George Takei seems to be having a big week. Not only is he all over TV these days with a new Sharp TV commercial, but he has been cast in a new Tom Hanks comedy. Hanks revealed the cast of his upcoming film Larry Crowne using a mysterious Twitter picture showing the headshots of his cast. Plus we have more Takei news with a new video about the Census.
Takei in Hanks movie
Tom Hanks (who is a big Star Trek fan) is directing a new comedy called Larry Crowne, which is about a man (Hanks) "forced to reinvent himself and find a new career as he navigates the second act of his life." And over the weekend Hanks used Twitter to announce his cast, by posting a TwitPic of a wall of headshots (see below) and the tweet "The Larry Crowne Casting Wall (incomplete). Hanx." And right there in the top row was the clearly identifiable headshot of Star Trek’s George Takei. The wall also revealed well-known actors like Julia Roberts, Peter Scolari, Bryan Cranston and Cedric The Entertainer. Movie sites like FirstShowing and Slashfilm have come up with the full list of names. As of now there is no indication what role Takei (or any of the other actors) will have in the film.
Tom Hanks "Larry Crown" casting board revealed on Twitter (click to see full size)
Takei headshot seen on Tom Hanks casting board
Takei dons Trek uniform to promote Census for same sex couples
In other Takei news he is featured in a new video from Equal Roots, where he (in his Starfleet uniform) and his husband Brad Altman promote how for the first time the US Census will be counting same-sex couples. Watch it below.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it would have been so much better if we got “Star Trek: Excelsior” in 1996 instead of “Star Trek: Voyager.”
George is also on the Howard Stern Show all this week.
#1 — agreed 100%. Heck, it could have even had the same premise as Voyager . . .
#1
Paramount considered doing an a “Captain Sulu” series while “Voyager” and “Deep Space Nine” were on the air. The “Voyager” episode “Flashback” was seen as a testbed for the project. But critical reviews of the episode were mixed and plans for the series were nixed.
Oh My.
haha we sure could have used Star Trek Excelsior.
Hey Anthony –
George Takei was on the Stern show this morning. His two great moments were:
1) He described ST the Motion Picture as “lugubrious”
2) George revealed that he was a college classmate of Francis Ford Coppola at UCLA. Apparently Coppola borrowed $500 from Takei to complete a student film but has never repaid the debt.
George is hilarious.
Cheers
“ST: Excelsior” would’ve been a much better choice to produce than “Enterprise.”
Hell, ANYTHING would’ve been better to produce than “Enterprise”!
I would have loved to have had an Excelsior series much more than DS9 or Voyager or Enterprise. That said, the flashback episode did have some really terrible acting in it. It could have been the directing but I remember thinking it really wasn’t well done.
I’ve always found it odd that around the time Tuvok was serving aboard the Excelsior, there was a human officer aboard the Enterprise-B that apart from the ears and eyebrows looked exactly like him. Of course, the Enterprise-B had a Sulu (Demora) at the helm, while the Excelsior had a Sulu who was captain.
That would have been an interesting “Excelsior” episode. The two ships meeting up. The two Sulus hanging out. Captain Harriman explaining to Captain Sulu why the Enterprise-B has a slightly different design than the Excelsior. And of course, the possibility of two Tim Russ characters bumping into each other….
@8 – they also screwed up. The guy who dies in the episode was very much alive at the end of Star Trek VI, so long as you watch the widescreen ratio version. He’s in the last shot from the Excelsior crew, for goodness’ sake. He’s cut out if you watch the full screen/pan and scan version, though.
And the episode really just kinda sucked overall – which was kinda par for Voyager anyway.
… they still COULD do it! Star Trek has been given a new lease of life with this film, Mr Takei is quite well recognised now due to his work in Heroes and the Sharp adverts, and the fanbase is already installed in terms of those who would gladly tune in and watch the adventures of the good ship Excelsior each week.
What I wouldn’t give to have friends in high places in Paramount – they’re missing out on so many obvious Trek opportunities! (another being a 2-part grand send off for Kirk and Spock – wouldn’t it be great to see Kirk ‘bought back’ properly – perhaps he never died, and there was a duplicate in the Nexus – and Spock for one last GRAND adventure together – with today’s CGI a television budget wouldn’t hamper things, especially if the writing was up to scratch… Kirk And Spock back on the ‘small’ screen were they started, going full circle together. Perfect! Ahhh if only! They’re both 79 now – Paramount needs to realise the golden opportunity they still have here!).
I’d definately be extremely interested in seeing a new Trek television series with emphasis on the WRITING and ACTING rather then FX and silly aliens and wars and space battles each week…
– I,M
#8 and 10
Also, in “Flashback” the Excelsior’s nacelles glowed blue while in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” they didn’t. At least not along the sides. It wasn’t until the Dominion War era that Excelsior Class ships had glowing nacelles.
Overall, “Flashback” was “Voyager”s version of “These Are The Voyages…”
Completely pointless to revisit an episode or movie when it would have been much more interesting if we got to witness something we hadn’t seen before. Both “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” and “The Pegasus” stood on their own without the need to “interfere”.
“Trials and Tribble-Ations” on the other hand is classic since the production crew took great care in weaving a believable story into a classic episode. Few mistakes were made.
Tom Hanks should be cast in the next Trek film! He IS a devout Trekkie!
#7
Don’t hate Enterprise.
Season 3 was good, and Season 4 was great… they axed it as it was reaching its prime.
I liked Voyager, but Star Trek: Excelsior would have been better.
Browsing along the cable tv highway last night, I came upon an episode of “Mission: Impossible,” which had George Takei in a guest-starring role. I don’t know if he would remember doing the episode because he had few lines. But he hasn’t changed much since then, he’s still looking rather boy-ish and seems to be aging rather gracefully. I’m still waiting for him and Shatner to have an “Amok Time”-style wrestling match, preferably before a live studio audience…
Tom Hanks would make a great Starfleet Admiral, or Commodore. Couldn’t you hear him utter the line, “Kirk… You do this, you’ll never sit in the Captain’s chair again.”
I gotta say Mr. Takei still looks good in the TOS movie uniform. I’m sure they could still crank out one or two Star Trek Excelsior TV movies for SyFy instead of the cheesy Saturday night movies or just put it on DVD.
George is a class act as always and I don’t think there’s a better person out there to represent the American Gay community than him.
And I agree with all of you Excelsior people out there, would have been better than Voyager, especially if the primes had been the Excelsior getting lost sometime after the events of Generations. Its too bad they decided to forget the project based off that one episode. It was cool to see the Excelsior in it but I though the episode its self could have been better written and such. Oh well. Maybe, though unlikely, they’d consider doing it as a mini-series. Seems like a good mini-series would be a great way to get Trek back on TV.
I’d consider buying a Sharp TV now because of Takei.
The question is not “if” but “when” will Tom Hanks be in a Star Trek movie, ……and Starkiller, go back to Star Wars and play with your lightsabre.
#10–not exactly an error… that parasite thing in Tuvok’s head may have created the death of that guy in Tuvok’s mind as a false memory, as was explained in the episode, to cover up its existence in Tuvok’s mind…therefore as Tuvok was explaining the guy’s death he likely was accessing the false memory and not the true one…
#12–you can chalk the Excelsior’s glowing nacelles to production revisions due to new computer tech… likewise The Borg looked quite different in First Contact than in The Best Of Both Worlds, as did Picard as Locutus…stop nitpicking over what you think are stupid mistakes but are really evolving production standards…this nitpicking is exactly why the public came to hate Star Trek fans
Moving on, why did Takei have to put on a fan uniform when likely Paramount gave him a copy of Sulu’s uniform from Star Trek VI or the one he wore in the Voyager ep ”Flashback’…seemed tacky…
Plus technically what George and Brad were advocating on the census form would amount to a compete devaluation of all marriage for straight and gay people AND census fraud, since stating you are married when you do not have the paperwork to back it up is falsifying a federal document and defrauding the federal government… by the letter of the law, it’s not if you identify as married that counts, but rather if you have the paperwork to back it up… George and Brad advocate clearly that couples without marriage licenses who identify emotionally as married should check MARRIED on the form…They are advocating falsifying a government document which is illegal and could get people arrested.
typo..i meant complete, not compete
An Excelsior series would’ve sucked bad. Not because of George,but because of the producers. From Relics and Unification to Generations, Berman and co. proved time and time again that they just don’t get TOS. It’s best they left alone that which they did not understand.
“….this nitpicking is exactly why the public came to hate Star Trek fans.”
Yet you go on to claim the uniform George is wearing in the video is fan-made and wonder why Paramount didn’t give him one he wore from the movies or “Flashback”. And you called it “tacky”. A “nitpick” that had no bearing whatsoever on the video.
A bit like a pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?
As much as I would like to think that ‘Star Trek: Excelsior’ would have worked the fact is that Trek in general was going down hill from ‘Voyager’ onto ‘Enterprise’. While I do like to watch ‘Enterprise’ on occasion I don’t really care about the characters—and forget about ‘Voyager’. Did they make it home? Who cares. I think in order to make ‘Excelsior’ work they would have had to bring in new writers and a new production team…some new blood would definitely got it off to a good start.
Star Trek needs to be rejuvenated with new talent once in a while and personally going to ‘The Adventures of Captain Sulu’ is not the direction Trek should go…even thought Mr. Takei is a nice guy.
Oh and I like it when the fans ‘nitpick’…just part of the fun of being in the Trek community.
I’m guessing the uniform is Takei’s costume from World Enough and Time? That’s the only time Sulu’s jacket had gold trim on the flap. (Arguably a blooper unless Sulu is an Admiral.)
George’s original costume is in the Museum of Japanese-American History.
Okay I’ll say it..
Excelsior would have been excelsior.
Probably not original, but it’s from
the heart.
George Takei: The King of all Media!
How I view myself?
As a geek
as a raccoon
How about what you are, ….or
~ none of your business.
#4
That’s really depressing because Sulu was the best thing about that episode. The Excelsior concept wasn’t flawed – Voyager was.
#29 The Museum of Japanese-American History? The one in Los Angeles? If it is I don’t remember seeing two years ago there. I remember the wall of suitcases and the shack and the kimonos they let you try on but not Takei’s Starfleet uniform.
The Voyager episode ‘Flashback’ was very flawed.. We learned the alien virus moved on when the host died, so Valtene (sp) dying wasn’t an indication of false memory, but the actual trigger that caused the alien virus to be implanted in Tuvok. And Valtene was very much alive at the end of Star Trek VI.
Beyond that, towards the beginning, Tuvok explains that it was only days after the explosion of Praxis that they were off to try to rescue Kirk & McCoy from the Klingons. Except we know from Star Trek VI that the Praxis explosion happened months prior to Kirk & crew even meeting up with Chancellor Gorkon.
And I can’t believe for a minute Sulu would’ve been dumb enough to think he could just shoot his way into what was unquestionably Klingon space to mount a rescue. Sure, he would have done anything (with intelligence) to rescue them, just as Spock was working to do on the Enterprise. Violating the treaty and leading towards an interstellar war was exactly what they were trying *not* to do. Cowboy diplomacy sure, but that was just stupid.. and Sulu was anything but an idiot.
I had such hopes for ‘Flashback,’ but was really disappointed. Still glad we got ‘Trials & Tribble-ations,’ which totally kicked tail.
Screw Tom Hanks. I don’t want him anywhere near Trek.
Holmes Osborne was cast in the film, as well. He played the Enolian official in the Enterprise episode “Canamar.” His photo is the one at the bottom, two pictures below Takei.
Tom Hanks is Matt Decker!….I can see it now…a cameo at the beginning of the movie…Hanks rams the shuttle right down the doomsday machine’s throat!
we’re stronger with you that without you……..
George as Sulu’s dad?
Walter as Chekov’s dad
Nichelle as Uhura’s mom?
Shat as Tiberius Kirk?
bring em all back!!!!
I hope George is playing a role in the Hanks movie and not himself. Go George!
Also nice to see Hanks and Scolari back together in a project. I always thought those guys had great chemistry on Bosom Buddies, and should have made a comedy film or two together when they were younger. I hope they share some screen time in Hanks’ movie.
Scott B. out.
I wouldn’t mind seeing George as Captain Sulu in a made-for-TV movie, that would be great! He still looks good.
An Excelsior series would have been just plain terrible. With respect to George, Sulu was probably the most boring character of the TOS crew: did anyone notice when he was off the bridge while Takei filmed “The Green Berets”? Never understood what he did to deserve a command.
That said Takei took what little the writers did for the character and did what he could with it.
Why does George’s uniform have an Admiral’s Gold stripe on the front of his jacket, yet a Captain’s Bar on his rank insignia?
#7 Have you ever seen enterprise from beginning to end? Because your statement is ignorant…
Great that he is still working.
Why is George wearing the gold braid of a Flag officer and yet his rank pin shows Captain?
Why aren’t any of the Trek websites crediting the Howard Stern TV show?
The YouTube video was up for over a week and it wasn’t until Howard mentioned it and played it on yesterday’s Sirius radio show that it was magically posted by the day’s end on websites everywhere.
The Stern show literally relaunched Takei’s career years ago.
Don’t worry, Howard will credit himself loudly…like everything else (I invented radio!)
I think there’s a separate box on the census form for people living as if they are married but cannot legally be so for various reasons. But George and Brad were one of the few in California who did get a valid marriage license, so they are allowed to fill in the married box as a same-sex couple.
Though, when the government is so involved in your daily lives that they want or need to know whether or not you’re in a relationship should be a warning sign that perhaps we have too much government in our lives…
Star Trek: Excelsior…. if anything, they should have made direct-to-DVD movies of it. It certainly isn’t to late, and the have a famous actor willing to do it. Takie is a living legend now. Put Christian Slater in it as a rebellious first officer, and I think you would have a hit series.
#22:
“Married same-sex couples will be counted as such in 2010, Census Bureau officials said, reversing a decision of the Bush administration.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/us/21census.html
“Steve Jost, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said same-sex couples would be counted, ‘and they ought to report the way they see themselves….'”
They also referenced that this is different from previous censuses in the video. So if there’s any problem to be had with this method of identification, its a problem with the census itself, not with the responses to it.