 Nerine Shatner Friendly House
This non profit organization is one of the nation's first residential
homes for women recovering from alcohol and substance abuse.
Donate
Here>>>
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Hollywood
Charity
Horse Show
For the past eleven years, William Shatner has spearheaded the HCHS
which features some of the best western reining riders in the country
while simultaneously raising money for charity.
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William
Shatner also
Supports:
 March
of
Dimes Canada
 The Jewish
National Fund
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Piglet |
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Post subject: Thought this was a lovely article..
 Posted: Jun 06, 2008 - 08:47 AM
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Member
Joined: Apr 14, 2007
Posts: 55
Location: Colchester, England
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Thought you'd like this??
June 5, 2008, 6:35PM
The burden of being Shatner
Breezy memoir by TV's Capt. Kirk has enough new info to interest even the most jaded Trekkie
By AMY BIANCOLLI
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
William Shatner's crazy life
UP TILL NOW: The Autobiography.
By William Shatner with David Fisher.
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 358 pp. $25.95.
Check out William Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds READ STORY
How weird it must feel to be William Shatner. Aside from being rich, famous and a globally recognized TV star, he has to bear the additional (albeit fabulous) burden of being "Him." Of seeing "Himself" everywhere he turns. Of not taking a step in public without being confronted by those who recognize Him.
In Up Till Now, his breezy and thoroughly meta memoir, Shatner describes a game his three daughters like to play: How long can they go without stumbling across a mention of Dad? Not long. Between his work on Boston Legal and those ubiquitous Priceline ads, Shatner seems to have developed a late-life gift for omnipresence. He's everywhere simultaneously.
And he is, by now, as much a pop-cultural construct as a human being: There is the man William Shatner, and then there is the summation of all we think we know about William Shatner. How can one person be Capt. Kirk, T.J. Hooker, Denny Crane and the guy who turned Rocket Man into a hallucinogenic spoken-word fantasia?
He's the staccato-talking, show-horse-breeding, sci-fi-novel-writing, phaser-wielding, alien-lady-smooching, car-hood-riding, cigar-puffing, Bernie Taupin-mangling, multimedia icon of the late 20th century and beyond. And he's ours.
Here is the point in the review where I confess to being a dork. For 31 years, I have followed every twitch in Shatner's career. More casual observers might know of his previous memoirs (Star Trek Memories and Star Trek Movie Memories), but only the few and the shameless pored through his 1979 authorized hagiography, Shatner: Where No Man ... . I read that thing until the spine dissolved.
Three years earlier I had first spied his Kirkness on reruns of Star Trek, and I was instantly, pubescently, obsessively smitten; I even bought a captain's uniform with that gold-lamé braid on the arm. And, yes, I attended conventions. Like I said, dork.
So when I sat down with a copy of Up Till Now, I brought a huge pile of baggage and way too much expertise.
Much of the book's Shat-arcana I was already familiar with, even his tale of busting a finger to save Harold Sakata's neck on the set of Impulse, and I was bored by the run-throughs of standard Trek lore.
Gene Roddenberry was imperious, Leonard Nimoy was aloof (at least at first) and the rest of the cast hated his Shatnerific guts. No new info there. I also could have done without the exhaustive postmortem of his failed game show, Show Me the Money, but I suspect that's true of most readers.
Plenty else is plenty entertaining, from his stories of growing up Jewish and scrappy in Montreal (where he learned to fold like a pro at his father's suit-making factory) to his comical and self-deprecating descriptions of the struggle to succeed on stage, tube and film.
Several names get dropped, some more gently than others. We learn that he insulted Spencer Tracy, that he blew his life savings on a bad tip from Lorne Greene, and that Yul Brynner kicked him in the pants on the set of The Brothers Karamazov.
We also learn that Koko the gorilla once grabbed him in his business with lascivious intent, but for such anecdotes the term ''T.M.I." was coined.
Shatner and his co-author, David Fisher (who co-wrote Johnnie Cochran's memoir), have assembled yarns from his life into a loose chronology that's gabby and baggy and funny and sometimes genuinely heartbreaking: His account of his third wife's drowning should stop cynics in their tracks. (He has since married No. 4 and seems besotted.)
If a single theme weaves through the book, it's the role of chance in the actor's life — in anyone's life — and the ripples of consequence that follow every decision.
Yet something more is going on here. The guy isn't just telling us about himself; he's toying with us. Shatner wants us to know that he knows that we know he's a star. He is equal parts self-promotion and self-mockery, and he is amused by the suggestion that after all these years he finally ''got it." Because he always got the joke. He invented the joke. We are but the audience. He is The Shat.
The book is crammed with self-referential asides. ''Think about that while I go put on my make-up for the next chapter," he writes after addressing Has Been, his remarkably fine CD produced by Ben Folds.
In a further nod to irony, he (and/or Fisher) often interrupts the narrative with brazen pitches for Shatner-related Web sites and merchandise.
Witness an entire two-page sentence — what is this, Faulkner? — devoted to Star Trek memorabilia available on the Internet, a list that includes fuzzy commemorative tribbles and ''I Slept with Kirk" coffee mugs.
Dork update: I once made a tribble for a book report. Truly.
Or, as Shatner would say, ''Truthfully." Lots of ''truthfullys" in Up Till Now. Such as: ''Truthfully, I have always enjoyed the company of women." And: ''Truthfully, I probably wouldn't have even considered following that elephant into the bush if I wasn't under the impression that, for the most part, I can communicate with animals."
The only hitch to this oft-stated love of the truth is his confession elsewhere that he doesn't always tell it. A widely published story about encountering extraterrestrials in the desert, for instance — it never happened. He made it up. Truthfully.
Well, it's his party. He says what he likes, knowing we'll listen.
Here is a man, after all, who once called into a radio talk show to say, ''This is William Shatner, and I am not an (expletive)." He has used his Star Trek alter-ego to stop fights (''Captain Kirk!") and duck speeding tickets.
He has gone trick-or-treating in a William Shatner mask. He is both the defender of his image and its winking creator, and judging from Up Till Now, he hasn't finished yet. With any of us.
Amy Biancolli reviews films for the Chronicle. She may be reached at amy.biancolli@ chron.com.
What do you think?
Christina  |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 06, 2008 - 08:55 AM
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Joined: Mar 10, 2004
Posts: 870
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 06, 2008 - 02:22 PM
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Joined: Dec 12, 2005
Posts: 10237
Location: No Man's Land ;)
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That's a nice interview. There's been something that I've been thinking of for the past couple of days because it's getting close to Father's Day. I imagine Lisabeth has been asked this many times, but I can't remember so I'd like to ask if she's ever gotten extremely tired of her dad being recognized all the time while she and her family have been on family outings with Bill. Has she ever in her lifetime wanted to say : "For pity's sake! I know you all love him, but he's MY daddy and I wish you'd just leave us alone long enough for me to appreciate that!"
Going to restraunts, movies, trick-or-treating, picnics, parks...must be very difficult to just be a normal family with all that notariety. But then again I bet she isn't no where as jealous and insecure as I am.  |
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Piglet |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 06, 2008 - 11:05 PM
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Joined: Apr 14, 2007
Posts: 55
Location: Colchester, England
Status: Offline
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