"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" got its 20th candle Thursday as the American Cinematheque hosted a sold-out screening of the enduring film at Hollywood's landmark Egyptian Theatre. On hand to celebrate the movie's two-decade anniversary were actors Walter Koenig ("Chekov") and George Takei ("Sulu"), executive producer Harve Bennett, and director Nicholas Meyer.

The demand for tickets was so high, in fact, that the Cinematheque added a second screening of the film that evening, taking place after the Q&A session with the special guests.

Even though this event coincided with the release of the new "Director's Edition" of the film on DVD (related story), Thursday's showing was of the original 1982 theatrical version, on a brand new 35mm print. But the update was prominent on everybody's minds, as many of the fans came armed with their new DVDs to get autographed by the actors and filmmakers.

All four special guests arrived before the screening and sat to watch with the audience, which was about the most enthusiastic crowd you could ask for — applauding when the guests' names appeared on screen, laughing and cheering at all the right moments, and shedding a few tears at the end. One of the heartiest responses came when Kirk yelled "KHAAAAN!!!"

In the Q&A, the Cinematheque representative who moderated the panel first prompted Bennett to explain how the second Star Trek movie came to be. Bennett explained that then-studio chiefs Michael Eisner, Barry Diller and Jeffrey Katzenberg brought him to meet Charles Bluhdorn, head of Gulf+Western (Paramount Pictures' parent company at the time). Bluhdorn asked him, "Did you see Star Trek I?" Bennett recalled, "My world passed in front of me... 'Yes,' I said... He said, 'What'd you think of it?'" Bennett sighed, and meekly responded, "Well — I thought it was boring!" (The audience erupted with laughter and applause.) "And I figured my career was over at Paramount. He said, 'Could you make a better picture than that?' 'YES,' I said! He said, Could you make it for less than 45 ****ing million dollars?!" (More uproarious laughter and applause.) "I said, 'Sir, where I come from, I could make five movies for that.'"

"I then proceeded to run every Star Trek episode over a three-month period on bad 16mm prints, uh, because I had never seen Star Trek!" Bennett admitted. "I have an excuse — I was the developer and producer on Mod Squad, and in Star Trek's final year, we're the guys that knocked them off the air!"

That comment was met by a roomful of good-natured boos. Meyer interjected, "He did his penance on the Star Trek movies!"

"So I saw 76, 77 episodes I guess," Bennett continued. "I staggered out of the projection room, and I vividly remember that I thought that one-third were absolutely brilliant, and one-third were okay, and one-third were forgettable. But of all of them, there was one I could not put down — that was 'Space Seed.'" The last lines of dialog in that episode, where the Enterprise crew wondered what would become of Khan and his gang in exile, prompted Bennett to pursue the storyline that came to be — as long as he could "get [Ricardo] Montalban off of Fantasy Island," which he obviously did.

Takei echoed some of Bennett's sentiments regarding "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." "It was wonderful with 'Star Trek II,' because we got back to the sense of what Star Trek as a TV series was like," he said. "Because as fine a film as Robert Wise made, it didn't have the feel or the rhythm or the sense of the TV Star Treks. And with this one, with Harve who brought all of his TV experience and background and sense of storytelling — AND the more limited budget that we had — we were back on the television rhythm." Takei gave Bennett much of the credit for the success of "Khan." "This man, I think, really did save the Star Trek legacy," he concluded to big applause.

Meyer was not so quick to criticize "The Motion Picture." "You won't get me to knock that movie, because I think without it, without Robert Wise having gone boldly where nobody went before, I don't think our movie would be as good. I think we learned a lot from watching it."

Meyer went on to explain that his recent experiences producing and promoting the DVD have given him a new viewpoint on his involvement with the film. "I approached this really — you should pardon the pun — from an alien perspective. I didn't really understand this until I saw it last week [at the Paramount premiere], but the whole movie was an attempt to explain this universe to me. And it began with my putting that title, 'In the 23rd century...' [at the opening of the film]. I said I was doing this for my father, because he won't know what the hell it is unless I explain it to him. Then I realized last week that it wasn't just my father that needed the explanations — it was me trying to reconcile my somewhat flatfooted worldview."

Koenig got some of the biggest laughs talking about how Khan could recognize Chekov's face when his character was not around during the original incident. He said that when he read the script, "I immediately saw that Chekov could not have been recognized by Khan, because I was not in 'Space Seed.' I was faced with a real [dilemma] between professional ethics and personal survival. Naturally I chose the latter. I simply didn't mention it, hoping that it would go away."

But then Takei talked Koenig into giving his explanation as to how Khan recognized Chekov, one he used to tell at conventions, and Koenig fired it off rapidly and dramatically: "Actually I was in Space Seed... I was at the time suffering from [an ailment] called Malapropsky's Malady, which is a kind of 23rd-century version of Montezuma's Revenge, and I was ensconced in the bathroom and there for hours and hours, while poor Mr. Khan, genetically engineered kidneys about to explode, pounded pitifully on the bathroom door, banging, banging, and when the doors swung open, I stepped out, and he said..." (He went into an impression of Montalban) "Yoooou! Yoou, I will never forget!!"

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