How did you get involved in Star Trek?
Alex: The studio exec on the movie is a friend of mine and we had dinner three, four years ago. He said, “What would you think about doing Star Trek?” When Bob and I first met, he literally had an Enterprise phone, he was a die hard (fan), so I knew that this was an opportunity we would have to consider very seriously. It was very scary for us. 

Why?
Alex: [Star Trek] has been around for so long and means so much to so many people. If you don’t do it right or you violate what they perceive to be the spirit of Star Trek, then you’ve done something really bad in the world.

How did you come up with the story?
Bob: We realized no one had ever told a story of how they all met,  even though Trek’s been around for 43 years. It seemed like an opportunity to tell a great, brand new Star Trek story.

What measures were taken to keep the film hush-hush?
Alex: We were the only people to have the script. The studio didn’t even have it. They had to come to the office to read it.
Bob: The script had code words for everything.  The codeword for the set was “Corporate Headquarters.” Any memo about Trek was just a boring “Corporate Headquarters” memo. During shooting, they would take the cast in covered golf carts that no one could see into.

Were your computers kept in a safe?
Alex: No, we just carried them around.
Bob (laughs): Don’t say that! Yes, they were in a vault!
Alex: We had in our computers Transformers, the outline for Transformers 2, Fringe and Star Trek. It would have been a real disaster if someone had taken our computers. But no. No extra measures taken. Maybe we should walk with them handcuffed to our wrists or something. But here’s the thing: When we were kids, after Darth Vader said, “I am your father,” we had to wait four years to find out what happened. That was horrible and absolutely delicious. And now, people already know what the sequel is going to be. There are spoilers everywhere. It’s miserable. It takes the fun out of movie going. So many people work so hard to make a movie and then it sort of gets ruined. That’s why there’s all the secrecy.
Bob: We are trying to protect the experience.

You’ve worked a lot with directors Michael Bay (Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Island) and J.J. Abrams (Trek, Fringe, Mission Impossible III). What’s the difference between them?
Alex: Michael is incredibly fun to work with and incredibly demanding of what he wants to get out of the experience of the movie. When you are done with your first draft, because he’s been in a lot of the decisions going into that, he locks in and he doesn’t want to change it, like, “I have shot the movie in my head now.”
Bob: The difference I would say is that Michael is a fascist dictator and J.J. is like a benevolent king, kind of a King Arthur, man-on-the -street kind of leader. Michael would just tell you exactly what he needs right there. Of course, I just mean that in a fun way. Michael made us stay in a hotel three blocks from his office so he could come in and check in on us when we were writing Transformers 2. J.J. would never lock us in a hotel.

 You’ve been working together forever. How did you guys meet?
Alex: In high school, second semester senior year —
Bob: In a film class actually —
Alex: At Crossroads School in Santa Monica.

Do you hang outside of work?
Alex: Yeah, we were best men at each other’s weddings. I bring my son over to play at his pool.

Your films have a lot of boy things: space ships, explosions, folding cars. Are these interests what brought you together?
Bob: I think when we met what drew us together was the side you don’t really show most guys. We’d show each other the letters we’d written our girlfriends in the middle of difficult times and we’d actually edit each other’s letters.

Who’s the better Romeo?
Alex: Well, me of course.
Bob: Alex’s letters were definitely more sophisticated. 
Alex: Bob’s had more color. But that’s how we started writing,  actually. We started correcting those letters then we said, "Oh! We can sort of come up with words together!"