I’ve seen that in acting. Actors often defend their choices. One of the most memorable skits from the early days of Saturday Night Live was called “The Coneheads.” They were aliens with heads that came to a cone top. It was very broad comedy. They were intentionally absurd in their efforts to figure out society. Supposedly, after the skit had become popular the actors were doing a table reading of a sketch and one of the actors balked at a suggested action, explaining firmly, “Oh no, the Coneheads wouldn’t do that.” Who knew these aliens with coneheads had irrevocable principles?
I guess that is as good a way as any of describing an inability to compromise: The Coneheads wouldn’t do that. This is a frequent problem in my profession: The director says, “I have a vision and this is what I need you to do to help me fulfill my vision.” In response the actor says, “I understand my character far better than you do, as I have created it, and my character would never do that. It is inconsistent with everything he [or she] is.” Creating a character means that he must be the same person in June as he was in January, although the director wasn’t there in January, so he doesn’t know that. Having been both an actor and a director, I have been on both sides of that particular equation.
Tell me how to forge a compromise in that situation. And that’s when there is only a performance at stake. Real life is a lot more complex and the consequences are far greater. There was a wonderful book written about Israeli paratroopers, the 55th Paratrooper Brigade, known as Israel’s “tip of the spear.” These are among the most elite soldiers in the world. Yet at one point Israeli security discovered a member of that elite group colluding with the Palestinians. He took these actions, he explained after being caught, based on his principles. He believed creating a two-state solution was the path to peace and his actions were furthering those beliefs. He was willing to give up his freedom and, if necessary, his life for his principles. Even though those principles might put the lives of his fellow soldiers in jeopardy, he refused to compromise.
I understand that reasoning. I don’t agree with it, but I do understand it. I think we have seen the results of that thinking in recent American politics. The only thing on which everyone can agree is that both sides have stuck to their political principles and as a result very little has gotten accomplished. In my life I have seen the benefits of compromise, a solution in which everyone gets at least part of what they need. Why would you go to jail for a principle? At my age I have learned to treat every day with the level of preciousness that my grandchildren should embrace. Every day of your life is precious. To see the sky, breathe the air, walk along and feel your body is precious because our days are numbered. There are people who are willing to do this, people willing to stand up for a principle and go to jail for years and refuse to give up. What is more precious: freedom or your principles? Each person has to answer that themselves.
There are exceptions to that, of course. Many people believe Jesus Christ gave his mortal life as a lesson to them. To me, the most extraordinary example in my lifetime has been Nelson Mandela, who was willing to go to jail for most of his life to protest legalized inhuman treatment by the government of South Africa. How can anyone not admire someone like that? He was an amazing man whose refusal to compromise literally changed the world. I feel the same way about soldiers who fight when their country is threatened. We are clannish by nature; we protect our cave, our clan, our tribe, and our country. We send our young people out to protect our clan. If the Nazis are encroaching on your country, you have to fight. If the government is treating you as a slave, you have to fight. If the fascist state is going to kill your family, you have to fight. I can see myself doing that, standing in front of my family to protect them from an oppressor. Ethics change and it is absurd not to acknowledge that: Thou shalt not kill, but the truth is that thou shall kill under certain circumstances.
Obviously there are some principles worth fighting and dying for, but that is at the extreme end and most people won’t encounter that situation. The things we have to deal with generally are much more personal and considerably less important. One day in 2015 I was driving on Ventura Boulevard and I had to make a left turn. I probably cut in front of someone to do that, because he responded by getting very close and honking his horn. A lot. That was his space and I had invaded it. He was doing the right thing and I had done the wrong thing, and he was standing up for his principle. I made my left, believing that would be the end of it, but he made a left, too. I sped up and he stayed with me, and we were racing down the road. I went around a truck, thinking he could be cut off, and he made an expert move and went around the truck and cut in front of me. I slammed on my brakes. A young man practically leaped out of that car and started walking toward me. I got out of my car and started walking toward him, my fists clenched. To do what? If we got into a fight it would take him one punch to beat me to a pulp. But I was ready to fight. I wasn’t going to back down. This thing had escalated from a silly move on my part into a potentially dangerous situation. Neither one of us appeared willing to back down. We had our honor to defend. Our principles! Then he said, “William Shatner. I used to stunt for you.” He was a professional stuntman and we had worked together. We both started laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
For Jews, living up to your principles has too often meant dying for them. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were given a choice: renounce your religion or die. My answer would have been simple: “I have been Catholic my entire life. I believe in Jesus and Jesus saves me.” Prior to and even during World War II admitting to being a Jew often was a prelude to a death sentence and countless Jews lived as Christians rather than dying as Jews.
Of course we tend to admire those people who sacrificed their lives for their principles. But dying to prove to other people that holding on to your principles is more important than life itself seems self-defeating. Living and spreading those principles seems to me to be more effective. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for refusing to compromise on her principles. Sir Thomas More, as I wrote, had his head cut off for refusing to compromise on his principles. These people live in our history for dying. But what is more important, saving your life to perhaps fight another day or dying for your ethics and principles? I don’t know if I am right or wrong for anyone else here, but I do know how I feel about it.
Why couldn’t they have compromised? Why couldn’t Joan of Arc have said, “I have a split personality; I am bipolar,” and after her jailers left said, “I am not bipolar. I only said that to live”? Why couldn’t you renounce your Judaism to the Inquisitors and when the Inquisition was done go to synagogue or daven in the basement? The German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber stood up to the Nazis when they began passing anti-Jewish regulations, certainly risking his life. But when he understood the consequences of his actions he accepted a compromise, leaving his beloved Germany and immigrating to then-Palestine in 1938. What is the principle that allows only obeisance without any room for compromise? That mystery eludes me and fascinates me. When I think about it, if I were in that circumstance can I say without any doubt what I would have done? It is impossible to have been born Jewish before World War II and not think about what you would have done if you were trapped in Europe. I like to believe I would have found a way to survive. I like to believe I would have done whatever was necessary to survive.
What type of personality requires an uncompromising stand on principle? It would have to be someone who was completely rigid, completely inflexible, and often has some sort of megalomania: I believe this is the only truth, and it is the only truth because I believe it.
My experience has been that almost always there is a third way of doing things, and that third way, the compromise, in my experience often turns out to be better than either side. There are many ways to say a line or lead your life, but there is only one way to stand on principle. I suspect one reason religion has not played a significant role in my adult life is because I tend to stray far away from any type of prescribed or
thodoxy, anything that tells you, This is the path to follow and if you don’t follow it you’re going to burn for all eternity, or at least have to do some penance. As I wrote chapters ago, we are all different, we are all unique; the reason I have hesitated to give any advice is because I don’t have the slightest idea if it is right or wrong for anyone else. The only principle that has worked for me in my lifetime is don’t be too rigid about your principles. Don’t make claims about right and wrong, about what you will do or not do. Too often we end up in conflict with someone whose principles are the opposite of ours. Those are the moments when you hope the other person isn’t armed. And when you finally realize you have to reach some sort of compromise. There are a lot of expressions used to describe this situation: backing down, selling out, all derogatory terms that infer you did something wrong. I have a friend who used humor to get out of situations like this. When faced with the possibility of a fight he would stand up straight and tell the other person, “There are only two things that can happen if we fight. Either I’m going to get hurt, or I’m going to get very badly hurt.” That always diffused the situation.
Life is a continuous series of compromises. Many of them are easy: We won’t go to Santa Barbara; we’ll go to Rancho Santa Fe. I’ll cut back on sugar, but I’m still going to have dessert. There are life-changing decisions that have to be made every day. I have seen that over and over: Should you take that teaching job you were offered or wait on tables and do the other low-wage jobs that leave you free to go to auditions at eleven o’clock in the morning. Should you take the character part that means you’ll be a bad guy or the third person through the door when you believe in your own heroic capabilities? Martin Buber understood that, writing: “I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.”
The difficulty is figuring out when to make those compromises. When do you stand on principle and when do you compromise? When do you refuse to stand for the National Anthem like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and when do you stand up tall? When do you turn down a job offer, end a relationship, walk away? The answer for each of us is different and it often is very difficult to make that decision.
Compromising doesn’t guarantee anything other than neither side gets everything they want. Sometimes that works out; compromise can be a negotiating tool—when negotiating a contract, for example, more often you end up at a compromise figure than what you originally wanted. But other times compromising turns out to be the wrong decision. Acting and directing are collaborative efforts and by nature require compromise. When I was directing a Star Trek movie, for example, I had this wonderful concept about the Enterprise searching for God but finding the devil. Imagine, the crew fighting its way out of hell! The possibilities were mind-boggling, and my mind was appropriately boggled with ideas. Then producer Gene Rodenberry turned it down. It was potentially too divisive, he said; too many people might object. We eventually compromised; rather than the true devil, the crew encountered an alien who believed he was the devil.
I had a choice: I could accept the compromise or refuse to direct the movie. I made a mistake; I accepted the compromise, which doomed the picture from the beginning.
I have made decisions, many decisions, in my life that I would change knowing what I now know. But at that time I didn’t know it and I made the best possible decision for me, the one I could live with. In retrospect, it may not have been the best decision, but it was consistent with who I was at the time. I desperately wanted to direct that picture, for example, and was willing to accept the compromise to get what I wanted. I made the right decision for me at the time, I was willing to be flexible with my principles, but the results proved it was the wrong decision.
I suspect we all like to think we are in most ways the same person throughout our lifetimes. Well, I am here to tell you we are not. Anyone who claims to have the same principles at my age as they had in their twenties simply hasn’t learned anything from their experiences. I have changed many times in my lifetime. We accept physical changes out of necessity: As you get older your feet hurt, your legs hurt, and your shoulder hurts. I love skiing, I love to ski as much as I love riding horses, but I accept the fact that I no longer have the legs to ski. My body doesn’t bend as it used to; my legs aren’t as strong. If I fall I will have difficulty getting up. The same thing is true about staying up all night drinking and then showing up for work the next morning. At a certain point your body tells you don’t do it, so you change your behaviors. I try to limit the change because I don’t want to give in to the ills of aging, but I recognize and accept the necessity of making physical changes.
I also have seen changes in my morals. It amazes and appalls me that I once celebrated the hunt for a wild beast. I found nothing wrong with hunting down and killing beautiful animals and I did so without the slightest hesitation. I did it for sport; I did it with TV crews watching my prowess with a bow and arrow. Who was that person? I now wonder. When did I change? What caused that change? And that clearly was only one of many changes I’ve made as I’ve gotten older and gathered knowledge and experience. What happened to holding on to those principles in which I once so fervently believed?
You can’t really believe in the sanctity of life while killing living creatures. I have little objection to friends’ hunting and eating what they kill. That is their decision. But I now find myself giving up eating meat for a variety of reasons, including philosophical. Perhaps as a function of age I have come to place a greater value on all life than I did years ago. Perhaps.
A lot of people resist change. They figure, This has always worked for me so why should I change? They think, I’ve made a lot of money doing things my way, so why should I change? I don’t have an answer for them; maybe they’re right. If that philosophy continues to work for them, who am I to tell anyone else they are right or wrong? Change for the sake of change can be dangerous and we don’t know where it might lead. The Constitution of the United States was written more than two centuries ago. Strict constitutionalists don’t want to change it at all. On the one hand, I understand there is good reason not to change it. People would prefer to hold tight to those precepts written in stone. If we don’t stick to the Constitution then gradually it will erode and eventually those principles on which this country was founded will be lost. On the other hand, throughout history any civilization that has refused to evolve to meet changing reality has disappeared. There are many people who feel the principles enumerated in that document are inviolate and it is those broad principles rather than the enumerated amendments that need to be defended. Of course, we have already fought the bloodiest war in American history over those same principles.
My interview show, Raw Nerve, gave me the opportunity to explore concepts like this with a lot of smart, successful people. What I found was that two people, both of whom clearly are intelligent, could subscribe to totally different philosophies and principles and be equally convinced they are absolutely correct and, in fact, believe without reservation that these are the only valid principles. I had conservative radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh as my guest; whatever you might think about him, he is well informed and smart. During our conversation he compared having health care to owning a home, telling me, “You’re assuming that there’s some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house.…” Actually, I was. And while his beliefs conflicted with my principles, he explained he felt that way because “it’s my job; it’s my life; it’s my career; it’s my passion. I’ve studied this stuff. I want the best country we can have, and this is not the way to get it.”
Sometime later I invited him to my home for one of my Monday Night Football parties. I
have a wall-sized television and host a gathering for several of those games. In addition to Limbaugh I had an extremely liberal friend there that night. Both of them smart people, and their principles, their political beliefs at least, could not be further apart. During the evening I watched my liberal friend, who obviously knew who Limbaugh was, artfully avoid any contact with him at all. My liberal friend sat on the other side of the room; when Limbaugh came to his side he buried his head in the refrigerator. He had no interest in even being introduced to Limbaugh. What occurred to me, as I watched this play out, was how invested each of us becomes in our beliefs and principles. And how quickly we judge people based on their beliefs.
I don’t think any of my other guests were aware of this playing out. Was my liberal friend right? Was he wrong? Did he miss an opportunity? I’m certain Limbaugh never even realized this was taking place.
An important lesson I have learned, and it took me a long time to learn it, is the danger of being judgmental. It serves no purpose. I support the people and causes in which I believe and try not to say too much about those things with which I disagree. But I do believe there is at least one truth that is the sum total of my experiences. I had been to South Africa several times, but I had never been to the townships, the black villages that had been established during apartheid. When I was filming in that country in 2017, I said I wanted to visit one of them. It wasn’t a good idea, I was told; it was too dangerous. But I insisted. I was accompanied by a well-armed guard. What I saw there was quite different than I anticipated. I saw fathers playing with children. I saw teenagers playing ball with one another. I saw young girls in school uniforms walking hand in hand. I saw their small shacks, each of which had a television and a satellite dish. I had seen this degree of poverty before, but I had never felt the level of peacefulness I found in that township. When we drove by they looked at us with curiosity but not hostility. I did not sense the danger I had been warned about. These were people living closely together—in harmony.
Live Long and . . . Page 14