This Writer Wrote

Alana and Sulu photo courtesy of Marc Scott Zicree

Alana on transporter photo courtesy of Marc Scott Zicree

Christina Moses headshot courtesy of Christina Moses

As we wait for the release of the new Star Trek movie from Paramount, featuring new young actors playing our beloved characters, it is a good time to celebrate the 40 some years that fans have kept the dream of the Star Trek Universe alive through their fanzines, fan clubs, and now Internet-based, live-action, filmed episodes.  So much so that Paramount Studios has been able to cash in on the hunger for new Star Trek stories for decades and is now bringing out a new take on the Original Star Trek series which started everything.  (And I’m calling it a new take because obviously I haven’t seen the new movie yet, but to my way of thinking, it was pretty obvious in that first episode of Original Star Trek back in the late ‘60s that Spock and Kirk did not know each other before they met as seasoned adults on the Enterprise — any movie that says they did is a new take on the subject matter.)

I am convinced that part of the reason that Paramount and the new kids on the block have decided they could re-imagine the series that has been with us for so long is because they saw that millions of fans around the world were willing to watch other actors (or fans) play their favorite characters in new, fan-written and fan-produced episodes presented on the Internet – the most successful venture being Star Trek: New Voyages or as it is now called, Star Trek: Phase II (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/).

Probably the most widely-acclaimed and nominated-for-Hugo-and-Nebula-awards episode of Star Trek: New Voyages has been “World Enough and Time” in which George Takei reprises his iconic role of Sulu.  It has been described as the “City on the Edge of Forever” for Sulu.  Just as Kirk had to decide between the love of his life and the universe as it should be in “City…” so does Sulu have to decide in WEAT between the daughter he has raised from birth to young adulthood or his Enterprise ship and crewmates, due to a freak accident which causes him to live 30 years on a planet in 30 seconds aboard ship.

It is a heart-wrenching dilemma that is made even more heartbreaking by the incredibly touching and vulnerable performance of Christina Moses as Sulu’s daughter, Alana – an innocent beauty whose entire universe was her parents and the stories her father told her about his life aboard the Enterprise.  At the premiere, sobs were heard in the audience for the decisions and sacrifices both Sulu and Alana make.  In fact, a few grown men who swore they never cry over movies admitted to tears and sobs over this one.

Because the role of Alana is so pivotal to the episode, director Marc Scott Zicree looked for an already experienced actress to play her, rather than one of the less experienced fan-bred actors who were responsible for the project’s existence.   With both parents accomplished actors, Christina grew up in the business.  Her father, Tom Moses, has taught acting in Long Beach, CA in addition to being a writer, director, and actor.

Yet, despite growing up in the business, Christina claims to have had no early-on interest in following in her parents’ footsteps.  “My father used to take me around to auditions when I was really young and I really didn’t like it,” she admits.  In fact, she attributes her childhood shyness as a reason why she wasn’t interested in Hollywood.  “Any desire that I have had or would have had would definitely be supported,” Christina explains about the parental attitude surrounding her youthful choices.  “I mean if there was something I wanted to do at a young age it would have been okay to do.  Some really important people were very interested in me and supposedly, I’m one of the best cold readers in town, but again, I don’t know.  I just wasn’t interested.  It wasn’t until Junior High where I discovered theater in school that I fell in love with it.”

Asked why her interest was piqued then, she indicates that she came to view acting “as just another art form, like painting.”  To her, it was just another way to express herself, another way to explore her inner being and life in general.  “And so I started doing it throughout junior high and in high school and when I went to Santa Cruz College, I did it there.”

But since acting wasn’t yet something she wanted to do professionally, she stopped performing when she first moved to New York.  Nevertheless, the call of the theater was too strong for her to resist so she ended up doing a lot of stage work in New York.  Through friends involved in film noir and film festivals, she ended up doing little independent shorts in New York and San Francisco.  Hence, WEAT represented her first foray into episodic or longer formats.  “This is the first, well, it’s not a feature but it’s the longest film that I’ve ever done.  You know, professionally, up to that point.”

As for Star Trek itself, Christina admits to not being a Star Trek fan before discovering this role.  “I remember it being on as a kid,” she says, “because my dad was a fan, is a fan.  It was on in the background and I went to see some of the movies with him, but no, I really didn’t understand the Star Trek phenomenon until I got on set and started asking people what is it – why is it that it has such a huge following.”

Asked what insight she gained, Moses explains, “First of all, I learned that it is just… it’s like a home for a lot of people. The things he [Roddenberry] was doing… the topics that he was exploring at the time were very controversial and revolutionary.  I mean I remember seeing an episode where Kirk – Captain Kirk — he gets in trouble for something and he’s brought before the court and on the panel there was a woman, there’s an Indian male, there’s a black male, there’s a white male, and for the sixties, that’s a huge payoff for people of color and a female to be people in power.”

“Beautiful,” is how Christina describes what Roddenberry did, looking at Star Trek from a political and holistic humanitarian point of view, especially considering the number of people exposed to his vision.  For the era, she thinks that “the open representation of society is awesome so I can see how people can find a place for themselves there.”  What strikes her is not just that Star Trek was “revolutionary with technology back then” but the incredible “imagination” it had of what the future could be like.  “It was,” she ventures, “a huge game of pretend and people could really explore and play in it in a way that they couldn’t in this society.  I understand the camaraderie.  And it holds up today, very much so, in the same way that it did back then.”

Since Christina admits to viewing everything from a political context, the fact that Star Trek broke down barriers is one of its most important and enduring attributes to her.  “If that’s where they are coming from,” she says of Star Trek fans, “in that way I’m a fan, too.  Definitely.”

One would think that the politically-minded Christina would have been a lot more aware of Star Trek’s history of breaking down barriers while growing up than she reveals.  After all, she is a child of a white woman and a black man — one who was/is a long-time fan of the show which featured the first ‘interracial kiss’ at a time when that was just not done.  Yet, when I mentioned that to her, Christina’s first reaction was, “Between who?”  Upon being told between Uhura and Kirk, she quipped, “They should get a statue just for that alone.”

Obviously, even though her parents were doing something that was in itself revolutionary for the time period, young Christina didn’t gain any special awareness from her dad of the impact Nichelle’s Uhura had on the image of black women or any of the other politics that touched original Star Trek fans.  “Both of my parents aren’t very political,” she explains.  “That is more me.  I mean if they are, it’s more environmentally – more living and embracing the roles that I was seeing more politically.

“The marriage for my mother was more that marrying a black man was so beautiful,” she elaborates.  “I mean, she was also in love with him, but because it was also more proof of breaking down race barriers.  She would tell this to me now, that that was how she thought back then, but it wasn’t a political standpoint.  For her, it’s more about love and humanity.  I just interpret everything theoretically and politically because that’s the way I view the world.”

So if this Star Trek project wasn’t a chance to work on a long-loved or long-admired show, how did she become involved?  “Through the grapevine, actually,” she admits.  “A friend of a friend, who’s friends with Marc and Elaine, put the word out that one of the actors had dropped out and they were looking.  I took a chance as I needed a job.  I emailed and they called me in and I auditioned and got the part, two days later.  Or a day later.  That’s how.”

Asked what attracted her to the role, Moses answers that “…the concept is awesome — what’s 30 seconds to one person is 30 years to another.  I like the idea of playing with manipulating time and space and perception.  So conceptually, that is really cool.  I would love for it to be a feature movie and see what happens on the planet Taliban and that’s cool.”

Nobody can deny that Alana is a very meaty role, but Christina especially liked the idea that Alana was “available” to everything that occurred around her and “grateful” for her experiences.  “I think Alana was a reflection of everyone around her,” Christina Moses elaborates on how she saw the character.  “She’s provided them a mirror for them to really see themselves – to see the parts of themselves that they let go of or didn’t tap into – what they desire.”

In what way, I wanted to know.  “In terms of anything,” Christina explained.  “Love — unconditional and so available.  Being able to look at everything with so much wonder and appreciation.  I think that’s what she reflected back to them.  It’s just about them and their needs and being who they are.  Spock got to see himself in just the questions Alana was asking him. Which was for her, too.  How can she exist, being so different?  And the fact that by giving up your future for the good of other people.  Life is much bigger than you.  He got to be reminded of who he was in Alana, all the goodness he could bring.  All of them – does that make any sense?”

It is also undeniable that Alana’s ethereal and innocent beauty is part of the audience’s attraction and bonding to her.  This had to be a challenge for any actress to bring across.  “How I approached it was… uhm… well… I just read the script a million times, over and over.  I would just pieced together what her life was like by what George was saying – my father as the life-giver and I just pretended to live there in my head.”

Moses also credits Kirk and Spock with helping with her characterization as she would imagine going through and living what they were saying to her, like putting together a puzzle.  “And then she just came out.”

But Christina denies that she deliberately imagined an innocent Alana. “I can’t say, as me, ‘Be childlike or be innocent and sweet.’  Because if you are trying to be acting, rather than trying your best to just live it, it doesn’t work.  Acting is pretending.”

It works “because we’re all kids or we can be,” she says.  “We know how to use our imaginations to play like we did when we were kids.”

Yet, it couldn’t have been easy to portray a character so constrained as Alana stuck in a stasis chamber, unable to touch, especially when the very stasis chamber was all special effects added later.

“I just winged it,” Moses says of that particular challenge.  “Yeah, that was part of the frustration of what she’s going through.  There was that lingering, ‘Okay, I’m really not here.  There’s a possibility that I may be on this planet alone, forever,’ which was part of her circumstances.  Circumstances that she couldn’t exist outside of the stasis chamber and that whenever they came up to her, she couldn’t touch anything for real.  She wasn’t real quote unquote in this world.  So yeah, that was part of it.”

Still, it had to be difficult to not have the physical freedom to do or touch things on this set that she might normally want to layer in.  For example, one of my favorite scenes is where she and Kirk are walking down a corridor and Alana twirls and dances because she is just so happy to be moving through the magical place of her father’s stories.  In fact, I believe that Alana’s pure delight and innocent wonder in this scene brings out the best in Cawley’s performance as Kirk.

“I would try to imagine what it would look like,” Christina says of that particular sequence, where she had to remain conscious that she couldn’t grab Kirk or touch the walls.  “And not being very scifi-ish, I’d be like, what are they talking about?  I just imagined the colors and not being substantial, whatever that would look like.”

In fact, Christina used this same approach to prepare for the intensely emotional scenes  Alana had.  “If you believe in anything, it’s real to you.  So, that’s it, really.  Pretending.  Over and over again.  Putting myself in her circumstance of my mother, my father, the planet…  I could understand her wanting a normal life.  If he had not told me all those stories, I wouldn’t have known anything about the world and the Enterprise.  I may be a human being and have a general feeling of longing, I don’t know.  You don’t know what you’re missing.  So, I just believed in it.  I believed in it, wholeheartedly.  If you saw your dad die – or not die – if you knew you couldn’t be with your father anymore… whatever was important to you… you would probably be exceedingly sad.  So as a human being, you know what it’s like to imagine or go through certain horrific circumstances.”

Unlike method actors who recall events in their lives to guide their performances, Christina doesn’t use her personal life to fuel her roles.  “I don’t picture my father up there,” she asserts.  “I didn’t picture anyone… I don’t have a loved one who has … I don’t use my personal life.  But I’m a human being.  I know what it would be like to lose someone.  I know what it’s like to be hurt.  So being a human being, I just imagined these circumstances over and over again until they become really really real for me.”

In other words, she just became Alana.  “As much as I could,” Christina reasons.  “I feel like there’s so much more room to grow.  I mean, I look back on it now and think, oh god, give me the role now.  Because I was so new and anxious over being new, but there’s always room to grow.  Always.  I don’t think there’s an endpoint.  At all.  Because one thing you complete opens the stage for new challenge, new growth.  You’re always growing, hopefully.”

This is something she continues to explore under the guidance of her acting teacher, Harry Mastrogeorge.  “That’s all we do, we just work on our imaginations … there’s no method to it.  There’s no [actor] tricks.  There’s no technique even, really it’s just practice.  You know, like if I had to practice the violin every day, I have to practice working my imagination, it’s that kind of brick. ”

In other words, it’s just about using heart and imagination, not worrying about how one looks on camera.  “My focus isn’t on how I look on camera, my focus isn’t how to indicate something or whether I’m wearing the right colors to make my eyes pop, it’s not about that.  It’s more about pretending and being truthful as much as is possible.”

“It’s surprising that when you want a trick, want to co-op – okay, if I know I want to act for the director and I know he wants something from me, and it’s just naturally not there at the moment, if I think of my mom being like abducted or something, I’ll cry for you, right then and there.  Sure, but to me that is cheating in a way, because it’s not the story, it’s not about me.  Like I’m not playing Christina who’s playing this person.  I’m a human being who’s playing… I’m now Alana.  I’m going to try to let go of Christina as much as possible.  Which I think is lifelong work.  It takes a lot of work.  When I see Meryl Streep, even if it’s in interviews, she plays… she doesn’t use her personal life, she uses her imagination when she plays.  And we can see with Cate Blanchett, we can see with Judi Dench, they are not the same – they are definitely not the same.  And you can see with Julie Roberts or Denzel Washington, who are great, they’re fun, they make you cry, they make you laugh, they’re highly believable, but you see them.”

“Awesome” is how Christine sums up being able to work with veteran actor, George Takei.  “He’s one of the humblest, kindest people I’ve ever met, and he just radiates so much positivity and creativity.  He really loves what he does, which makes it easy for us to surround him, and want to work with him, whether behind the scenes or in front of the camera.  He’s so professional, honestly, in attitude – he’s like a beginner — and humble.”

Asked what Takei gave her to take with her as a young actor for the future, Moses replies “Technique.  Just how he works.”  That is partially because she considers herself a stage actress first and foremost.  “I’m used to having to be bigger and more expressive,” she explains.  “So I really had to take a lot of that out for film.  So I’d just watch him, watch how he did things.  He knows how to handle himself on film. I have no idea how to handle myself on film.  I just do the things.  Once as we kept shooting, I said to myself, I’m going to watch him and learn how to handle myself.”  Hence, she credits the veteran actor with teaching her “how to be in front of the camera and maintain the life in the character and story.”

Although Christina did not experience the same ‘pinch me to see if I’m awake’ incredulity working with iconic characters and actors that longtime ST fans in the cast and crew did, she says she understands how they feel.  “To be an Asian captain back then and now, it just goes along with everything that I said before, that you really have to appreciate who he is and who he was and what he means to Star Trek.  To those people who are fans of an actor, that’s huge.”

The impact of Star Trek on the people around her wasn’t lost on her, especially for those who maybe weren’t the most popular kids in their school.  “School’s hard.  High School especially is horrible.  Or can be.  Maybe your whole life isn’t so good.  You want to fit in.  And it just speaks to humanity and everyone – it taps into a little bit of everybody.   You’ve got this show where none of this matters whether you’re cool or not cool, whether you’re white or you’re black, whether you’re rich or poor – that’s not even, not even an issue at all.  That’s huge.”  And Spock became the embodiment of all that for “people who are labeled geeks, who are not cool, who are not sexy, who are not whatever….”

Christina’s greatest challenge was totally unforeseen: she became very ill.  And considering how sick she was during filming, the performance she turned in was astonishing.  “I had this huge fever.  Chills every single day.  I felt horrible.  That was the biggest challenge.  To stay present on the story and not on how I was feeling.  I haven’t been that sick in a long time.”  In between takes, Christina could be seen huddled in a borrowed winter jacket.  Moses would do her scene and then return to the area cordoned off as a dressing room to rest.

In fact, Christina was so sick that she can’t remember much about shooting and is even surprised she made it through the 20 hours of filming on the last day.  “I was just so sick that that’s what I remember.  I didn’t really hang out much, behind the scenes because I just really wanted to stay in the story.  I had to go lie down a lot and when I was gone, I’d just be imagining the story as much as possible.  So I don’t even know a lot about what had happened.  I remember laughing a lot.  And people laughing as things went wrong, but what they are, I can’t recall.”

In fact, she was so tired and sick, she was almost unaware that she almost caught on fire when they were setting off explosive charges in the stasis chamber during her climatic scene.  “I was really worn when we were practicing with the explosives at the end of the film.  I don’t remember it too much.  We were almost finished.  Those were my last scenes.  And they had to take the fire extinguisher and put it out.  That was just cool.”

Moses loved working on the project.  “People were so passionate about what was a pure passion project.  People were so kind.  They opened up their homes.  They brought food.  They made food.  They ordered food.  Everyone pitched in.  Construction you know.  Sets… people gave their time.  People came from Australia.  People drove and flew from California.  That’s amazing.”

Working on this project also opened her eyes to how unique the whole Star Trek World is.  “That other people were willing to go out of their way to help the vision.  Some stayed only a few days.  Some stayed for the duration.  It [the location] wasn’t soundproof and we had to stop a lot.  There’s a lot… we had to deal with.  But we were all happy to work.  And to be a part of something almost bigger than ourselves.”

Although Christina doesn’t have any particular favorite scenes that she shot, she says the people she worked with were the best part of the project.  “They really shot some amazing things… scenes.  That’s just pure passion and respect for everyone.  I’m just really inspired when people just step up and do the work that needs to be done.  And they collaborate.”

Since then, Christina has done some Internet commercials, an independent SAG horror film written and produced by Gordon Greene and directed by Sasha Crane, the nephew of Anna and Lee Strausberg, the Elevate Film Festival for Sound and Music, and a radio play (“Magic Time”) written and directed by Marc Scott and Elaine Zicree.

The horror film was shot in and around a castle sitting on a 5,000 acre ranch in Antelope Valley, CA.  “And I don’t die.  Oh, I shouldn’t say that,” she instantly corrects.  With a smile, she adds, “I may die.”

“I had a blast,” Christina says, even though she never thought she’d do a slasher horror film.  ”There is substance and heart in this film, but it is also a fun, thrilling slasher.  It’s a movie within a movie.  A group of actors have been cast in this film which tells the true story of what became an urban legend… very bad things happen to us as we are trying to recreate the true life events.

“This being a thriller, I had to scream my head off a lot!  And run around a lot!  Most of our scenes were shot outside.  It was extremely dark, scary and freezing with winds I have never witnessed before, growing up in Los Angeles.  Plus, my character was constricted to wearing a small dress, as all good thrillers require.

“Though we shot in April, we were smack dab in the middle of a desert with no mountains for protection against the wind, but, at the same time, it was incredible.  So quiet and beautiful with nothing to scatter away the stars at night.  The view in the daytime was endless, serene and absolutely gorgeous.”

Christina did all her own stunts.  “Okay, that sounded a lot cooler than was meant!  Mainly I had to run and fall, but they did have to teach me how to fall/faint and look real.  I definitely accrued some bruises, but so worth it.”

What was most challenging on this project was allowing herself to be afraid and adjusting to the cold and hours.  “We shot from sundown to sunup so you can imagine the chill and tiredness.  The cast and crew were amazing!  So talented and fun.  We had a great time, downing monster after monster, Emergen C’s to stay awake, eating home cooked meals from the director’s family and friends who catered, dancing in our trailers, watching films… horror was among them, one of the “saw’s” I believe.”

For the film festival in which participants get 48 hours to make a film from start to finish, Christina worked behind the scenes.  “I helped to produce a documentary and seven music videos for the festival.  We focus on works that uplift… that elevate consciousness in some shape or form by choosing issues that are socially and globally relevant and important.”

Five short films, five documentaries, five music videos and five commercials were produced in this time frame with professional directors and actors.

“Everything is cast and crewed under the kick-off.  And the director is pulled from the hat for the project.”  From that moment, they have 48 hours to complete the project.  Details can be found at elevatefilmfestival.com.  “We premiered at the Kodak Theater and it is the first time the Kodak Theater ever had a film festival there.  And it was huge.  We got over 3,000 people.”

As a result, Moses has another passion besides acting: producing documentaries.  Especially on subjects like kids getting involved in war.  She’d like to uncover “…what causes our kids to pick up arms in the streets and form gangs.  I mean, war can be… it’s not just your physical war…”

Christina Moses played Colleen in Magic Time, a radio play based on Marc Scott Zicree’s best-seller book of the same name, in which a cataclysmic event happens and all things technological or mechanical stop working and magic returns.

This is actually a subject that deserves its own article and I’ve written about this project elsewhere.  If you want to learn of my participation in this project, check out http://dannygirlpaceyjack.blogspot.com/2008/12/magic-time-gives-crystal-another-first.html and its two preceding entries.

Finally, as an addendum, Christina Moses had her first pre-premiere screening of her first horror film on January 30, 2009 at Paramount Studios in Hollywood for industry professionals.