in Roswell on the independent film circuit. Roger Nygard: Well, these days, to sell your inde film, you have to get noticed. You have to get reviews. That's what distributors look at. And a lot of times, that's not even enough. What they really want are big names, because nobody trusts their gut instincts and they figure that if you have a big name, they have a way to sell it. With a documentary film, unless your documentary is about Madonna, you don't have that. So you have to do the film festivals. That's what we did with Trekkies. Audiences loved it. But it still took us six months of screenings at all the studios before someone made a distribution offer. Which oddly didn't come from Paramount. They hadn't even seen the film yet - they couldn't be bothered. They finally took a look at it when we had a competing offer, and they put in their counter offer. I think they realized that they had to win, because it would look silly if some other studio was marketing this documentary about their own franchise. For Six Days in Roswell, we're sort of following the same path. I have a foreign sales company that's just starting to work with us. And as you know, I'm in the process of trying to find domestic distribution. We've got some people interested. There's even one company that wants to do a limited theatrical release. I'm not sure I want to do that though, because the expenses required to make and distribute prints to theaters could eat up any royalties we might make on video. Six Days in Roswell is definitely a title that should live on video and DVD. |
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 The poster for Six Days in Roswell |
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Bill Hunt: Yeah, I'd agree that that's where your real audience is. It's got the potential to become a great cult flick, and that's definitely where it will thrive. So how is Trekkies selling on DVD? Do you have any information from Paramount on that? Roger Nygard: Quite well for a documentary. They released it on home video, at a rental price, and on DVD last November. And it's going to a sell-through price on video in July. That will be the true test. But it sold a lot of cassettes already at the rental price. And a lot of DVDs, which is already sell-through. As far as notices, on our website we've got all the reviews for the films. The Hollywood Reporter loved Trekkies, and Roswell is getting great write-ups too. Audiences seem to really enjoy it. Bill Hunt: Well, I can vouch for that. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. The whole crowd I saw it with was rolling in the isles. My wife and friends too - they had a blast. I think Six Days in Roswell might actually have a bigger audience that Trekkies , because everyone seems to have a little interest in the UFO subject. When you talk to people about it, you're always hearing them say, "You know, my Dad saw a UFO once," or something like that. The whole idea of outer space and alien life seems to grab at the imagination - like when NASA landed that little rover on Mars, and something like 3 million people a day were visiting their website to see the pictures. Roger Nygard: And the conspiracy theory people are on top of stuff like that too. Bill Hunt: Sure - which the whole alien thing feeds into. People have that healthy distrust of government in this country, and the word "Roswell" just gets them going. Look at the popularity of The X-Files. It's a perfect example. There are a lot of people who are just sure that the government has a flying saucer hidden in some secret hanger somewhere. Roger Nygard: Or seven of them - that's what one of the researchers we interviewed claimed. But the guy wasn't sure if they were all alien, or if the Air Force had built a few on their own based on the captured technology. Bill Hunt: The beauty is that if it is true, it's a self-keeping secret. Anyone who talks is going to look like a kook. Roger Nygard: And there's no doubt, some of them are kooks. There are some bad apples that are ruining it for the rest of them. Bill Hunt: And that scares off the serious scientists. Even the people who say that UFOs are bogus, but who just want to search for radio signals from intelligent life in space - they get egg on their face because of the kooks. The NASA SETI program got sacked for that reason. Some congressman complained about tax dollars being spent on looking for "little green men" and that was that. Roger Nygard: You know my brother does that - he downloaded that program where your computer can search for radio signals. Seti@Home. Bill Hunt: Speaking of that greater level of interest we were talking about, Seti@Home is the largest computing project in the world right now, because so many people are downloading that program. There's like hundreds of thousands of people involved. Changing the subject a bit, what's next for you? You've done Trekkies, you've done Six Days in Roswell… Roger Nygard: Well, Suckers is currently playing on Cinemax and it will be on home video later in the year. I'm writing a script now and I've been pitching some TV series ideas. I spent the last year going to film festivals with Roswell, so I haven't decided exactly what's next. Bill Hunt: Any plans to follow up on Trekkies or Roswell... make it a Kitchey Americana Trilogy? Roger Nygard: The White Trash Trilogy? I say that, by the way, being one of them myself. (laughs) Well, Trekkies II is very likely something we'll start doing later in the year. As far as the next, I don't know what would be the right next topic. They sort of flow from one to the next. Anything with Rich Kronfeld. Bill Hunt: Maybe send him in search of Elvis? Roger Nygard: Sure. Or Sasquatch. (laughing) Bill Hunt: Yeah, I could see Rich out on the side of a mountain looking for Bigfoot, wearing that furry cap with the floppy ears… Roger Nygard: He's kind of the Inspector Clouseau of researchers, but he gets the job done. Bill Hunt: He's a character all right. I really enjoyed Trekkies, but when he appeared and went to that Radio Shack, man - I just lost it. The whole bit with the blinking light on the Captain Pike's chair - oh, man… Roger Nygard: One for yes and two for no. You'd think in the future they'd have a little better system than that. Bill Hunt: What was even funnier was that in Six Days in Roswell, the motor in the chair didn't work anymore, so it had to be towed in the parade - funny! You know, before I forget, there's one other thing I wanted to ask you about, which is how did the Trekkies themselves react to Trekkies? Because as an audience member, you're definitely laughing at these people. But as something of a Star Trek fan myself, I couldn't help thinking that even as you're laughing AT them, you're laughing WITH them just as much. It's almost reverent in some ways. Sort of like people collectively saying, "Boy… aren't we something. We are funny, but we get the joke too." |
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 Rich Kronfeld's Star Trek float in the Raspberry Festival Grande Days parade in Hopkins, Minnesota |
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Roger Nygard: Well, some people have seen the film as mocking. But most see it as good natured fun. It's like a Rorschach test. People project their own viewpoint on the film. If you see these people as freaks, you're going to go away with that. But if you're open minded, you'll come away with a new understanding of these fans. That's why there's no commentary or narration - we wanted these people to represent themselves with their own words. You decide. But we did do a screening of the film, before it was finished, for a group of diehard Trekkies - or Trekkers - and they laughed twice and three times as hard as the average, non-Trek-fan audience. It was the only screening I was really nervous about. But they got all the in jokes, they recognized all the people. They laughed at themselves as much as anyone. They've got a great sense of humor about themselves. And I found this to be a pretty interesting psychological effect - no matter how extreme a fan they were, when they came out of the film, they said, "Those people are nuts… but I'm not THAT bad." (laughs) It's like there's a line, and you can never get too far across it. And the way I look at it, why is anything too far? Bill Hunt: Well… whatever makes people happy. That's what makes life interesting. Roger Nygard: But there are some Star Trek fans who were very disappointed with the film, so you can't please everyone. Just the fact that we called it Trekkies and not Trekkers pissed off a lot of people. Bill Hunt: (laughing hard now) Really? Roger Nygard: Yeah. You know, there are some very vociferous Trek fans who think that Trekkers is the only right term, and they want to separate themselves from the Trekkies… Bill Hunt: Who are seen as more extreme... Roger Nygard: Right. And by definition you're making yourself MORE extreme by saying, "Their label is wrong, and they're too extreme!" People are nothing if not fascinating. Bill Hunt: So one last question - can you still get tickets for Roswell: The Musical? Roger Nygard: (laughs) It's bigger and better every year. They've even got their own website. It's moved to an outdoor theater this year, and I think they've got an orchestra. I would highly, highly recommend it if you're looking for something to do over the July 4th weekend. Go to Roswell, New Mexico and see the musical. Bill Hunt: Just be sure to make your hotel reservations in advance, right? Roger Nygard: (laughs) Yeah. ---end--- |
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 Roswell, New Mexico - it's a great place to crash! |
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All of us here at The Digital Bits would like to thank Roger for taking the time to chat with us. As we mentioned, Trekkies is now available on VHS and DVD. You can also visit the official Trekkies website online. Six Days in Roswell is currently playing only on the film festival circuit, but if you can find a showing, don't miss it! We're working to help Roger arrange domestic home video distribution for the film, including a special edition release on DVD, and there may be good news to report soon, so stay tuned to The Digital Bits for the latest. In the meantime, you can also visit the official Six Days in Roswell website, where you'll find photos, reviews and clips from the film. And you can contact Roger Nygard via e-mail at: roswell6@aol.com Tell him the Bits sent you! As always, I welcome your comments. Bill Hunt, Editor The Digital Bits billhunt@thedigitalbits.com |
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