Up Till Now (19 page)

It was terrible. Marcy and I were going to be late for the Oscars.

I got out of the car. I grasped the arm of one of the brawlers to
alert him that I was there. I didn’t want to get hit by a wild blow. I held up my hand in front of the second man and said firmly, “I’m breaking this up.”

It seemed obvious that both men had been driven by their machismo to get into it a lot deeper than they liked—and were happy that someone was stopping them. The second man glanced over my hand at my face. He seemed shocked. “Captain
Kirk
!” he said.

Almost instantly both men relaxed. The anger just drained right out of them. Of course they had to stop—Captain Kirk had taken charge of the situation!

That was the power of the
Star Trek
franchise. While we were doing the show, Leonard, more than anyone else, worried about being typecast. “When the part was first offered to me,” he remembers, “I had a conversation with Vic Morrow, who had starred in the successful series
Combat!
I told him I was concerned about what playing this character might do to my career. He told me, ‘You have three choices. You can do it in total makeup so nobody knows who’s underneath the makeup, or do it for the money and when it’s over you take the makeup off and you’re ready to go to work, or you can do it recognizably and hope it helps your career.’

“I didn’t want to hide inside the character. I thought, if this thing works I want people to know that this actor did it. I was proud enough to want the credit for giving that performance.”

But in its initial run
Star Trek
had not been successful enough for any of the actors to become typecast.
Star Trek
was just a few lines on our résumés and an occasional small check. Probably Leonard had a little more difficulty than anyone else because his character was so unique. When the show was canceled all of us went back to the work of being an actor. Leonard, for example, began touring with his play
Vincent
, and eventually joined the cast of
Mission: Impossible
for two seasons.

It was only after the show unexpectedly became an international hit that all of the actors became well known and strongly identified with their characters. But by the time that happened all of us were hard at work on a variety of other projects. So until I began appearing
at conventions and making the
Star Trek
movies I hadn’t seen any members of the cast besides Leonard since the day I had walked off the set for the last time. We’d worked together on the television series and on six
Star Trek
motion pictures, and then we’d gone in different directions. That’s what an actor’s life is like.

I had always assumed my relationships with everyone else in the cast were fine. Maybe we hadn’t become good friends, but to my memory there had not been any difficulty, any bad feelings. And truthfully, for most of my life I’ve had very few close friends. I’ve had many acquaintances, there are so many people whom I’ve liked and admired, but almost no one beyond my wives with whom I felt comfortable talking about the things that mattered. So the fact that I hadn’t maintained friendships with any other members of the cast seemed very normal to me. That’s why I was shocked many years later to learn about the deep animosity several members of the cast had toward me.

In the early 1990s I had just finished interviewing Nichelle Nichols for a book I was writing,
Star Trek Memories,
when she told me, “I’m not finished yet. I have to tell you why I despise you.” As this wasn’t
Saturday Night Live
I knew she was serious. Despise me? I didn’t understand that at all. That possibility had never even occurred to me. She began explaining, telling me that while we were making the series I had been completely self-absorbed; not only hadn’t I been supportive of the other actors, at times I’d even been responsible for them losing time on screen and even took lines away from them.

When I considered this, I realized she probably was right. I was the star, Leonard Nimoy and I were in the middle of almost every scene, Dee Kelley was also in the majority of the scenes, so it hadn’t even occurred to me that Nichelle and Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Jimmy Doohan had to fight for every minute on camera. Their careers depended on it. I was so intent on telling the story that I never focused on their needs or desires. The only thing I could say in my defense was that I never intentionally tried to hurt another actor. Perhaps I was ignorant, but I was never mean.

I discovered that the rest of the supporting cast felt very much
the same way, but only Jimmy Doohan refused to speak to me. Doohan was particularly critical of me, both as an actor and a person. Obviously there wasn’t anything I could do but take it. While I thought his comments were extreme and truly unjustified—and maybe even petty—I certainly wasn’t going to get into an argument with him. The fact is that Leonard and Dee Kelley and I worked full days five days a week, while the other members of the cast came in as they were needed. When the show ended, as far as I knew, everybody was satisfied. Then the conventions started and the actors would go to the conventions and get standing ovations. Slowly, I think, the supporting players began to consider themselves lead actors and no longer wanted to take a backseat. In some ways their perception of reality changed. But even after being criticized I do think of the cast with affection on some level.

And at least
they
didn’t call me wooden!

What I would rather remember is that working together—all of us—we had made entertainment history; we’d created a multibillion-dollar franchise with beloved characters that has been seen, and reseen, and rereseen, and... and in doing so we’d made an indelible impression on American culture and changed countless lives. The Smithsonian Institution has held a major
Star Trek
exhibit and the Las Vegas Hilton is the site of
Star Trek:The Experience
, a themed attraction featuring rides and a show. Dee Kelley, Dr. McCoy, used to say that his greatest thrill was the number of people who told him that they had entered the medical profession because of him. Similarly, both Leonard and I have often been told by people that they had become an engineer because of
Star Trek
, or a physicist, or an astronomer, or a pilot. Astronauts have told me they first started dreaming of going into space when they watched the show.

Just imagine what the world would be like if the other series pilots I’d done had made the same impact on society as
Star Trek
. If
Alexander
had been successful tens of thousands of people would have become soldiers and armies would have swept through the Middle East and then...Well, if
For the People
had achieved the same level of success as
Star Trek
we would have become a nation of
countless lawyers and I’m certain you can imagine what the result of that would be!

Fortunately, it was
Star Trek
. Naturally, we had a very special relationship with the American space program. As it turned out, a NASA executive discovered that every time they launched a manned rocket our ratings went up, meaning people were very interested in space; and when our ratings went up Congress voted more money for the space program. In fact, the prototype space shuttle, which was used primarily to perform tests in the atmosphere, was named the
Enterprise
. NASA officials often invited us to launches, and finally I decided to go to one of them. They treated me as space royalty, eventually allowing me to sit inside the LEM, the moon landing module, with an astronaut. I was lying in the hammocklike seats pretending to be flying this module, looking out of the small windows at the universe displayed around us just as the astronauts would see it. The astronaut, who was teaching me how to fly this craft, told me to look at a certain section of the star system—and as I did, flying beautifully across the entire horizon came the Starship
Enterprise.

As I climbed down from the LEM several thousand NASA engineers started applauding. Several of the brilliant men and women who actually had designed and built this craft that would soon land Americans on the moon came forward to present me with an intricate scale model of the
Enterprise
that they had spent hours putting together. As they told me how difficult it was to complete, the model broke into pieces. I looked at it, and when the laughter subsided I pointed out, “It isn’t rocket science, you know.”

Perhaps the most memorable story I’ve heard about the impact of the show was told to me by a limo driver. He had picked me up at my home to take me to the airport and we’d driven only a short distance when he pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped. “I have to tell you a story,” he said.

Oh man, I thought, what’s going to happen now? There are certain encounters all well-known people have with fans that are less than pleasant. Sometimes they are dangerous. My hope was that this was the usual, “I’ve written a screenplay that would be perfect for
you and I know you’ll want to hear all about it. That’s why we were brought together. Okay, page one, scene one. A beautiful day but storm clouds are gathering . . .” But this wasn’t one of those stories at all. “When I was a prisoner in Vietnam,” he began. He had spent several years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He told me the most terrible story about being chained in cages, tortured, beaten, and deprived of food and water. But one of the few things that kept him going, he explained, that kept them
all
going, was that they kept themselves alive mentally by playing the
Star Trek
game, in which they would play our roles. By constantly changing roles and doing different segments from memory, they kept their sanity and hope alive.
Star Trek
had enabled him to survive, he told me, and he just wanted to thank me.

By the time he’d finished telling me that story both of us had tears running down our faces. And he hadn’t written a screenplay.

It’s just astonishing that a television show would have that kind of power, that it could affect scientists and soldiers and be celebrated from the Smithsonian to Las Vegas. But there was just one more little thing that ensured Captain Kirk would survive the end of the voyages of the
Enterprise
. In the mid-1970s director John Carpenter was creating the character of Michael Myers for his horror film
Halloween
. After briefly debating using a clown mask, production designer Tommy Wallace bought a $1.98 Captain Kirk mask from Burt Wheeler’s Magic Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Then he widened the eye holes and spray-painted the mask kind of a bluish-white. Michael Myers was born.

I have often gone trick-or-treating with my children and later my grandchildren. The concept of going door-to-door collecting candy has always been appealing to me. One year I was visiting my daughter Leslie and wanted to go out trick-or-treating with my grandchildren—but I had no mask or costume to wear. Hmm, now what could I possibly do?

It was absolutely perfect. I put on the William Shatner mask and disguised myself as myself. Everybody who opened their doors recognized me, but nobody knew who I was.

I never forget how much I owe to
Star Trek
—the longevity of my career, so many wonderful experiences at conventions and other events, the checks that enabled me to finally get more than eighteen hundred dollars in the bank, and almost two very large bowls of really good Halloween candy.

Let
me tell you how death gave birth to an idea: after I brought my father’s body back with me to Montreal I had to pick out the coffin in which he would be buried. My father had come to Canada as an immigrant in the early years of the twentieth century. He’d struggled all his life to bring his entire family over from the old country. So he knew the value of a dollar and that’s what he taught me.

I was standing in the showroom looking at different types of coffins. What do I know about coffins? What features are included? What options are available? I knew nothing at all about coffins. And as I looked at the rows of coffins beautifully displayed I could sort of hear my father’s voice, telling me, “What, Billy, are you kidding? Forget about that lead-lined stuff, what am I going to do with that? Just get me a nice simple wooden coffin.” Which turned out, of course, to be the most reasonable.

I bought that coffin and my father lay in it. During the funeral service, as the rabbi was giving the eulogy, I turned to my sister sitting on my right and I said, “Joy, Daddy would have been very proud of me. I got a great deal on his coffin.”

She thought about that for a few seconds. “Why?” she asked. “Was it used?”

I laughed, then turned to my left and told that to my other sister. She passed it along and soon most of the people in the chapel were laughing while we were grieving for this wonderful man. It struck me then how grief and laughter fit so easily side by side, and I never forgot it.

Many years later, in August 1999, I was sitting shiva for my third wife, Nerine Shatner, who had died tragically. For those who don’t know, it is an important aspect of Jewish tradition that after the death of a loved one his or her family sits shiva for a week. During that time friends come to the house to pay their respects and console the family. There’s always a lot of food, people tell stories about the deceased, and often there’s loud laughter. It’s a truly wonderful tradition that really helps people get through the extraordinary pain that comes with the loss of someone you love.

During this period I was standing in my kitchen with several good friends, thinking about the eclectic group of people who were there at that moment. I opened the refrigerator door and this idea came to me: what if a group of struggling young comics agreed to show up at the homes of Hollywood celebrities sitting shiva where they knew they would get a very good meal and perhaps meet an agent? Basically,
they plan to use the occasion of sitting shiva to audition for whoever was in the house. Nobody walks out on shiva.

I turned from the refrigerator and within two minutes had expounded an entire outline of a story about grief and laughter. I continued developing that concept for several years and by 2007 I had a very good movie script that I began producing.

So should anyone ask you where great ideas come from, you now know the answer: great ideas come from William Shatner’s refrigerator.

Obviously I don’t know where ideas come from, but I do believe everyone has a unique vision. Given the freedom to create, everybody is creative. All of us have an innate, instinctive desire to change our environment, to put our original stamp on this world, to tell a story never told before. I’m absolutely thrilled at the moment of creativity—when suddenly I’ve synthesized my experiences, reality, and my imagination into something entirely new. But most people are too busy working on survival to find the opportunity to create. Fortunately, I’ve been freed by reputation, by the economics of success, and by emotional contentment to turn my ideas into reality. I’ve discovered that the more freedom I have to be creative, the more creative I become. Rather than diminishing as I’ve gotten older, my creative output is increasing.

The concept of
The Shiva Club,
as I’ve named this movie, is a simple one: grief can be funny. But it’s as much about dealing with mortality, a subject I’ve spent considerable time thinking about. And I’ve come to realize that among those things I most value about life is the joy of discovery. Whether it’s the taste of food or wine, the taste of friendship, of the woman I love, of an adventure, or the taste of the thrill—all are wonderful tastes of life. I know that the people who live the longest and the richest lives are looking ahead and not behind. So I immerse myself in new experiences, I dive as often as possible into the river of life. I don’t understand the concept of retirement. It’s not a bad thing to savor your memories, it can be wonderful and warming, but not at the cost of losing your excitement about the future.

I don’t want to die, yet I continually put myself in truly dangerous situations. I seem to have an on-off switch, and when it goes on, I lose sight of the potential consequences of my actions. I take risks that I shouldn’t take, but I can’t seem to help myself. My family has accepted the fact that they can’t stop me. In fact, once, as a Father’s Day gift, my daughter Leslie and her husband, Gordon Walker, gave me a certificate to go skydiving. This wasn’t something I’d ever spoken about wistfully, but they decided it would make me happy to jump out of an airplane. And of course it did, although admittedly I screamed all the way down.

I don’t know why I put myself in these situations, but I continue to do so. Perhaps because I’m afraid I’m going to miss something? So sometimes I find myself in the middle of a precarious situation, wondering, what the hell am I doing here? Am I crazy? In 2005, for example, I agreed to participate in the largest paintball fight in history to raise money for my therapeutic riding program. I had a wonderful idea—well, it seemed like a wonderful idea at the time—I would film the entire event and sell the DVD to raise even more money. But if it was going to be good entertainment it needed to have a spectacular opening. I’ve got it! This epic paintball battle was going to take place in Joliet, Illinois, and I would paramotor up the Ohio River and land on the playing field.

Can you really do that? the organizers asked me.

Why not? I responded. Once again, I was about to find out exactly why not. The preparations went very well. Four thousand people paid one hundred dollars each to participate. I was going to be the captain of one team, the greatest paintball player in the nation was going to be the captain of the opposition. I had been paramotoring several times; basically, you put a seventy-five-pound engine with a propeller and a parachute on your back and take off. It’s a glorious experience—I’ve flown with flocks of birds—but it also can be very dangerous; people have died doing this. Generally you fly about a thousand feet high at ten or fifteen miles per hour, holding a dead man’s throttle in one hand and the controls for your parachute in your other hand. By holding down the throttle the propeller creates
the wind in your parachute that keeps you aloft; when you release the throttle the engine stops and you float down and land gently. In theory.

I took off about ten miles from the playing field. It was a beautiful morning and I was following the Ohio River. I was about six hundred feet high and my hand began to sweat because I was unfamiliar with the equipment. The throttle began to slide out of my hand and I dropped to five hundred feet. It was then I noticed that there were potentially lethal power lines alongside the river. I began to sweat a little more. If necessary, I thought, I could land in the river, I’m a strong swimmer—but then I realized I was not a strong swimmer with a seventy-five-pound engine strapped to my back and wrapped in a parachute. I descended to four hundred feet.

The only thing keeping me in the air was that throttle and I was holding it down with my pinkie. I didn’t have enough altitude to release my grip and quickly grab hold again to restart the engine— besides, I was too nervous to attempt that. So I just held on with my pinkie, pressing down as hard as I could, literally holding on for life. And suddenly I realized I was in the middle of another why-amI-doing-this moment. Why am I risking my life for a stunt?

I barely made it over the river. As I looked down and saw the thousands of people gathered there for this paintball war looking up, for the first time it occurred to me that all of them had exactly the same thought in mind: I’m going to shoot Captain Kirk.

The object of a paintball war is to compile points by shooting enemy soldiers, capturing his flag, and shooting his commanding officer. Shooting me. The primary rule governing the battle is that there is no primary rule: everything is legal. You can cheat, lie, do anything you can to score points. For example, I had paused for lunch when one of my soldiers walked into my tent—and confessed he was actually a spy sent to shoot me. He’d changed his shirt to get through my lines. “But I can’t do it,” he said. “I love you and I can’t shoot you.”

“Yes, you can,” I said, and so our plot was hatched. He took me prisoner and we marched back to his headquarters. Unfortunately, as
we got close I began to feel a sharp, throbbing pain in my left arm. It had been an amazing day: after flying in a paraglider I’d been running around in the heat all morning, wearing very heavy protective clothing. I was covered with sweat. I sat down in the shade and leaned against a tree. My breathing became loud and labored. “I think I’m having a heart attack,” I said with astonishment.

The action stopped as the news spread quickly: Shatner’s having a heart attack. Instantly, people came running from all over. Somewhere behind me I could hear someone calling for an ambulance. Finally the commander of the enemy came over to help me. It was obvious he was very concerned. He leaned over, and asked, “How you feeling, Bill?”

“Fine,” I said, smashing him in his chest with the two paintballs I was hiding in my hand. “Gotcha!” Hey, it’s not my fault they forgot I was an actor. Captain Kirk lives!

The truth is that for some inexplicable reason physical fear has never bothered me as much as emotional fear. I have never worried very much about getting hurt, while I have spent many a sleepless night being terrified of failure. Terrified I would never get another acting job, terrified I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my responsibilities. During these times my daughters would refer to me as Black Bill, as in: “Dad’s being Black Bill,” meaning I was in a dark mood. I withdrew, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. After
Star Trek
was canceled, for example, I went through one of the most difficult periods of my life. I wasn’t particularly worried about myself; I’m a resilient person, I knew I would be fine, but I spent many sleepless nights worrying about how I was going to support my ex-wife and my three daughters.

Star Trek
was mostly perceived to have been an interesting and expensive failure. It had lasted only three seasons; we had just barely made enough shows to allow it to be sold in syndication. But as far as I was concerned, I’d put away my phaser forever. My greatest regret was that it did not lead to any other substantial offers, so I really had to start all over again. Leonard accepted a starring role on the already successful series
Mission: Impossible
, a role he played for two seasons and very quickly grew to despise.

Once more, I was broke. I needed to earn some money very quickly, so I decided to perform in a play on the summer circuit. I went on tour in a very flimsy British sex comedy entitled
There’s a Girl in My Soup
. When it had opened on Broadway Edwin Newman described it as “the sort of English play that prevents American theater from having a permanent inferiority complex.” I played an aging bachelor pursuing a beautiful young woman whose greatest talent was her microskirt. It was a perfect play for the suburbs. We played a different theater each week. To save money, I’d bought myself a ram-shackle pickup truck, put a camper-shell in the rear bed, and drove it cross-country with my dog. Each week I’d park the truck way in the back of the theater parking lot and live in it. Just an actor and his dog, living in the back of a truck. It was depressing beyond any imagination. I was absolutely broke, terribly lonely, terrified of failure, and starring in a comedy.

During the day I would do whatever publicity the theater management asked me to do. After each performance I would wait outside to greet the audience and thank them for coming. And then I would go home to my truck. This was the difference in life between comedy and tragedy: when I had been starting my career, if I’d been this carefree bachelor living in a truck, inviting women over to see my carburetor, it would have been a very funny situation. Instead, I’d been a working actor for decades, I’d starred in three failed TV series, and I was a divorced father of three children living in the back of a truck. That was a tragedy.

A summer later I co-starred with Sylvia Sidney and Margaret Hamilton in a Kenley Players production of
Arsenic and Old Lace
. The producer, John Kenley, had been very successful on this straw-hat circuit by bringing television stars to his theaters in Ohio. As those who worked for him know, John Kenley was a...an... interesting man. Or woman. Or both. He would spent summers in the Midwest as a man and the winters in Florida as a woman named Joan Kenley. When Merv Griffin wrote that John Kenley was “a registered hermaphrodite,” Kenley responded, “I’m not even a registered voter.” Although in his autobiography Kenley admits, “Androgyny is overrated.”