Honestly, I knew nothing about computers. I had seen the huge mainframes at NASA, but I’d certainly never used a computer at home. I didn’t even know how to turn one on. This was long before the Internet existed, so computers were basically glorified calculators and word processors. Mostly people used them to play video games like Pong. Legally, though, anyone endorsing a product is supposed to have some experience using it. So Commodore shipped two Vic-20s to my home, where they remained untouched in their boxes. My attorney insisted I take them out of the boxes and plug them in. That way no one could claim I didn’t even know how to plug one in. So that was the entire range of my knowledge of computers: I knew how to plug one in.
The television shows and the movie documentaries I hosted or narrated literally went from the bottom of the world to the ends of the universe. They included the syndicated series Secrets of the Deep and Inner Space, both of which explored life in the deep oceans, and the syndicated special Space Age, which featured all kinds of futuristic gadgets like a home laser and the incredible—in 1973— nineteen-thousand-dollar electronic typewriter. In 1976 I narrated the theatrically released documentary Mysteries of the Gods, based on Erich von Däniken’s bestselling book Chariots of the Gods, which speculated that beings from outer space had visited Earth millions of years ago and influenced the Mayan civilization. Universe was an animated short documentary sponsored by NASA that explored the universe from subatomic particles to deep space, beginning with the Big Bang—and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Short Documentary. We didn’t win, though. The Magic Planet, which I narrated in 1983, was an early look at how changing weather patterns could affect the Earth’s very fragile ecology.
I had become the entertainment-industry expert on science and outer space. I was the figure of authority. But the program in which I really became involved was the five-part, ten-hour miniseries for Ted Turner’s TBS called Voice of the Planet. It was an unusual format; I played the fictional author William Hope Planter, who was talking to the spirit of the Earth through a computer located in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, about the very real problems facing the planet in the future. Those problems ranged from overpopulation to a shortage of water.
I agreed to do this series when the producer, Michael Tobias, told me, “There’s very little money involved, it’s going to take a lot of your time, and it requires us to go around the world.”
Go around the world? Several weeks later Marcy and I found ourselves at the Tengboche monastery in Nepal, looking up at Mt. Everest. Buddhists believe the Himalayas are the center of their spiritual world and the confluence of those mountains is in the valley. We had hiked in with a crew of five people and were camped in a small shed right next to an outhouse.
This was a truly awe-inspiring place. This monastery was on a ledge about fifteen thousand feet above sea level; there were no birds, no wildlife, very little vegetation. Just extraordinary snow-tipped mountains cutting into a radiant blue sky. The only sounds were the wind whistling through the valley and the mellifluous chanting of the fifty monks who lived there, the mmmm-sound of the universe disappearing into the silent valley. It was unlike any place I had ever been in my life.
Many years earlier, when I had been a teenaged counselor at a B’nai Brith camp, I had walked out of my bunk late at night and looked up. The sky was brilliant with stars and as I looked at those stars I was struck by an overwhelming feeling of insignificance. Suddenly I understood that in the whole of the universe I was meaningless to a degree I couldn’t begin to fathom; smaller than molecules, atoms, quarks, smaller than my ability to imagine. I kept looking up—and then I fell over backward.
That feeling of wanting to unite with the universe had stayed with me from that night. I’d searched for it. Several times in my life I’d had so-called Zen moments—when I was in perfect harmony with the horse I was riding, making love, or preparing mentally to shoot an arrow—but I’d never truly been one with the universe. I’d never had that mystical experience I’d read about. If I were ever going to reach that state, I realized, it would be at this monastery.
The first night we were there I went outside into the freezing air, wrapped in my sleeping bag. I sat down and stared into a sky of a billion stars and waited for the spirits of that valley to come to me. And I waited. Nothing happened; finally I was frozen and went back into the shed. Maybe the spirits would come the next night. The second night I did the same thing, and the third and the fourth, staring into the night, waiting for a moment of whatever I was waiting for. It. Finally, on our last night I sat outside again. I waited an hour, and then it struck me. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! I realized nothing was going to happen. Maybe my toes would get frostbitten, but nothing else. So I went back inside.
Later that night, as I lay in my warm sleeping bag, it suddenly occurred to me why I was in that valley. It is a truth that has never left me. I was there to understand that I didn’t have to be sitting outside in the freezing cold night at a monastery in the Himalayas beneath Mt. Everest to recognize and appreciate the wonderment that exists in every object. It’s with me all the time, wherever I am—even on the San Diego Freeway. It’s in our skin, it’s in our finger, it’s in everything. All you have to do is pause and contemplate that thing, whatever it is, and allow yourself to be astounded at its existence, and you are on the verge of the Zen feeling of being at one with the universe.
We traveled around the world for Voice of the Planet. The budget was not large enough to afford stuntmen, so I took risks that in retrospect amaze me. I went ice climbing in the French Alps. I was dropped by helicopter on a plateau on Mt. Blanc. When Michael Tobias asked me to climb a vertical rock wall all I asked was that he get it in one take—although once I was properly roped I agreed to do it several times to get the right shot. It might well have been Jim Kirk who viewers imagined was climbing that wall—but if I fell I was going to break every bone in Bill Shatner’s body. Through it all, though, one thought resonated in my mind: The star doesn’t get hurt! The star doesn’t get hurt!
This show received somewhat modest reviews, but I was extremely proud of it. I once said that it was a program I would be proud to pass along to my grandchildren. That’s true, but more important, what I have passed along to those grandchildren is the love and appreciation for this Earth that I gained while making it. For me, it was an epiphany. I suddenly became aware of the way we were using up the Earth, and until very recently doing so without any concern. I became a committed environmentalist and have done my best since then to be responsible about my own use of our resources— although truthfully every once in a while I haven’t been above giving Mother Nature a little pinch in her oil reserves.
My status as television’s leading man of science and technology was assured in 1978 when I was invited to co-host the first televised Science-Fiction Movie Awards. It was just a simple awards show, not very different from the numerous awards shows broadcast each year, and ordinarily it would have been quickly forgotten. And it would have been, except for those fateful few words I said to producer Arnold Shapiro: “You know what, how about if I sing something?”
And thus a legend was born, a legend that will live in television history for what I think is going to be a long, long time. For it was on that show that I performed my unforgettable version of the Elton John and Bernie Taupin song “Rocket Man.”
It has been said about my singing that I have great courage. But beginning with the album The Transformed Man I’ve tried to emphasize the poetry of the lyric by performing it dramatically rather than just singing along to some melody like all those other people, the Sinatras and the Streisands of the world. In fact, during this time I was touring with a one-man show in which I did dramatic readings from great science-fiction literature, accompanied by a complete philharmonic orchestra. For example, I would read an excerpt from an Arthur C. Clarke story while the orchestra played Stravinsky’s Firebird. The live show was a tremendous success—at the Hollywood Bowl we drew eighte
en thousand people, at Anaheim Stadium we had twenty-eight thousand people.
When I was asked to perform this song I thought I’d try something very unusual. I’d perform the song in its many layers, doing part of it like Sinatra might do it, another part of it emphasizing the rock-it, man, hip aspect of the song and, honestly, I’ve forgotten the third level. Lyricist Bernie Taupin actually introduced me at the Science-Fiction Awards Show. I was sitting on a stool on an otherwise bare stage, dressed impeccably in a tuxedo, smoking a cigarette. And I began talk-singing the story of the lonely rocket man on his way to Mars. “...I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife. It’s lonely out in space. On such a timeless flight . . .” Eventually, using chromakey video techniques, a second version of me appeared, a sadder version. And a few lines later a third Shatner appeared, a tired, disheveled, perhaps even dissolute man. And together the three Shatners finished the song. “. . . and I think it’s gonna be a long, long time...”
The audience was stunned. People watched in shock and awe and then asked the question, Is he kidding? There is a very thick line between performing a song seriously and doing it in mock seriousness— doing it well enough to confuse the audience about that is the actor’s art. Was I trying to make my performance humorous? Was it intended to be a parody of meaningful singers with cigarettes? Or was I simply out of my mind?
As so many of the great science-fiction movies remind us, there are some things that mankind was never meant to discover. I will simply report that this remains the best-known performance of the song “Rocket Man” ever done.
For two decades stories about this performance have been passed down from father to son and rare bootleg copies of the video were passed around. Men boasted of owning a first-generation copy and invited women home to see it. Parodies of my performance have been done on several shows, including Family Guy and Futurama. But now several dozen versions of it can routinely be accessed on the Internet, particularly on YouTube—with more than a million people a year still mystified by it. And about that, I am not kidding.
The heroic characteristics exemplified by Captain James Kirk— among them honesty, integrity, compassion, and courage—were easily transferable, making me a desirable commercial spokesperson. At the beginning of my career it was well known that real actors simply did not do television commercials. Actors acted, spokesmen spoke, period. It was considered an act of artistic prostitution. Many stage actors would choose to starve rather than sell out, and a lot of them got the opportunity to do just that. I felt very much the same way, I was not for sale! Not that anyone was interested in buying, of course, but even if I had been offered a commercial I would have refused.
But in 1963 I co-starred with Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, Laurence Harvey, my friend Howard Da Silva, and Claire Bloom in The Outrage, Martin Ritt’s westernized remake of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I played a disillusioned preacher who is told three different versions of a rape committed by a Mexican bandit played by Paul Newman. For me, the joy in making this film was the opportunity to work with Edward G. Robinson, whom I had long idolized as one of America’s finest actors. One night he invited me to his home for dinner, and afterward took me out back where he had built a small round building that vaguely resembled New York’s Guggenheim Museum. This was his art museum and inside was arguably the finest private collection of French impressionist works in the world. He was passionate about it. As he showed these paintings to me he referred to them as his “children.”
Coincidently, a couple of days earlier I’d happened to see a coffee commercial he’d done. It had been jarring for me to see an actor of his stature doing a commercial, so I asked him about it. He looked at me, then pointed at a superlative painting by one of the masters. “That’s why,” he said.
After that I changed my whole attitude. If Edward G. Robinson, who’d made classic films like Little Caesar, Key Largo, and The Cincinnati Kid, could do television commercials, so could the person who made Incubus.
Among the first commercials I did was for Loblaw’s, Canada’s largest grocery chain. I’d walk down the produce aisle looking directly into the camera and say with the greatest sincerity I could fake, “At Loblaw’s, more than the price is right.” And then I would pause and pick up a big, round, juicy melon and examine it as if I’d never before seen such a big, round, juicy melon and say, with practiced surprise, “But, by gosh, that price is right.”
I took this work very seriously. Whatever commercial I did I wanted it to be the best commercial ever done. I wanted people storming their local Loblaw’s to buy melons. I wanted to sell more melons than anyone had sold before. When Marcy and I did a series of commercials for Promise margarine I wanted people bathing in margarine. When I did a local spot for a personal injury lawyer I wanted people hobbling over to their telephones as fast as they could limp to call that lawyer. I’ve done so many commercials for so many different products, most of them easily forgotten, but there is one classic advertising campaign that has become part of American pop culture, a job I got because of my unforgettable record album. But before I tell you the story of that unusual commercial campaign, let me interrupt with a brief anecdote.
The primary reason that most big stars don’t do commercials is that they’re worried about damaging their image. They’ve spent many years creating a positive impression in the minds of the audience about who they are, an impression that allows them to play and be accepted within a certain type of role, and they can’t afford to risk it.
Early in my career, in Canada, I had done mostly light comedies. In fact, I’d become known as a light-comedy leading man. And I loved it. Believe me, there are few feelings for an actor more satisfying, more luxurious, than standing on stage bathing in waves of laughter. And when I came to New York I did comedy on Broadway. In one play, I remember, I got a nice laugh with a very simple expression. I was very proud of that laugh. Unfortunately, one day I didn’t make that particular face—and I still got the laugh. Uh oh. And that’s when I realized it wasn’t me getting the laugh at all—it was another actor behind me doing whatever he was doing.
When I started working in television and the movies I was cast almost exclusively in dramas. So the recognition I earned came as a serious actor. There weren’t a lot of laughs in Judgment at Nuremberg, for example.The audience got used to me as a Shatnerian actor. It was only much later in my career that once again I got the opportunity to do comedy. Shatner doing comedy? And when I discovered that I got laughs by poking fun at myself, I gleefully poked and prodded and pushed and pulled at myself. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I understood the psychology that enables people to find humor in the presentation of a somewhat rigid character remaining completely oblivious to the changing cultural scene around him. I got the joke. Actually, I created the joke—and I loved sharing it with the audience. We’re all in this together! But still, I maintained some standards.
And then, with thirty million people listening, Howard Stern invited me to join him in the homo room.
Certainly one of the greatest fears of an actor is public humiliation. Oh please, whatever happens don’t let me be embarrassed tonight. Being humiliated—being emotionally stripped naked in front of the world—is one of the worst things any human being can experience. To avoid humiliation people often refuse to take risks, and in response to it people—and even countries—have gone to war.
Every actor has their own way of dealing with it. I stopped reading reviews of my performances years ago, and I’ve rarely watched shows I had done so I wouldn’t be upset by a director’s edit that didn’t come out my way. For many years the fear of being humiliated had prevented me from attending any Star Trek conventions. I spent several years thinking it was some kind of stupid game that people were playing, they were sharing a great joke, and if I took the show and my work seriously I would become part of that joke. I wasn’t willing to risk that. Then I was told that fifteen thousand people were going to attend a convention in New York and I was offered a substantial
amount of money.
I decided to attend the convention. I didn’t prepare a speech, I was just going to answer questions. And then when I walked on stage and felt the massive love from that audience all my fears disappeared.
Several years later I was promoting my first TekWar book, the beginning of a new science-fiction series I’d created. I’d done a lot of radio interviews, all of them pretty much the same: please buy my book. And then I was scheduled to appear on The Howard Stern Show. I didn’t really know who Howard Stern was, I think I listened to his show once before going on. What I didn’t understand was that Howard had his own set of rules. He was limited only by what he could get past the FCC, so in those years he had very few constraints. What I did not realize was that he had planned terribly offensive things to do with me to see how far I would go. His program revolves around the humiliation of his guests to some degree—he likes to bust balloons of pomposity. He sought to jar me, to flummox me, and, I suppose, to humiliate me, by attacking my image.
The radio show and its audience were his turf. He was the bad boy, the street fighter; I came in as a married man, a father, with a reputation, an image, and a career to protect. After this brief interview I had to go back to the shows I was doing in a different world, so I was limited in my ability to fight back. “William Shatner’s a little nervous,” Howard began. “He’s a big star and he doesn’t want to embarrass himself.”
That’s when he invited me to join him in the homo room. “It’s a better place to conduct the interview,” he explained. “The only other guy we brought down here is like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. He freaked out and tried to run out, but he handled it.”
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