William what? That fat bloke off that Rescue 911? That guy who ruined Mr Tambourine Man? Him?
Yes. Him. I have deep admiration for William Shatner, and on this webpage I will explain why without resorting to laughing, pointing and/or sneering. Ready?
1. He has a unique acting style. His stilted words and habit of pausing between words is not, as most people will say, 'crap', but is, in fact, an extremely effective way of acting on television. In an out-of-the-ordinary show like Star Trek, you need out-of-the-ordinary acting. Look at the bland, identical style of acting used by the casts of The Bold And The Beautiful, Diagnosis Murder, Melrose Place, etc. It's dull. It's cliché. It's identical. It doesn't make you want to watch. Yet look at Shatner. A man who acts like him will stop you dead in your tracks and instantly enthrall you into the programme, whatever it is. And anyway, if you're still not convinced, it's only TV, isn't it. You don't expect Laurence Olivier. It's not Shakespeare. Yet Shatner's done Shakespeare, and very well too.
Those who say William Shatner can't act should be forced to watch the "City On The Edge Of Forever" episode of Star Trek and the "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" episode of The Twilight Zone in quick succession.
Scenes from Nightmare At 20,00 Feet
2. He's got a sense of humour. His appearance on Saturday Night Live proves this. For those who haven't seen the sketch, Shatner addresses an exceptionally geeky Star Trek convention (note the t-shirt that reads "I grok Spock") with the words "Get a life. It's just a TV show!". He then points to a Vulcan-eared Jon Lovitz and asks "You, you must be nearly thirty. Have you ever kissed a girl?", to which Lovitz looks sadly towards the floor. Click here to read a transcript. Many thanks to Mogwai for providing it.
He isn't adverse to a bit of self-mocking either, as he proved in the film Free Enterprise, where two Star Trek fans meet their hero Shatner and discover that he's making a musical of Julius Caesar, including a rap! Proof that Shatner knows the ridiculousness of The Transformed Man.
He also made fun of his famous role in the Twilight Zone in an episode of Muppets Tonight. Miss Piggy had seen a gremlin on the wing of the plane and Shatner was the unbeliever sitting next to her. (He was also reading a copy of his own book Tek War!)
He was also the only funny thing in Airplane II.
From the letters page of Mad Magazine, Issue 117, March 1968...
... and the same, nearly 30 years later. Issue 362, October 1997.
3. His singing ability. OK, so he's no Frank Ifield, but you have to remember his album, The Transformed Man (released in 1968 by Decca, #DL-75043), wasn't an entirely serious attempt at a new career as a recording artist. Of course his versions of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and Mr Tambourine Man weren't better than the originals, how could they be? But he showed a tremendous amount of moxie by even attempting to sing a song from the Sergeant Pepper album. And rather than try to sing it better than John Lennon (a seemingly impossible task) he decided to turn it into a spoken word track, like a beatnik poem. Whereas Leonard Nimoy, despite not having any sort of singing voice, tried to be a lounge singer in the style of Robert Goulet, making his albums sound awful and date quickly, Shatner's album, on the other hand, is still very listenable, even if only for novelty value.
Good news: Shatner's going to release his version of Gary Numan's Cars! I can't wait!
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Shatnerama
William Shatner
* Born: Montreal, 1931
* Lives: Los Angeles and a horse farm in Kentucky
* 1951: Moved to Ottawa to join the Canadian Repertory Theatre
* First movie: The Brothers Karamazov (1958)
* First TV series: For The People (1965 -- it lasted one season)
* Star Trek series: 1966-69
* Star Trek Movies: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979); Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982); The Search for Spock (1984);
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986); Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier (1989); Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (VI);
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
* Other movies: Airplane II (1982); Loaded Weapon I (1993);
Tekwar (1994), which Shatner also wrote.
* Other TV series: TJ Hooker (1982-87), Rescue 911 (1987-97)
* Internet Movie Database entry: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Shatner,+William
Odd bits:
From http://www.jamcaster.com/JamMoviesArtistsS/shatner_william.html:
Tuesday, July 25, 2000
By JIM SLOTEK -- Toronto Sun
MONTREAL -- He's William Shatner, Canada's Walk
Of Fame star, and he is Canadian.
Shatner, who hosted a gala last Thursday at Montreal's Just For
Laughs festival, delivered what was generally conceded to be the
best opening bit of the fest with his own spoof of Molson's I Am
Canadian rant.
TV viewers will see it this fall when Just For Laughs begins
airing new episodes on CBC. In the meantime, here it is, as
scripted by Shawn Thompson, Howard Busgang and Jebb Fink.
"Hey, I'm not a Starfleet Commander or
T. J. Hooker.
I don't live on Starship NCC dash 1701 or own a phaser.
I don't know anyone named Bones, Sulu or Spock.
And no, I've never had Green Alien Sex -- although I'm sure it
would be quite an evening.
I speak English and French, not Klingon. I drink Labatt's, not
Romulan Ale.
And when someone says to me, 'Live long and prosper,' I seriously
mean it when I say 'Get a life!'
My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg.
And Tribbles were puppets! Not real animals!! Puppets!!!
And when I speak, I never, ever, talk / like / every / word / is
/ its / own / sentence!
I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal.
I believe in Priceline Dot Com, where you never have to pay full
price for airline tickets, hotels and car rentals.
I have appeared on stage at Stratford, Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall
and at the Monkland Theatre in NDG (Notre Dame de Grace).
And yes, I've gone where no man has gone before. But I was in
Mexico and her father gave me permission.
My name is William Shatner and I AM CANADIAN."
[An mp3 file of this speech used to be available from plagarising comedy site Does My Fanny Look Big In This? but it has since disappeared. I'll put it online if anyone requests it.]
Few people know that the Star Trek theme originally had lyrics, written by Gene Roddenberry himself. It was supposed to be sung hauntingly over the credits. The lyrics certainly prove that it was Roddenberry's original intention was for a "soap opera in space". [If you fancy a bit of a sing-a-long in your best Shatner voice, download the Star Trek theme in midi format HERE.]
Be-yond
the rim of star-light
My love is
wan-dring in star flight.
I know he'll find
In star-clustered
reach-es,
Love, strange
love
A Star-wo-man
teach-es
I know his
jour-ney ends nev-er.
His star trek
will go on for-ev-er.
But tell him
while
He wanders his
star-ry sea,
Remember,
Remember me.
Copyright (c) 1966 & 1970 by Bruin Music Company, all rights reserved. Reprinted without any permission at all.
The full story about how Shatner came up with The Transformed Man is explained in Dennis William Hauck's 1995 biography Captain Quirk. Unfortunately I haven't read it, so here's the story related in the liner notes for Golden Throats 4: Celebrities Butcher Songs Of The Beatles (certain sentences have been removed due to excessive sneering):
Shatner was motorcycling through the Mojave Desert with four friends in the summer of 1967. Suddenly, his Suzuki Titan 500 hit a rut; Shatner was thrown, and after the heavy chopper fell on him, he blacked out. His buddies never looked back. When Shatner came to, he felt the presence of a "shadowy phantom". He righted the cycle, but couldn't trip the ignition. Here he was - stranded in the middle of the desert at midday - in 110º heat. Disoriented, Shatner began pushing his cycle - he knew not where - when the bike "seemed to aquire a mind of it's own," Hauck recounted. "He could push it in just one direction," as if guided by "an unseen force". On the horizon, Shatner glimpsed "a mysterious dark figure waving him on"; six hours later, he arrived at an old filling station. Looking up, he "observed a pie-pan shaped object glistening in the sky". Meanwhile, his three cohorts, after a frantic search found Shatner " relaxing with a cool drink at the gas station". Hauck surmises, "He almost certainly would have died had he not been guided to safety by the unknown presence"
Shatner grew convinced that superior intelligences in the universe could interact with humans. "I can't prove UFOs exist." he told the press, "but anyone who denies they exist is as foolish as the person who denies God exists". A few months later Shatner recorded The Transformed Man, an artistic statement about his desert UFO encounter. [...] Despite the LP's inclusion in Jimmy Gutterman and Owen O'Donnell's The Worst Rock 'N' Roll Records Of All Time and the perennial tracks on Golden Throats, Shatner attests: "The thrill I got from making this album was deeper and more satisfying than anything I have ever experienced. I was really in orbit".
Reviews of The Transformed Man (as mentioned in the liner notes for Golden Throats 2: More Celebrity Rock Oddities):
"... recites the song's spacey lyrics as if... bellowing out frenetic warnings from the captain's chair on the Starship Enterprise after an intoxicating run-in with a cloud of Klingon wacky dust." - Jimmy Magahern
"... performs... as if someone had laced his drink with a combination of helium and LSD." - Don McLeese
"... displays a blissful exuberance that remains unfathomable to the befuddled listener." - Roundup Records
"... sounds in dire need of padded restraints." - Susan Whitall
mp3's:
A William Shatner out-take medley: "It sickens me" and "Sabotage" [Shatner.mp3, 0'50, 344 KB]
Songs from The Transformed Man:
(Just open the 'shatner' file)
* Mr. Tambourine Man [mrtam.mp3, 3'27, 1.38 MB]
* It Was A Very Good Year [goodyear.mp3, 3'56, 1.58 MB]
* Spleen/Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds [splucy.mp3, 6'02, 2.42 MB]
Links (taken from Yahoo.com):
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To tell you the truth, I don't particularly like William Shatner that much. Thus making this entire article a complete waste of everybody's time.
Next week: Why I Love Jim Yoakum.