“Please Stand By” Film starring Dakota Fanning opens Jan 26

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In Please Stand By, Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds, The Twilight Saga) plays a young woman with autism who runs away from her caregiver in order to boldly go and deliver her 500-page Star Trek script to a writing competition in Hollywood. Will she live long and prosper? You can find out on Jan. 26, when the film is released in theaters, on demand, on Amazon Video, and on iTunes.

Please Stand By is written by Michael Golamco (NBC’s Grimm) and directed by Ben Lewin (The Favour, The Watch, and the Very Big Fish, the John Hawkes-starring The Sessions). The film costars Toni Collette, Alice Eve, and Jessica Rothe from the recent hit horror film Happy Death Day, with a special guest appearance by Patton Oswal

While Please Stand By is character-based indie film, Michael Golamco is no stranger to genre. He has inserted nerdy elements into his work as a playwright, including Dungeons and Dragons and futuristic computer AI. He was also a writer on the NBC series Grimm and is currently working on the upcoming Syfy science fiction horror series Nightflyers, based on work by George R.R. Martin. TrekMovie had a chance to talk to the writer about his new movie and what Star Trek means to him.

Can you talk about the original inspiration for your play, which you then turned into a screenplay for this movie?
I read this article in The New York Times Magazine back in 2007 called “What Autistic Girls Are Made Of.” It focused on this summer camp for kids with autism and particularly the girls. There were two takeaways for me from that. One was that girls with autism still have this emotional need to connect with people and with the condition making it difficult to pick up social cues, [it] kind of makes it a double whammy for girls because it is difficult to socialize properly. And they need those emotional connections. Autistic boys and men have been dealt with a lot in popular culture like with Rain Man and now with The Good Doctor and it is kind of more socially acceptable for boys to be awkward and weird, but for girls it is harder.

The second thing was that one of the girls in the article wrote fan fiction, specifically Lord of the Rings fan fiction, and I loved that so much, because it is what we do. We do storytelling and so the character emerged from that. The play was a short one-act play that is essentially the first act of the movie. In it we establish the three main characters: Wendy and her caregiver Scottie and her sister Audrey. By the end of that one-act play Wendy goes off on her journey and that is where the play ends, so we don’t know what happens. The response to the play was fantastic and so I thought we had something, so I expanded it to a feature. I kind of wanted to see what happens to her out there.

Your Wendy writes Star Trek fan fiction instead of Lord of the Rings. I know you have genre connections, so are you a big fan? Do you consider yourself a Trekkie?
I love Star Trek! It is something I think about a lot. When I was a kid The Next Generation was out, and I watched TOS, but TNG was my show. Star Trek has been around for so long but the series that defines Trek for you is the one you first discover and for me that was TNG. I have always been a fan and it has always influenced me in my genre work. On Nightflyers we talk about Star Trek all the time. Terms like “red shirt” are part of our culture and so we use those as a shorthand to get ideas across. I often refer back to individual TNG episodes to pitch ideas or to communicate ideas.

It is something that has been part of my creative DNA since I was a kid and that still influences me today. I am rabid with anything Trek that comes out, I want it right away.

Do you see a connection for people on the spectrum to fandom or fan fiction?

With reading about autism and talking to them, there is this idea of the “special interest.” It is something that you are really interested in that you love. It could be a piece of fiction. You find something that speaks to you on a gut level and you get really interested in it.

Everyone is different. Autism presents differently in different people. What a lot of people with autism are seeking is a sense of calm and something they can focus on and enjoy. Great stories are a sense of calm. That is a universal aspect. Once you get absorbed in a story, you start to unpack it and want to make it your own and try things. It is a way of widening people’s imaginations and paying homage to the stories that really made this who we are. So, there is a powerful component there for people with autism and everyone else.

Wendy seems particularly drawn to the character of Spock. Is there something about Spock that draws in people who feel different?

Absolutely. The way that Spock was presented in TOS was that he was the only alien on the crew. Keep in mind he is half-human and dealing with that a lot. It’s also true of Worf. These two characters are real ambassadors for their cultures and really believe in them and espouse them because they are in contact with humans. So, they give you the sense of the other, and that was fascinating for the 1960s when Trek came out. Not only are the Russians and Sulu on this ship and representatives of the other, but there is also this alien, Spock, who is the ultimate other.

So, I feel that the condition of autism makes you feel a little alienated, no pun intended. You feel separate from humanity. For me, I am not on the spectrum, but there have been plenty of moments when I felt alienated from humanity or felt apart. And Spock’s story and his character and how he was treated in the show and in popular culture and how revered he is gives me a great deal of comfort. It makes me feel it is going to be okay.

I think Gene Roddenberry had it absolutely right back then. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. He created a character that is an iconic representation of being different and I think a lot of people gravitate towards that.

In Please Standby, how did you learn to play Wendy?
Meeting one person [with autism] means you’ve met one person. Every person on the spectrum has different traits. It gave me this sense of freedom that I could create Wendy and I didn’t have to model her on anything.

What appealed to you about Please Stand By?

The script was super well written and very detailed. A lot of Wendy’s personality traits and quirks were already written in there. I’m so lucky to have been able to work with a script that had so much detail. Also, Ben Lewin, the director, had done so much research and had met people, so he introduced me to the people that he had become friends with. That was, of course, really helpful.

What really works in Please Stand By is the whole Star Trek connection, the piece that Wendy is writing; how Spock doesn’t have emotions and Wendy’s not in touch with her feelings.

We see her love of Star Trek and we see her using a character that we’re also familiar with, a story that we’re all familiar with, and we see her use that as a way into her own emotions and into society. I was touched by that. I’m not involved with Star Trek, but it shows the power that people have when you make something that people become fans of.

This is not necessarily a real example, but I’m sure a Wendy exists out there somewhere in the world. I was really moved by the notion of taking a character like Spock, who is seen as cold, and turning that on its head and seeing him as somebody who is isolated from their emotions and can’t find a way to access them. I think that’s what Wendy sees him as.