People have wondered why it gets to me when jackasses on the
net call me a has been and say my work as no value. After all they are what the
hell do they know? Right? Well, the reason is that that’s all I get. Simple
acknowledgement of anything I’ve done is a fleeting thing in my life.
I remember as far back as elementary school that I had the
same problem. One instance that comes to mind was when I was in third grade and
our class broke up into teams to build carrying displays for our school’s Chinese
New Year Parade. My group build a very detailed tiger. I worked on the head and
the painting work on it. When all the displays were done the teach graded the
projects and read the names of all the kids on each individual team…all except
for my name. I had to correct her on this. She apologized but my peers took a
collective sign and called me a glory hound. Also, when the parade went on my
group’s display was featured to the news story in the local newspaper. My mother
proudly showed me the picture in the newspaper and read the caption to me.
Though my smiling face was there behind a girl named Nancy my name did not appear in the caption
with the other kids.
Well, woopie dee! You didn’t get acknowledged for a stupid
paper mache’ tiger and that gives you the right to be an asshole and demand
acknowledgement…My answer to this is read on…
My finally year in elementary school we had a poster contest
for our school’s big carnival to get donations to help with after school sports
programs. I did a very large poster featuring a huge detailed clown face, carousel,
and ferris wheel that took me three weeks to design and paint. Needless to say,
I won the contest. I got a check for $15 dollars, which was a hell of a lot of
money for the age I was at the time. Also, my poster was to be prominently
framed and displayed outside the front of the school with my name on a card on
the bottom…Problem was when my family arrived at the carnival we saw that the name “David Mennor, 1st Prize
Winner” was on the card below my poster which had my name clearly signed on it.
After spending half an hour, which felt like an eternity to me, we tracked down
the principle and informed him. He looked at the card, shook his head, and said
there was nothing that could be done, but that at least I knew it was my poster
and I had the prize money. This hurt me deeply. My father was so mad he
refused to allow us to stay so I didn’t even get to enjoy the carnival I worked
so hard to promote.
Boo Hoo, sad story you say, if you are a complete ass…
Well, after the carnival bullshit I gave up on doing
contests completely for many years....
My next fun event happened as a surprise to me at end of my
high school term. Supposedly, because I had had learning problems due to physohedrin
poisoning, known now as Physoderm, and overcame them my teachers thought I
deserved some acknowledgment by putting in for two scholarships. The
scholarships were the Robert Rittenour Scholarship for Superior Achievement in
English Studies and The John Papan (local representative) Memorial Scholarship
for General Education. Together I got $3,000 in scholarship money for college.
I went to my schools award night in suit and tie and a couple of the socials, that’s
what we called the stuck up, shallow, jackasses that thought they ran the
school, got is my face and ask me what the hell a loser like me was doing at
awards night. That night I got two scholarships, to be correct I was the only
person to get two scholarships, which pissed the socials off to no end. Well,
the next Tuesday, because it was always on Tuesday the school newspaper came
out. It featured on the front page the list of people and awards given at
Awards Night. Well, since the last Thursday I had been telling people that I
won to two scholarships, so you can imagine how amused I was when I looked at
the list and my name didn’t appear. To be exact the newspaper put down Hans
Thomas, the guy who won The John Papan poster contest as the person winning the
scholarship. They didn’t even mention the Rittenour scholarship at all. I went
to the head of the newspaper, a social, and told her that there was a mistake.
She huffed and said it was no big deal. I even went to the principle and he
gave me the same response except for saying my old favorite line “You got the
money and you got the scholarships that’s what’s important. So for the next
three weeks of the school year I was called a liar and the socials enjoyed
rubbing it in my face.
Oh, you got me in tears, you say laughing…
I say no comment.
Well, the next should have been my greatest achievement yet.
I was seventeen at the time. I had the pleasure of going to Los Angeles with my father to attend the
first ever convention for The William Shatner Fan Fellowship (Yes, there
actually was one in the early 80s). Anyway, while I was there the organizer
Sonny Cooper introduced me to Harve Bennett, who had just been given the
assignment to create an entertaining Star Trek film after the lack luster Star
Trek: The Motion Picture. Well, Harve and I chatted for nearly three hours and
this ended with him offering to pay for a hotel room if my father and I would stay
an extra week and help him come up with an exciting treatment for Star Trek II.
After a week of long days at the Parmount Office for Star Trek, which was
actually in the TV office section instead of movie production offices, we put
together the treatment that would become Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (At the
time we had it under the titles of Star Trek II: The Genesis Project and Star
Trek II: The Vengeance of Khan). Anyway, before I went home at the end of the
week Harve informed me that I wouldn’t be able to get credit on the film
because I wasn’t a member of The Screen Writer’s Guild and Paramount was a
little on the picky side about that. He said he would make it up to me. He
actually did. He sent me a crew T-shirt, a limited edition belt buckle that
only people associated with the production were supposed to get, and Admiral
Kirk’s broken spectacles from the end of the film. Then a year and a half later
I was back in LA for another William
Shatner Fellowship event. Harve contacted me again and I was back in the Star
Trek offices again, this time he needed my help with writing the actual script
for Star Trek: III, which at the time was subtitled In Search of Spock (I found
it amusing). So Harve was having trouble with key scenes in the film. He just
wasn’t feeling the Star Trek vibe from what he was writing. The first scene I
rewrote was the very opening of the movie. Harve had it taking place at a wake
for Spock. We moved the wake to later in the film and I came up with a very sad
opening with Kirk doing his Captain’s log. Later I added a scene where a
crewman asks Kirk if there was going to be a celebration of their homecoming.
Kirk say that god knows there should be, that they paid for the party with
their dearest blood. Then I worked on the very long series of scenes known as
the stealing of the Enterprise
scenes. It was my idea to give the supporting characters one scene in this
sequence that highlighted them. Sulu got to do the body throw live that his
character did in the animated episode The Infinite Vulcan (Though George was a
bit incensed about being called “tiny”). Scotty got to show his humorous side
and what a tricky fellow he could be. Finally, Uhura got to do more than
communications with “Mr. Adventure”. There are a few other scenes I threw some
classic Star Trek references in as well. Needless to say Harve once again gave
me the same to while thanking me for my help…no credit. I did get another belt
buckle, T-shirt, and I got a prop phaser from the film. Also from that point
on until Harve left Star Trek I got
shirts and crew collectibles from the productions….So I was happy though I didn’t
get to see my name on the big screen…That came years later with my work on The
Horror Seasons. But even now there are some people who keep trying to say I’m
lying about my participation in Star Trek. One person who is friends with
Walter Koenig has called me a liar because during the production of Star Trek
III Walter doesn’t remember an hour visit I had to the set with Harve. The
thing is the person who really made me feel welcome on that visit was Mark Leonard (Spock’s
father Sarek). I was a bit shy at the time, after all these were my heroes, and
Mark invited me to have a coffee and pastry with him at the snack table on the
set. I remember chatting with him about that years later at the last Creation Convention I
attended before Mark died. The thing is that asshats love to remind me that I
don’t have a credit and that Nick Meyer (The man annoyed me) has taken credit for
completely writing The Wrath of Khan, but if you look at the clumsy work he
does in the writing of Star Trek VI to try and copy my style and my claim looks more reasonable. Also, as for
Walter’s claim he doesn’t remember me on the set…can you remember a single hour
from thirty years ago with any detail, especially if that detail is a shy kid standing in the
background?
Sure..you say I believe that shit....Right. I say believe as you
will.
So comes to my books, I’ll be short because you all already know the details. I was on contract with Berkley Books. I found out they
expected me to write four novels in one year or I wouldn’t get paid. I worked
sixteen hours a day seven days a week on those books both writing and editing
the book. The stress nearly killed me. I was promised $20,000 for if the first
printings made a certain level of sales. Berkley
promised me book signings and convention appearances. I got nothing except an
initial payment of $1,500. Now jackasses are telling me I’m a has been, even
though I have three projects in production and am the host of a very successful
Blog Talk Radio show. They say my work has no value and no one is interested…which
is interesting because last month on Ebay a collection of my Camp Crystal Lake
books, including a flash drive with my final novel, The Mask of Jason Voorhees
(which I spent seven years writing for the fans) ,were sold for $600.00 in
auction. That doesn’t sound like something no one is interested in or has no
value. Still I get told my books are crap and I have no fans, thus I am not
worthy of consideration to be a guest at conventions…So you wonder why I get
pissed and go off. This is an edited down version of the crap I’ve had to
endure over the years and I'm sick of being fluffed off and having my achievements ignored…Get a
fucking clue…
