Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Comparative Media Studies Program, thought it was some kind of joke when he got an e-mail message from a Hollywood casting director asking him to be an extra in the latest Star Trek film (which opened last weekend). But a few weeks later he was getting fitted for a Klingon costume, as the professor describes today on his blog.
“I had to do it, even though it meant postponing some significant meetings, ducking out early from academic conferences, and taking a series of red eye flights, not to mention spending several thousand dollars,” Mr. Jenkins wrote. The scholar is a life-long Star Trek fan, but he also pioneered the idea of studying fan culture, so he’s written about Trekkies. He posed for The Chronicle holding a Klingon weapon for a profile story we did in 2007.
Mr. Jenkins said in an e-mail interview that his scene ended up getting cut from the film in the end, but that he is hoping that the scene might be an extra in the DVD release.
Star Trek’s director, J.J. Abrams, also invited another scholar to appear in the film — Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer-scientist who became a celebrity after he delivered a “last lecture” in 2007 about achieving his childhood dreams. The professor was dying of pancreatic cancer (and he has since passed away), but his remarks on life drew more than a million views on YouTube. According to a press release by Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Pausch appears in the new Star Trek film and even has a line: “Captain, we have visual.”
Mr. Jenkins said that he was not in the same scene as Mr. Pausch, so the two did not get to meet on the set. —Jeffrey R. Young
