| Allen Asherman's Interview
with William Shatner - 1986
From "The Star Trek Interview Book" by Allen Asherman, available through
Pocket Books.
In this book, he's interviewed 38 people connected with STAR TREK. Excellent
book!
He's an actor, he directs, he writes, breeds championship
horses, keeps Doberman pinschers, has
hunted big game with bow and arrow, and he flies.
About the only thing he lacks is spare time. He can
be deadly serious one moment, and laugh at himself
or just about anything the next. He's William
Shatner-to millions of people, also known as
Captain James T. Kirk.
Actually, it's the other way around. Captain Kirk
is William Shatner. They share the same degree of
intensity and purpose, qualities that have pushed
Shatner to the forefront of his profession, and made
Captain Kirk a legend.
Shatner's presence and style are responsible for
much of the dramatic intensity and delicate balance of
seriousness and self-parody that is the core
of STAR TREK.
I first interviewed William Shatner with my friends
and fellow writers Steve and Envin Vertlieb during
the summer of 1969, when he was directing and
starring in There's a Girl in My Soup in Pennsylvania.
At that time, when asked if he thought whether
man was meant to fly, he responded, "If man was
meant to fly he'd have wings..." His face had
not the hint of a smile until almost 15 seconds later when
the ends of his mouth curled upward, and he added,
"...But we are flying aren't we?"
Shatner took time out from the development of
STAR TREK V for the following interview.
--------------------
AA -- Before MGM signed you to a contract, you
were previously offered one by another studio.
Why did you turn it down?
WS -- I don't know why I turned it down. It was
all the money in the world, and I needed it at the
time, but I don't know. It was some peculiar
pride of not wanting to leave the stage, or something
strange. I had no reason to do it.
AA -- Do you have any regrets concerning any decisions
you made earlier in your career?
WS -- No, I don't regret anything at this point.
That may change on the next phone call, but at the
moment I don't regret anything.
AA -- What are some of your recollections about
working with Spencer Tracy?
WS -- ...Spencer Tracy was a man who did very
much what I do on a set, and that is, he comes down
and he does his job, and then he goes back to
his dressing room. That's what he did on Judgment at
Nuremburg, and the only real thing that I can
remember about him was that he delivered a
wonderfully worked out, intricate monologue that
I was a party to, and later I said how impressed I
was. This was said with all the nerve of a stage
actor saying to a film actor how impressed I was that
he memorized all that, thinking that film actors
- because I was young at the time and I didn't know
how they worked - would read it off something.
And that suitably insulted him and he stalked off and
didn't speak to me much thereafter. [laughter]
AA -- Do you prefer to take the Parts of heroes
or villains, and do you feel that you've been typecast
as a result of STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, I don't know...I don't think in terms
of heavies and heros. A "heavy" is a hero, and a hero
should be a "heavy". I mean there should be a
mix. To make a fully-fledged character isn't to be
one-sided. The worst heavy should be shown with
as valid a life as possible. Heroes are generally the
leading men, and generally a story is written
around the leading man or the leading woman. So for me
to be typecast into playing the main part in
a story isn't bad typecasting. But there weren't any other
"spaceship" castings. I don't know how to answer
that typecasting question, because I never heard
people say, "Don't hire him," I only heard the
people say, "Would you like to do this?" So I guess the
typecasting thing has interfered, but I don't
know how.
AA -- How did you become involved with STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, Roddenberry called me in New York
and asked me to come to Los Angeles to see the
pilot that they had already tried to sell-unsuccessftifly.
The idea had been good enough that they
wanted to try again, so I came to Los Angeles
and he and I viewed this hour-and-a-half film together.
When I walked out I remember thinking it was
a very imaginative and vital idea. I thought everybody
took themselves a little too seriously. This
was very profound people doing very profound things,
whereas I would have imagined that a battleship
in space would be the same as a battleship on the
ocean, where professionals doing their job take
it as professionals will: as workaday, and things have
their rightful weight in life aboard the battleship,
so that "full speed ahead" doesn't become a very
profound, meaningful thing. That was my impression,
and we spoke about that and the recasting of the
thing that Gene intended to do. Then a script
was written, and I made suggestions that Gene kindly
said some time after had some import. So I was
helpful in the piecing together of the part of STAR
TREK in which I was involved. My general impressions
were that it was a wonderful, vital idea that
needed little change.
AA -- How much of Captain Kirk comes from your
own personality?
WS -- On series television people come and go:
usually a new writer and director every week. The
only people who don't come and go are the producer,
the cinematographer, and the actor. So with
Gene riding herd on the way that we might have
acted, and the cinematographer on the way we might
have looked, the actor's responsibility was in
the area of making the character as real as possible,
asking for changes when things did not work...I
think there's a great deal of my own personality in the
character, if only because in 79 shows, day after
day, week after week, year after year, the fatigue
factor is such that you can only try to be as
honest about yourself as possible. Fatigue wipes away any
subterfuge that you might be able to use as an
actor in character roles, or trying to delineate something
that might not be entirely you. By the second
week you're so tired that it can only be you, so I think
that in Kirk there's a great deal of me.
AA -- Kirk and Spock both have characteristics
that children have. Spock sometimes suggests a lost
little boy, and Kirk often reflects a childlike
energy level, a mischievous quality. Do You recognize
such qualities in yourself?
WS -- Well, he and I are children. Having been
actors all our lives, there is a great element of the child
in both of us, and that comes out in our everyday
life.
AA -- Were you happy with those portions of the
STAR TREK television series that relied on your
contributions?
WS -- ...In the STAR TREK series? A series is
filled with compromises. You start off with a grand
idea, and I've done four series now, two lasting
13 weeks each, and the other two lasting three years
and four-and-a-half years, so I'm two pretty
accustomed to what it feels like to do a series. A series
starts off with a great idea and then time and
fatigue affect everybody, so all everybody's trying to do
is get the words out, to occupy 52 1/2 minutes
of film time. Anything better than that is a kudos to
superhuman energy and intense desire to do better
than just adequate...To do a halfway decent series
is a Herculean task.
AA -- To what do you attribute your boundless
energy and your continued ability to portray
physically demanding roles, to retain your youth?
WS -- I don't know. I think perhaps it's genetic.
I was built for the long run, not for the short dash, I
guess. [laughter]
AA -- When was the first time you realized that
STAR TREK had a very large fan following?
WS -- Well, I think [it was] some years after
I had been doing other things and touring in plays that
somebody came up to me and asked, "Have you seen
your STAR TREK in a bar?" Apparently it was
playing in a bar...and I said, "No," and that
was the first I heard that reruns of STAR TREK were
back. But it was coincidental, out of left field
- a person having seen it in an out-of-the-way spot.
AA -- When did you get your first personal taste
of being a media celebrity? Was it ai a convention?
WS -- Yes, probably, and the conventions that
I went to in those early years were filled with
passionate fans who would assume the persona
of their various heroes. Mostly they were people
having fun. There is a fringe element out there
that thinks that I am the captain of a spaceship, and
they're difficult to deal with. They're very
voluble, and they make their presence felt far in excess of
their numbers, so I take that with a grain of
salt knowing that the vast majority of fans a" just having a
good time. But that fringe element does make
you think twice.
AA -- It must be strange being recognized while
you're out with your family going shopping or just out
for a stroll. Has being such an easily recognized
celebrity had an effect on you?
WS -- Yes, I've become very paranoid, and don't
go out and do those ordinary things to any great
extent. When I do I wear hats and glasses. I
even wore a mask in New Orleans at the Mardi Gras.
Since it's generally the custom to wear masks,
I thought I could wear a mask and walk in the streets.
Well I wore this leather mask that covered my
entire face, and people came up to me and asked,
"Aren't you William Shatner?"
AA -- And while your privacy has been so greatly
reduced, you have to recall that this is basically the
result of your practicing your craft so well.
WS -- Oh, yeah, well that's what I keep trying
to do, and I have to be reminded that it's a trade-off, the
recognition factor and the virtues of being recognized.
AA -- How does it feel to be part of a myth, known
throughout the world?
WS -- ... I don't think of it as a myth - I'm
trying to come up with a joke, but I won't do it - I think of it
as an ongoing, very practical series of problems
to solve. Right now it's a life-enhancing experience to
be in this position to guide the next STAR TREK
movie. It's my work, and it's new, and it's different
and it's really exciting. To be able to say that
after all these years in the business has got to be rather
unusual.
AA -- Do you read science fiction? And considering
your schedule, do you have any time now to read
at all?
WS -- I used to be quite an avid science fiction
reader. I haven't done much of it of late, and the
reading I've done has been other things.
AA -- Other than STAR TREK V, would you rather
appear in and direct films that are not science
fiction?
WS -- ... I don't work in that way. I'm going
to do this horse picture because I've become crazy about
horses. So I've invented a story and it has the
horses as a background, and I'm hopeful that it will be
done this summer. I'm waiting to hear about it
now, as a matter of fact. And that's a kick. Now, I've
just lost a film that I should have directed
and acted in this summer, and the horse picture would have
been done next summer. That picture was a kind
of horror film, a wonderfully inventive horror film,
which unfortunately fell through. But that looked
like it would have been terrific to do. So any good
story that comes along is what I want to do.
AA -- Are you enthusiastic about directing STAR
TREK V, or are you nervous about it?
WS -- It's probably both...I've done a lot of
directing, theater and some 12 hours of film. I don't feel
inadequate on [the] technical aspects of making
a film. On the contrary, I feel confident with the
support group behind me, which includes Harve
Bennett, and all the other people who have made the
STAR TREK [movies], plus the cinematographer
that we will choose. That will be helpful technically.
[As for] my ability to tell a story and to dramatize
it, to make it entertaining, I've been doing that all
my life as an actor, as a director, and as a
sometime writer. So what I'm really thinking - in both a film
called Bloodlines, which I'm waiting to do this
summer, and STAR TREK, which I'll do in the winter -
what I'm really doing is biting my lip in anticipation.
I can taste the joy of getting something down on
film that is entertaining. I think making a good
film shot is joyful. There's an ecstasy about doing
something really good on film: the composition
of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture...It's
palpable.
AA -- STAR TREK IV featured a generous helping
of humor, as did some of the best episodes of the
STAR TREK television series. Do you plan to feature
the element of humor in STAR TREK V?
WS -- Yes. We discovered something in STAR TREK
IV that we hadn't pinpointed in any of the other
movies - and it just shows how the obvious can
escape you - that there is a texture to the best STAR
TREK hours that verges on tongue-in-cheek but
isn't. There's a line that we all have to walk that is
reality. It's as though the characters within
the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of
living. That energy, that "joie de vivre" about
the characters seems to be tongue-in-cheek but isn't,
because you play it with the reality [that] you
would in a kitchen-sink drama written for today's life.
AA -- What are your goals with STAR TREK V?
WS -- ... The basic idea is mine, and I worked
on the story with Harve and David Lowery, who is
writing the screenplay. I hope that the end result
will reflect certain life experiences that I am going
through, because as we take the characters through
the aging process there are certain inevitable
questions one asks oneself through each passage,
each decade that we pass through, roughly. We ask
ourselves questions which are universal that
don't occur when you're younger...and so I hope that the
end result will reflect some of these questions
that I want the characters to ask. I say that because I
think it's there now, but what the final film
will show might be different. I hope it isn't.
AA -- Have you had any feedback regarding your
appearance on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and
your comedy routine regarding STAR TREK conventions
and fans?
WS -- ...Nothing really bad. On the contrary,
I think most people have taken it in the same way it was
meant to be, and that is just fun...It was solely
designed to make you laugh, and anyone who took it
more seriously than that...It was a spoof.
AA -- Do you think the television of today is
better than it was in the 1960s, when STAR TREK was
originally on the air?
WS -- I don't watch much television, but those
movies of the week, and things like that, are more
sophisticated than anything that was on in the
sixties, with some rare exceptions like STAR TREK.
AA -- What do you think accounts for the popularity
of STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, nobody has ever enunciated it. It's
what everybody perceives instinctively. It's what made
STAR TREK appealing. When asked what it is about
STAR TREK that made it popular, we all have a
standard answer. I once had a big laugh with
Leonard. I asked, "What do you say?," and he went
down the list, and I said, "Well, that's exactly
what I say." We talked about the themes and the people,
but none of us ever said [it was] the joie de
vivre, the "tap dancing," as Harve Bennett put it the other
day. Nobody talks about the tap dancing. When
I was young many years ago, Tyrone Guthrie, who
was a great English director, said to me I had
"happy feet." I was wearing white shoes in a play, and I
knew what he meant. The timing in comedy has
to do with the whole rhythm, and the rhythm comes
out vocally, with your head...and in this case
the rhythm came out on these white shoes, and I was
"tap dancing." I think that was what Harve Bennett
meant when he was talking about me tap dancing.
AA -- Is there anything you've ever wanted to
say to the fans of STAR TREK, but have never gotten a
chance to say?
WS -- Something I want to say to the fans? But
I don't know who the "fans" are. I am asked how will
the fans think about this, or what would the
fans do if they found out about that, or how will the fans
react...but I don't know who they are. The fans
are a large conglomerate of people. They're a
heterogeneous group of people. There's no single
"fan." I mean, who are we talking about? Some fans
like one thing, and some another, and their individual
tastes I can't ascertain. I never know how to
answer that question, "What do you want to say
to the fans?, " or when asked, "What will the fans
think about this?" I can't answer that question,
either. The only thing I can say is I'm trying my best to
entertain myself [with] STAR TREK, and hoping
that that sense of entertainment will be translated to
the other people, whoever else is watching STAR
TREK, because I care a great deal about STAR
TREK. I think STAR TREK is wonderful, and I'm
trying to keep it as entertaining as it has been.
That's my thought [for] anybody who likes STAR
TREK. |
