Anyone who has worked on, well, any production involving actors, has likely encountered a time when everyone in the room was struck with a fit of the giggles. That is, those blissful moments when nothing funny has necessarily happened, but a group of people is attacked by sudden overwhelming atavism. It seems that Pine, Quinto, Saldaña, and the rest of the cast were struck by such a moment … right when the entire production was falling behind schedule. The cast may have been enjoying themselves, but Abrams was decidedly not. He recalls the stress of the day, and how peeved he still was at the time-eating jocularity. He said:
“It wasn’t awesome on one particular day when we were shooting this one scene and they were all together. And it was one of those things where we just had no time. It was really late. It was just, we were way over schedule. We had all this work to do. The next day it was going to be a disaster. And it was one of those few scenes on the bridge where they were all together. Because a lot of times it’s like, two actors here, three actors here. But it was one of those scenes. And they were just all in the mood to goof off.”
Tommy Gormley was the first assistant director on the production, and J.J. Abrams recalled that he did his job well. Well, if the job was to make Abrams feel terrible about falling behind schedule.