http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05Shatner-t.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all“I. Have. Striven. For. Genius. All. My. Life.
But I have known failure.”
The Many Iterations of
William Shatner
STAGE AND SCREEN Shatner in, clockwise from top left, "The World of Suzie Wong,"
"The Brothers Karamazov," "T.J. Hooker" and "Star Trek."By PAT JORDAN
Published: September 3, 2010He’s late. He calls to explain. “A mix-up,” he says, and then, “I read all your stories.” Pause. “You. Are. A. Grrreat. Writer.” Another pause. “What’s your name?” I tell him. He says, “Of course it is.” I ask what his name is. “MY NAME? I. Am. William. Shatner!”
Well, yes, but which
William Shatner? The child actor from Canada, descended from Eastern European rabbis? The 23-year-old Shakespearean whom
Sir Tyrone Guthrie called the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s most promising actor? The young actor who made his debut on Broadway two years later, in 1956, in “Tamburlaine the Great,” then appeared in his first Hollywood film, “The Brothers Karamazov,” with
Yul Brynner in 1958 and starred on Broadway in “The World of Suzie Wong” that same year and “A Shot in the Dark” in 1961? That actor was mentioned in the same breath as his contemporaries
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Robert Redford — until, without explanation, his career faded before it bloomed. The great movie roles weren’t coming his way, so in the ’60s, waiting for stardom, he took parts in forgettable movies like “The Outrage” and “Incubus”; guest roles on TV dramas like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone”; parts on TV serials like “Route 66,” “Gunsmoke” and “Dr. Kildare.” At 35, he was a working actor who showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheap and always answered his phone. In 1966, he accepted a starring role in a sci-fi series called “Star Trek,” joining a no-name cast, some of whom later accused him of being pompous, self-aggrandizing, clueless and insufferably William Shatner, which became his greatest role once he finally accepted the fact of it.
After “Star Trek” was canceled in 1969, he appeared in more schlock movies — “Big Bad Mama,” “The Devil’s Rain” — and as the lead in a TV series, “Barbary Coast,” that never caught on. So he guest-starred on game shows: “The Hollywood Squares,” “Celebrity Bowling,” not even a regular among C-listers. But during the ’70s, “Star Trek” became a cult phenomenon in syndication. Conventions. Star worship. He fought it at first — in a skit on “Saturday Night Live” years later he told the Trekkies to “get a life” — but finally succumbed to the adulation. From 1979 to 1994, he starred in the first seven “Star Trek” movies, on which he capitalized by later cranking out (with co-authors) a basketful of “Star Trek” novels.
After he was killed off from the “Star Trek” movies, he began doing commercials, because, he said, “every day I realized I would not be a star.” He was 66, beefy, no longer matinee-idol handsome. As always, he worked cheap. In 1997, he took a modest salary (and stock options) to become a spokesman for a little-known online discount-travel company, Priceline. As the pompous
Priceline pitchman, he became an Internet sensation among the hip-and-cynical blogger set, which thought he was hilarious in spoofing himself. He didn’t know who this William Shatner character was, but he played to it anyway, which helped lead him to a role in the mid-2000s on the television series “The Practice” and its spinoff, “Boston Legal,” that earned him two Emmys and a Golden Globe. He played the pompous, clueless, self-aggrandizing 70-something lawyer
Denny Crane, suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s, which Crane calls “mad cow.” William Shatner the man was playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner. Shatner has said he once wore a William Shatner mask on Halloween — “Nobody knew who I was.”
But the William Shatner character is so famous that
The New York Daily News has said, “It’s now William Shatner’s universe — we’re just living in it.” That universe will expand a bit more on Sept. 23, when the sitcom “$#*! My Dad Says” makes its premiere on CBS. Shatner plays the hard-boiled father of a feckless 28-year-old,
Justin Halpern, who comes back to live at home. The real-life Halpern began posting his father Sam’s sensible but foulmouthed advice to him over a year ago on Twitter. After attracting more than a million followers, he turned his material into a book with the same name as his Twitter feed (slightly less printable than the sitcom’s title), which reached No. 1 on
The New York Times ’s hardcover nonfiction list.
In a driving rain at 10 o’clock one morning in mid-July, I met Shatner, who is 79, and his fourth wife,
Elizabeth, who is in her 50s, at Bret and Susi Day’s Grey Ridge Farm in the rolling horse country west of Lexington, Ky. For 25 years, Shatner has raised, bred and shown saddlebred horses. His wife, to whom he has been married for 9 years, has been involved with horses since she was a child in Indiana. That night and the next, the Shatners were competing at the Lexington Junior League’s horse show.
Shatner got out of his red S.U.V., oblivious to the rain, and ordered me to follow them to Starbucks. “You have caught us in a maelstrom of activity,” he said. “And now you are caught up in our maelstrom.”
The maelstrom began when I tried to follow Shatner in my car through the sheets of rain. He weaved in and out of traffic as if trying to ditch me. At Starbucks, Liz got out to buy breakfast; Shatner parked, and I got into his truck. “I often conduct interviews in my truck,” he said. “I thought you’d be amused.” Then he told me he was nervous about this interview. “Why?” I asked. “At this stage you’re inviolable.”
“But you can write weird things about me,” he said. “How a little dribble comes out of my mouth. It’s irksome to read about someone I don’t recognize. It frightens me.” Shatner is shameless when it comes to his acting and his public persona. There is little he will not do, no humiliation he will not embrace, to make his fans laugh. He once boasted that he did “not let things like dignity” hold him back. Yet, as a man, Shatner is terrified he will look foolish. He said once in a book that his greatest fear is that his last acting job will be his last acting job. “After 70 years, the fear never leaves me,” he told me.
Shatner became an actor at 6, he said, when he realized he could “make people laugh and cry.” He grinned. “Sometimes they laughed when I played drama and cried when I played comedy.” Then, stentorian again, he intoned: “I. Have. Striven. For. Genius. All. My. Life. But I have known failure.” Shatner was interviewed once by a snarky British talk-show host, who showed scenes from Shatner’s TV cop show, “T. J. Hooker,” and asked, “What do you think about your acting?” Shatner replied: “Oh, I was terrible. How could I have played it that way?” Outside Starbucks, Shatner said to me: “If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right. Sometimes you shouldn’t work so hard” to entertain. Then, softly, he said: “I never thought of myself as a great actor, like
Olivier. I was a working actor. I entertained people and always tried to be terrific at whatever it was.” His problem and his salvation. He played so many different roles that “people couldn’t define me like they could
De Niro. I took whatever work came my way to pay the bills, even if it wasn’t a decent role.” His motto was “Work equals work,” which destroyed any hope he had of being taken seriously as an actor but also brought him longevity, wealth and fame. “I was always grubbing,” he said. “But I was saying the words somewhere.” He leaned toward me and said, with mock import, “I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.” He put his hand on my knee, squeezed gently, then said with breathless intimacy: “I said this one line for Priceline 20 times. I struggled to get the nuance. My silence reverberated in the ether.” His face was close to mine, as if imparting a great secret. “If you add a car and a hotel room, you will get an even better price from
Priceline.com.” I nodded. “See! You got it!” Then, matter-of-factly, he straightened up and emphasized how much satisfaction that one line gave him. “A pro takes the job knowing it’s not a great role, just a paying job. But every word has music in it. My satisfaction is trying to reach that music.”
I asked if he regrets anything about his career. “Regret is the worst human emotion,” he said. “If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I’m content.”
What makes him content, besides the money, is the adulation he gets from his fans. People thank him for the years. Six-year-olds, 20-something bloggers, old ladies. “Bloggers think I’m cool,” he said. “I wish I knew what it was about me that was cool so I can repeat it. I’ve been in front of people their entire life. Oh, there are so many iterations of William Shatner.”
It was the Internet generation that pushed his fame to its current height. Shatner said with wonder: “I learned the name was
Priceline.com. You mean dot-com is a thing? Someone licensed dot-com? They’re making money off it? That was my education to the Internet.” So he hired someone recently out of college to teach him the mysteries of the Web. Priceline paved the way to Denny Crane, when
David E. Kelley, the creator of “The Practice” and “Boston Legal,” saw the commercial, and that role then led to “$#*! My Dad Says,” about which Shatner had doubts. “Sitcoms have problems,” he said. “How do I play through the laugh track?” When we met, he also didn’t have a handle on the father yet. “He seems to be a codger, but he isn’t,” he told me. “He’s irascible, but is it an act?” When CBS was filming the pilot, the real
Sam Halpern stood up and called out: “That’s not right. I drink bourbon.” Justin Halpern told me that when the two men met “they said hello, took a picture, then parted ways.”
Liz returned with our espressos and oatmeal. Shatner complained about his oatmeal and ordered me not to eat mine. I told him it was fine. He said: “Do. Not. Eat. It.” Liz gasped and said, “No, no, no!” She grabbed Shatner’s espresso out of his hand. “That’s the one with caffeine.” She glanced at me and said, “The one thing Bill doesn’t need is caffeine.”
Ten minutes later, I was weaving in and out of traffic, passing 18-wheelers in the rain, trying to keep up with Shatner. I pulled up alongside his S.U.V., lowered my window and was drenched with rain. “I need gas!” We found a gas station. While my car was being fueled, I noticed Liz was gone from his truck. Shatner grinned. “She was a pain,” he said. “So I let her out by the side of the road.” Liz emerged from the restroom.
Twenty minutes later, we reached the Alliance Stud stables. Once inside, Shatner told me, “I am a champion athlete.” Liz went to visit the stall of their horse
Call Me Ringo, then hurried back and said, breathlessly, “He’s lying down.” By the time a trainer gave Ringo a shot as a precautionary measure, the horse was up. Liz said, “Wasn’t it lucky I found him, honey?”
We went into a dirt ring where Shatner’s horse
Thunderbolt was tethered to a sulky, the two-wheeled carriage used in harness racing. Shatner climbed in and said, “My trainer adjusted the stirrups for me for tonight’s competition.” Shatner trotted his sulky around the ring, picking up speed, cutting his corners more and more sharply, sweating heavily as he tried to control his 1,500-pound horse. Standing beside me, Liz said, “
Winston Churchill said, ‘The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.’ ”
Shatner got out of his sulky breathing heavily as Liz mounted her horse, which had no sulky. She sat ramrod straight, smiling, struggling to control the powerful animal as she circled the ring, faster and faster. Shatner called out: “Don’t slow down! Don’t let him panic!” He grabbed his camera and took pictures of Liz. Shatner said, “Faster!” Liz said, “I’m done.” Shatner said: “No, you’re not done. One more picture.”
Back on the highway, we drove north furiously in the sheeting rain. I lost Shatner in the traffic and the spray. I swerved into the left lane and cut off a truck; the driver nailed his horn. I swerved back, sped up and caught up to Shatner. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, where Liz had a meeting for the World Equestrian Games. Shatner and his wife are on the Governor’s Advisory Board for the games, which run from Sept. 25 to Oct. 10. Liz hurried through the rain into a building. I got back into Shatner’s truck. I asked him how long he can keep up his furious pace before he retires. He snapped: “Retire! Retire! You mean go fishing in Montana? What does that mean: you hated the whole life you lived? I love to act, write, generate ideas. I’m crazy about horses, my wife, my kids” — he has three grown daughters — “my grandkids, my next part, the words that I learn so that they come out indigenously.”
Shatner once said that he never thought he’d get old, then he got old, and he still didn’t think he was old, although now he admitted, “I’m a couple of steps slow.” He added, “I dream about running lightly, sailing through the air.” If he just keeps moving, on the run, death won’t catch him. He’s embarrassed by his age. It angers him that people think he’s old, he told me. “Time for me to go slobbering into a home! My. Juices. Are. Flowing.”
Still, when he gets a pain in his chest, he’s perhaps more likely to think heart attack, not pulled muscle. But there are upsides to his age, too. Into his fourth marriage, he said, he finally understands the institution. It’s about castration, he said, adding, “We are getting into misogyny here.” Age has also taught him more about what he called the nuances of acting. “A subtlety abounds in communication that only appears as we get older,” he said. “I’m able to bring more empathy in creating a character I couldn’t reach years ago. I couldn’t have played Denny Crane years ago.”
If Shatner is to be lauded for any one thing in his life, it is likely to be his brilliant characterization of Denny Crane — if, in fact, it’s a characterization. Crane seems so close to Shatner that it’s almost impossible to separate the two. Indeed, “Kelley did the reverse of what most writers do,” Shatner told me. He didn’t just “write the character first, then get me to play it.” He also observed Shatner, then fleshed out the character from his observations. (Kelley, for his part, says he conceived the Crane character first.)
Some of the parallels seem downright cruel. Crane is a clueless fool. He suffers from memory loss, impotence and egomania that is almost pathological. But on rare occasions he has brilliantly lucid moments. Crane says of his career: “I wish I was never great. Because . . . I remember. When God strips you of your talent, he should at least have the decency to strip away the memory of having had it.”
In one episode,
Alan Shore, a younger lawyer and Crane’s friend, played by
James Spader, says: “You’re trying to have the first laugh on yourself so that when others snicker, as they no doubt will, you can pretend they’re laughing with you instead of at you. But they will be laughing at you, Denny.” At such moments in the series, a typical response from Crane is, “Every time somebody counts me out of the game, I surprise them.”
At one point during the final season of the series, Crane and Shore are smoking cigars, drinking Scotch and talking about their day as they regularly do at night. Shore exhales and says: “Denny, you have defied the odds your entire life. . . . We’ll all be dead and buried, and you’ll still be out there doing Priceline commercials.” This is not the only moment of self-awareness in the series. In one episode, Crane and Shore are splashing around in a pool, each one trying to rescue the other from drowning until they are both rescued by a lifeguard. It is an eerie reminder of the death of Shatner’s third wife,
Nerine, who drowned in their swimming pool in 1999 while Shatner was out to dinner.
Kelley told me that Shatner never complained about some scenes being “too close to the bone.” The actor was “always willing to make fun of himself,” Kelley said. “Sometimes he was in on the joke, sometimes not.”
Candice Bergen, who also starred in “Boston Legal,” told me: “Everyone noticed the similarities. There were some difficulties, but I’m not the one to reveal them.” As Kelley put it, initially, at least,“Bill and Denny were both aging icons trading on their currency from their past.”
When I told Shatner I experienced a moment of mad cow when I couldn’t find my car in my hotel parking lot, he grimaced, annoyed. Why? “Gas pains,” he explained. Then he brightened and added: “Denny was a wun-der-ful role. There’s a little bit of every actor in a role. The sadness of the character was very close to my consciousness. It’s hard to play an old fool, non sequiturs, which is all Denny was. Then I realized he thought his life was a TV show. That helped me.” It helped because Shatner’s life seems at times to be a TV show lived in public, a benign “Truman Show.”
Liz came running from the World Equestrian Games meeting. “Oh, honey,” she said. “They loved my ideas.”
At 3 in the afternoon, we slid into a booth at Tony Roma’s restaurant in Lexington. I told Shatner I was exhausted from chasing him all over in the rain. “I was just trying to torment you,” he said. The waiter appeared. I said I wanted a salad for an appetizer, and Shatner interrupted: “No! He’ll have the ribs appetizer.” I said I didn’t want the ribs. “You’re having the ribs,” he said. “They’re delicious.” Liz said, “But honey, he doesn’t want the ribs.” Shatner said: “He’s. Having. The. Ribs.” Then, sharply, he added: “This is the man’s table. Go sit over there at the woman’s table.” Liz ignored him and began talking about the equestrian games. Shatner shrugged, as if defeated. When the ribs arrived, we all picked at them. “These are good,” I said. “I think I’ll have them as a main course, too.” But Shatner said: “No. Have something else.” I said, “But I want the ribs!” Shatner said: “Some. Thing. Else.” I ordered a sandwich. The waiter asked if I wanted coleslaw or fries. Shatner answered, “He’ll have the fries.” I said I wanted the coleslaw. Shatner said: “I. Want. The. Fries.” I pointed out that he was having a baked potato. He said: “All right. I’ll let you have some of my potato.”
While we were eating, Shatner said: “We didn’t talk enough about ‘Bleep My Dad Says.’ It’s inconceivable to me the boy went back to live with his father. I couldn’t at that age. Talk about failure.” He looked pained. “I still don’t have a handle on the father. Or sitcoms. Sitcoms play the joke, not the character. They telegraph the laugh.” His voice got shrill. “Don’t let ’em laugh! Don’t let ’em laugh! Then let ’em laugh, and it’s a bigger laugh.”
Our main course arrived. Shatner reached across the table and began eating my fries. “Mmm, good!” he said. When I remarked that he was eating them all, he said, “Eat my potato.” Shatner purred as he ate. Then he told me again he still doesn’t have a handle on the father. I mentioned my father: an orphan, a gambler, a con man who never understood love. Shatner nodded, peppered me with questions, said: “Hmm. Very interesting.”
We ordered espresso. Liz told the waiter, “Decaf for my husband.”
Shatner was complaining now that “Bleep’s” writers “write a funny script, then they change the words for a better laugh when I’m on the floor.” He shook his head. I told him that once I used the word “miasma” in a story, and my editor tried to change it. “Hmm. Mi-as-ma. A wun-der-ful word.”
After lunch, we walked through the mall. Shatner, in a T-shirt, sweat pants and sneakers, stepped quickly, bowlegged, like a cowboy hunched forward. We stopped at an art gallery that was exhibiting Liz’s flower photographs. She provided an enthusiastic commentary: “Here’s a heart growing out of a rose to show the continuum of love, and this one is symbolic of eternal beauty.”
An old woman, trailing her son behind her, interrupted Liz. She introduced Shatner to her 46-year-old son and said, “He’s watched the ‘Star Trek’ reruns since he was 6.” Her son stared at Shatner, tongue-tied. Shatner nodded and smiled. Liz was still talking about her photographs. Another person, a Frenchman, approached Shatner. He said he was a “Star Trek” fan, too. Shatner nodded, took Liz’s hand and began backing out of the gallery. The Frenchman followed. Shatner turned with Liz and walked quickly toward the exit with the Frenchman pursuing, still talking at him. They escaped into the rain.
Later that evening, I sat with Shatner and his wife in box seats close to the horse ring at Red Mile’s Paddock Park, watching the first competitors. The stands were sparsely occupied on account of the overcast clouds and the threat of rain. Beside me, Shatner munched on part of a Cuban sandwich, which he had been given by the woman sitting behind us. Everyone there knows him, he said, “the Hollywood interloper among elegant, rich, old money,” but no one bothers him.
Shatner said he doesn’t even break even with his horses. “Well,” I countered, “at least you got your $600 million from your Priceline stock,” an amount cited in a recent newspaper article. “That’s absurd,” he said. “If I wasn’t working, I’d be broke in 10 years. A horse owner once told me, ‘Never buy anything that eats while you sleep.’ ” He watched a young rider and said: “I like the way she’s controlling her horse. He’s on the edge of wildness.” The rain came just as Shatner got up to change into his black-and-gold silks for his competition. Liz put her hand on his arm and said, “Be safe, honey.”
Shatner entered the ring on his sulky at the same time as four other competitors. Thunderbolt pranced around the ring in the rain. Mud splattered Shatner’s glasses. After the competition, in which Shatner finished second, he pulled his sulky close to Liz in the stands. He had a huge grin on his face. The fans all laughed and cheered him.
I got back to my hotel room at midnight, spent after my 14 hours with William Shatner. I lay down, fully clothed and turned on the television. A Priceline commercial! Two William Shatners! An evil one with a black goatee and a good one. The good one looked at me through the screen and told me what a great deal he had for me.
The following morning, I went to Bret Day’s farm. “Bill never does the actor thing here,” Day told me. “He just wants to be a guy in the horse world.” He said that when they go out to dinner, he likes to drink Budweiser, but “Bill makes me drink these fancy beers.”
Shatner and his wife arrived at 9 o’clock. He and I sat on a bench outside and talked about last night’s competition. Then he leaned toward me and said with breathy faux intimacy that he knew how to play the father in “$#*! My Dad Says” now. “I think he should have been brought up in an orphanage, a gambler and a con man who had to hustle for love.” I said, “That’s my father!” He grinned and said, “I’ll send you an acknowledgment.” I told him to send me a check. He said, “An acknowledgment.”
An S.U.V. parked nearby. A mother, father and their children got out. The mother saw Shatner and said: “Oh, I’m so excited! You’re the only person I ever wanted to meet. Will you take a picture with me?” He stood up and posed with her. The woman asked, “Where’s Alan Shore?” Shatner pointed to me and said, “He’s filling in for Alan today.”
After that, the family went into the stables. Shatner sat down beside me and said: “You know, some horses don’t get along with one trainer or rider but do with others. It’s like actors who don’t get along with a director. I mean, what’s not to get along with? Do. The. Job.”
Another S.U.V. pulled up. A beautiful young woman got out. Shatner and I fell silent. We watched her until she disappeared into the stables. We looked at each other. “I saw her in Kroger the other day,” Shatner whispered, “but I was afraid to go up to her.” He leaned closer to me and said, “Age is filled with a . . . miasma of fear.”
I asked him about “Star Trek.” Serious now, he said: “I never thought it’d become a big deal, just 13 episodes and out. I didn’t think I was hard to get along with. There were a few disaffected actors who came in once a week. I had nothing to do with them. Friendly! I was working seven days a week, learning 10 pages of dialogue a day. They had one line! Then after the show was canceled and the ‘Star Trek’ phenomenon began, those actors would go to the conventions. They’d get applause, praise, and begin to think, ‘Hey, I was wonderful, and Shatner stole the spotlight.’ ”
Which was the beginning of the William Shatner character. Shatner said: “Then that character was foisted on me by people like yourself in the press. It’s your fault!” Shatner complained that he never recognizes himself in any articles written about him. I said that’s because he gives writers the wrong answers. We riffed, playing the egomaniacal writer and the clueless actor. I asked him a long convoluted question. He put on an innocent expression and said, “I just act because I like it.” Wrong answer, I said. He looked chastised and said: “Really? What should I say?” I told him. He said, “Let’s try again.” He repeated verbatim what I told him, then added, “Better?”
We got serious again, got back to this William Shatner character. “They said I was this William Shatner character, and I figured I had to be it,” he said. “Pompous, takes himself seriously, hardheaded.” Shatner said that that character evolved slowly, until one day he realized he couldn’t change it. “So I played it. But I didn’t see it. That character doesn’t seem like me to me. I know the real William Shatner.” He laughed. “At least one of us should.” I asked him if the real William Shatner is like the Wizard of Oz, manipulating us all from behind a velvet curtain. He shook his head no, then said: “I always did assume they were laughing at me. Lately it’s come to my attention they are laughing with me.”
That evening, I met Shatner, Liz and her mother and sister at an expensive Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. The maître d’ looked around the empty room and led us to a big, exposed table in the center. I whispered to him, “How about the banquette with the wall around it?” Shatner brightened. “Good idea!” he said. Then, crestfallen, he added, “I wish I’d thought of that.” We sat at the banquette, and Shatner ordered a glass of 30-year-old Scotch for himself and me. I told him I preferred bourbon. He said: “You’re. Having. Scotch.”
