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BrianS7785 |
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Post subject: Bill On Kirk & Leonard On Spock
 Posted: Jun 05, 2008 - 04:54 PM
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Joined: Jun 18, 2004
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I ran into two articles, one by The Associated Press that has Bill watching himself as Kirk for the first time in years, and another an NPR profile of Spock with Leonard's insights.
Watching an old episode of "Star Trek," Shatner likes the hero
By Ted Anthony
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 06/04/2008 07:12:43 PM MDT
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_9481556
One recent week, William Shatner did something he hadn't done for many years — watched the original "Star Trek." It was kind of an accident.
Now, you might think that a bit odd. But Shatner rarely watches himself work. When it comes to acting, he says, he lives in the moment and moves on. Same thing these days with his work as Denny Crane on ABC's "Boston Legal."
This particular night, though, he was recovering from hip surgery and couldn't sleep, so he was watching TV. An old episode came on — the one where the crew of the USS Enterprise visited a society that had modeled itself after Chicago gangsters of the 1920s. Kirk and Spock dressed up in pinstripe suits and held court as tough guys.
Watching, Shatner was more pleased than he expected.
"I haven't seen myself playing Capt. Kirk in a long, long time," he says. "And I watched it now, from my perspective of 40 years later, and I thought, 'You know, that's rather good.' It's a starship captain trying to do the accent, the Noo Yawk accent, trying to play tough, trying to be one of the guys. It's not quite right, but it's what a starship captain would have done — a decent imitation, enough to fool those guys but not the audience."
Shatner won't be playing Kirk in the upcoming reboot of "Star Trek" directed by J.J. Abrams.
Leonard Nimoy plays an aging Spock, but the Jim Kirk character — a young version — is portrayed by actor Chris Pine.
Shatner has said he's sad but not angry at the decision, which springs from the killing off of Kirk in the 1994 film "Star Trek Generations." The recent late-night TV watching got Shatner thinking, though, about the character of Kirk and how it has endured.
"That was a good hero," Shatner says.
"He made decisions. He was forceful. He was compassionate. He was the instigator. He fought hard and long physically and emotionally. He carried the dilemma of whether to intrude or not to intrude. It was all the classic forms of good Greek playmaking: The hero has the dilemma and resolves the dilemma."
Even the series' renowned cheesy production design, done on an increasingly tight budget through the show's 1966-69 run, didn't put him off.
"The actors were wonderful. And I didn't care about the sets or anything like that or the cheesy spaceship," Shatner says. "I think that's what happens in 'Star Trek.' Your eye goes past all the faults because you're concentrated on the actors and the plot."
Mr. Spock: The 'Mystery of Masculinity' Embodied
by Neda Ulaby
Readers on Spock:
“He was just plain sexy, without even trying. Sex symbol, savant and occasional psychic: Spock is an icon for all times.”
–Hazelyn Patterson
"What was truly astonishing was my Depression-era mother moaning…,'Why don't you be more like Spock?' She admired his cool handling of any crisis and his logical thought processes."
–Judith Brodnicki
"If Captain James T. Kirk represented President John Kennedy's "New Frontier" and the Camelot legend of the Sixties, Mr. Spock represented an amalgam of Gandhi and Margaret Mead."
–Jeffrey W. Mason
"...Is he truly an ideal to strive for? Do we really wish to calculate probabilities for all our decisions and then calmly experience the wonder and mystery of the world around us, suppressing all joy, anger and sadness?"
–John Brown
"He encompasses elegance and intelligence, and a way of observing life that, while pointed, was never cruel."
–Lorie Johnson
Weekend Edition Sunday, June 1, 2008 · When Gene Roddenberry created the TV series Star Trek, the suits at NBC had some advice: "Lose the Martian."
They were talking about Spock.
But Mr. Spock went on to become the most beloved half-alien in network history. In fact he went on to become, well, one of the most fascinating fictional characters on TV.
Fascinating — four syllables and one arched eyebrow — that's Spock, just as much as his pointy Vulcan ears.
The first time actor Leonard Nimoy said the word was in an episode where the crew of the USS Enterprise faced a strange, sinister entity. No matter where the ship turned, the object managed to be in their way. The bridge was on high alert — so Nimoy shouted out his next line with the same energy: "Fascinating!"
"The director, God bless him, said be different from everyone else," Nimoy remembers. So on the next take: "Fascinating," in that cool, collected way.
"I think in that moment a very important aspect of the character was born," Nimoy says.
D.C. Fontana was a writer for the original Star Trek series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. She says that singular "fascinating" conveyed interest, skepticism and — layered deeply in there — a kind of wonder.
Nimoy found fascination in Spock's status as an outsider.
"When [Gene Roddenberry] hired me to do the role," Nimoy says, "he gave me a very interesting dynamic to work with, in that Spock's mother was human, his father was Vulcan. He was sort of a half-breed."
And as such, he was prone to some internal conflict.
As Spock's mother Amanda explained in one episode: "When you were 5 years old and came home stiff-lipped, anguished ... I watched you knowing that, inside, the human part of you was crying."
"I think that's one of the most interesting things about Spock," says Nimoy. "It's not what you're getting, but what you don't get — what peeks out occasionally."
What peeks out occasionally are Spock's emotions. One of the series' favorite gambits was to have him lose his mind. Writers would put him under the influence of an urge to mate, or a flower spore, or a germ that eliminates defense mechanisms, as in an episode called "Naked Time."
"I'm in control of my emotions, in control of my emotions," Spock insisted in that episode.
Emotion vs. Intellect: 'It's A Struggle We All Face'
"It's a struggle we all face," says Henry Jenkins, humanities professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Are we driven by our emotion or by our intellect? And how do we reconcile those two things?"
One of the things Jenkins studies is Star Trek fan culture. He says Spock's struggle makes him an unlikely sex symbol.
"Spock is sexy for a large number of people, male and female," Jenkins says. "Many of the female fans I studied really are attracted to the emotional depths of this character." Like many men, Spock "represses outward signs of emotion," Jenkins says. He's a character "who tries to hold it all in, but who seems to be sensitive, sensuous at certain times."
And Spock's intense relationship with Captain Kirk only complicates his character.
"He seems to have a deep affection and even passionate relationship to Captain Kirk," Jenkins says. "This character, then, became the embodiment of the mystery of masculinity."
At a Turbulent Moment, a Bridge Between Cultures
Star Trek made its debut during a turbulent moment in history — in the midst of the Vietnam War and the feminist movement — and Spock somehow spoke to the times, Jenkins says. It was rare then, he says, to see a TV character embody two very different cultures.
"In that sense Star Trek looks ahead to the society we live in today, where so many people are mixed race, mixed cultural background," Jenkins says. "And I've been thinking about that a lot lately, looking at Barack Obama. There's something in the [Obama] mythology that seems to echo our assumption about Spock — that he's someone able to bridge worlds. And he's indebted to Vulcan philosophy of IDIC, the Vulcan philosophy of infinite diversity and infinite combination. Someone who is of mixed race is seen as being capable of understanding both races."
(As it happens, Nimoy supports Obama for president.)
While Jenkins says Nimoy's performance as Spock was a marvel of sensitivity and nuance, he is looking forward to a new actor playing Spock in an upcoming movie. Jenkins is brave enough to make a comparison to Hamlet: Like Shakespeare's conflicted hero, Jenkins says, Spock is a character for the ages.
"We can imagine seeing hundreds of different actors play Hamlet, and indeed the richness of Hamlet is seeing differences and the different interpretations of that character," Jenkins says. "With the new movie, we will for the first time see Spock as a character larger than an actor."
Fascinating.
(For the audio version: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =90964169) |
_________________
Brian finally caved and joined Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=845365098
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Spock1 |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 05, 2008 - 06:50 PM
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Member
Joined: Apr 28, 2003
Posts: 1807
Location: Here for the moment; don't waste it.
Status: Offline
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Facinating, indeed!  |
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Have you ever noticed how some days you just get washed over by the sense of cosmic emptiness and lack of meaning? ................
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 05, 2008 - 10:21 PM
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Member
Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 9334
Location: Living in the NOW
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| Quote: | | "That was a good hero," Shatner says. |
Hey buddy! What's this "was" business?!? Kirk will always be a hero.... right up there with Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger. Paramount may have killed him off, but we didn't.
And on the other side of the TV screen, Bill Shatner is a hero to countless children who have been helped through the HCHS and other charities. You opened the real life door to make it possible to make a real difference on this planet. It is only fitting that we roll up our sleeves and join the crew.
And you wanna know a secret? Your wife thinks you are a hero also. We can tell by the look in her eyes.  |
_________________
"The best sermons are never preached.
They are shown to others through example."
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Spock1 |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 07, 2008 - 03:21 AM
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Member
Joined: Apr 28, 2003
Posts: 1807
Location: Here for the moment; don't waste it.
Status: Offline
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| As one who grew up with Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, they were and remain for ever, heroic and honorable characters. |
_________________
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Have you ever noticed how some days you just get washed over by the sense of cosmic emptiness and lack of meaning? ................
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