Shatner Rules (17 page)

QUIZ

Which one of these is an Australian slang word, and which is a character once played on a TV show by William Shatner?

A. Bascom

B. Kovalik

C. Gronke

D. Manoshma

E. Bodosh

F. Rawhide MacGregor

F
or many years in Hollywood, when an agent got a comedy script tossed onto his or her desk, the first phone call they made usually wasn't to William Shatner.

If they needed a crusading district attorney, a race-baiting zealot, noted Roman statesman Marc Antony, a honeymooner who becomes enslaved by a fortune-telling machine, a Swedish farmer squaring off with Lee Van Cleef, a brother named Karamazov, a young sailor named Billy Budd—you gave William Shatner a call. You didn't call him if you needed a clown.

Heck, I was even hired to play a Burmese sailor named Maung Tun on an episode of the old police show
Naked City.
But I just couldn't book comedy. (Although someone in the casting department at
Naked City
clearly had a sense of humor, booking a Canadian as a Burmese sailor.)

This is ironic because I spent most of my time in college and in repertory acting in comedies, like
The Seven Year Itch
. But once I landed on the New York stage, started doing television, and then films, I could not be taken seriously as a clown.

This is too bad, because I love comedy, and love performing comedy. And I'm glad that the second half of my career has allowed me more opportunities to make people laugh. And again that's laugh
with
, not
at
.

Performing comedy is like performing a knife-throwing act at a sideshow: When done properly it can amaze and awe, but one mistake, and there's blood on the stage. Comedy is like an orchid: When tended to properly, it is a thing of beauty, but when it's not, it withers and dies. Comedy is like chocolate soufflé: With careful monitoring it can rise to great heights, but if you slam the door too hard—flat as an unfunny pancake.

If you had asked me a few years ago, “What's the purest form of acting?” I would have said “theater!” But after my experience on
$#*! My Dad Says,
I have to say that it's sitcom acting. There's a communication and concentration required that is unlike anything I have ever experienced as a performer.

On a sitcom, you need to communicate with your audience and concentrate on what you're doing. In drama, so many different opinions matter: the director's, the producers', the writers', and so on and so on. In comedy, ultimately, the most important opinion is the audience's.

Doing comedy in front of an audience is like a juggling act (oops, sorry, I maxed out my metaphor limit). It's all timing, and it becomes all rhythm. If somebody coughs in the audience, it screws up the laugh. If you have the slightest hesitation on a word—if you hesitate, if you can't think of the perfect bon mot, the comedic moment is gone and the audience always knows it.

The people who came to see
$#*! My Dad Says
had a tremendous impact on the show and on my performance. We would run a scene in front of the crowd, and if I failed to connect, they wouldn't laugh. When they didn't laugh, our producers, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, would round up the writers and we'd try the scene again—but with different punch lines. Each thirty-minute episode was a mutual collaboration between performer, writer, and audience—more so than in any other genre.

In doing comedy you have to listen, you have to adjust, but most important, you . . . have . . . to . . . take . . . your . . . time.

A favorite comedian of mine was Dick Shawn, and he really personified both the ecstasy and the agony of comedy for me. I once went to see him perform in the mid 1980s. My wife and I arrived early, sat down in the auditorium, and noticed a large pile of paper and debris on the stage. I couldn't figure out if it was part of the set dressing, or some garbage they forgot to remove from a previous performance.

Either way, time passed, about twenty minutes or so, as people filled in to take their seats. Suddenly the lights went down, a voice came over the PA announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen—Dick Shawn!,” and Shawn leapt up from the pile of garbage.

He had been waiting there, silent, for nearly half an hour, just for that big, crazy laugh of surprise.

Patience. What a virtue.

Shawn was a master of taking his time. He would do these long, rambling jokes—with laugh-free setups—that wouldn't pay off until the very end. I so admired his courage—what if the joke tanked? As they say in comedy, “That's a long way to go to find out that the store is closed.” Audiences hate it when they feel their time has been wasted. But Shawn was fearless.

In fact, his commitment was such that when he was performing at a show in San Diego in 1987, he was doing a joke about the end of the world when he did a face-plant on the stage. The audience roared. And Shawn did not get up. The audience kept laughing.

It had to be part of the joke, right? This was the guy who was known to hide under a pile of trash for thirty minutes just to get an opening laugh. And the audience was patient until the paramedics arrived.

Shawn had had a massive, fatal heart attack while performing.

Needless to say, I really admired Dick Shawn's timing and patience and courage, but no comedian should ever die like that on stage.

And I was thinking about him in 2005, when I was invited by the American Film Institute to celebrate the bestowing of a very special lifetime achievement honor. And even when I discovered that I wasn't the honoree, I consented to stick around.

Who was the man of the hour? George Lucas.

The highlight of Lucas's career was probably when he was the cameraman on a religious anthology program I once acted on called
The Psalms
. But he's done other stuff too, like
American Graffiti
and the
Star Wars
movies.

FUN FACTNER:
You can purchase
The Psalms
at WilliamShatner.com. It's the perfect gift for that family member who loves William Shatner, George Lucas, and the word of God.

Now, lifetime achievement awards are taken very seriously in Hollywood. In fact, most everything to do with awards in Hollywood is taken very seriously. If you want to suck the air out the room at any Oscars celebration, get on stage and make some barbed comments about the nominees. Do you remember who won the Golden Globes last year? Of course you don't—but I'm sure you remember the furor Ricky Gervais caused after his caustic monologue full of showbiz attacks hit the air.

And now I was tasked to open this special event . . . this lifetime honor to one of the most successful and powerful men in film . . . with some comedy. But not just a series of one-liners. I had to go out there and take my time and do a character bit and lead the audience to the laugh. An audience perhaps not in the mood to laugh. After all, they were in the presence of a master. One who could put them in his movies! It was a very serious moment.

This was a black-tie, top-tier event. In addition to Lucas, the crowd was filled with such luminaries as Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, Robert Duvall, and Chewbacca!

Yes, Chewbacca was seated near the stage. I think he even had a better seat than his costars, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.

(NOTE TO CHEWBACCA: Don't wear your ammo belt to a black-tie event. The tabloids will put you in a “fashion don'ts” spread, and rightfully so.)

The banquet room was decorated with—needless to say—a
Star Wars
theme. There were massive posters, pictures, even an X-wing fighter hung from the ceiling. And the first person anyone was going to see on stage?

That dude from
Star Trek
.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome . . . William Shatner.”

Can you say “cognitive dissonance?”

I walked out, and the crowd was . . . puzzled. The response somewhat . . . muted. I felt like I had stepped into a rumble between
Twilight
and
Harry Potter
fans in the middle of ComicCon.

(NOTE: Referring to elements of recent popular culture will help gain hip young readers. Thanks again, grandkids!)

I could see George Lucas on his special dais, sandwiched between Spielberg and Ford, looking baffled. And I could see Mr. Han Solo himself mouth the words, “What? The? Fuck?” (Clearly I elicit that response. Perhaps that should have been the title of
Shatner Rules
?)

Even Chewbacca folded his arms, and roared, “Bring it, bitch!”

(NOTE: I am not fluent in Wookie.
Star Wars
is for nerds.)

I got to the middle of the stage and felt a tad nervous. When you're nervous, the instinct is to rush. Get it done. Get off the stage, run back to your car, and go home.

But no. I had to be patient. My comedy needed its knife thrown, its orchid watered, its soufflé fluffed. I was going to take . . . my . . . time.

I smiled and said, “Ladies and gentlemen.
Star Trek
changed everything.”

Totally unexpected, out of left field, a tad disrespectful? It got a laugh, but not a giant laugh, and about half of it was nervous laughter. Lucas seemed confused. I was starting to sweat. Did I want to bomb in front of Steven Spielberg? Of course not. But I stuck with it.

Patience. Again, the key.

I looked around the room, admired all the sci-fi decoration, and declared “. . . and aren't these conventions wonderful?”

Boom. There was the laugh. Lucas even laughed. Chewbacca nodded and gave a thumbs-up (I didn't know Wookiees had thumbs). They were finally with me.

I pretended to be confused, and then slowly pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and began to read it.

“Dear Mr. Shatner . . . we'd love to have you open the show . . . Star
Wars
?!?!”

I was milking it, and the audience was eating it up.

“Wait a minute, I can do
Star Wars
,” I corrected, as I stared into Mr. Lucas's eyes. “George . . . it's George, isn't it? May I call you George? You can call me Mr. Shatner.”

Laughs and more laughs. Had I rushed it, had I bailed, the whole bit would have bombed and wound up on the cutting room floor, replaced with a montage of scenes from
The Psalms
and other Lucas masterpieces.

Eventually, my bit ended with me singing “My Way” and doing a kick line with a bunch of Storm Troopers. I even gave a shout-out to Chewbacca, who then stood up and fist pumped.

I was patient, took my time, read the crowd, and got the laughs. Comedy is a delicate, wonderful thing.

And now, I'm waiting—patiently—for the call from either Lucas or Spielberg. It's been six years now since the show. Come on, guys. I can do comedy. I can even throw knives, if that's what you really want.

T
hat's what a little sign read on the table in my tented VIP cabana at the Nokia Theater in downtown Los Angeles. There was no sign of this so-called Metallica, but if they were going to get higher billing than me, I was going to take their goody bags. (My grandkids
love
guitar picks, Linkin Park T-shirts, and studded leather wrist bracelets.)

I was at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, where I was to receive the coveted Honorary Headbanger Award. A headbanger is a heavy metal or hard rock fan who rocks his or her head violently back and forth while listening to said music.

(NOTE: Please—don't ask me to ever demonstrate. I am an honorary headbanger. I am not licensed to head bang, nor may I practice it, or advise others on its practice. At least not in the state of California. But if you ask me in Nevada—let's rock!)

I settled down into my chair in the little “Metallica and Me” section, ordered a beer and some sliders, and gazed at the crowd. A parade of young—and not so young—metalheads, tattooed and bestudded, passed me by, occasionally stopping to do a double take at the sight of Mr. and Mrs. William Shatner. It was quite a bizarre crowd. The VIP room was a who's who of “what the hell is that?”

(NOTE: Give yourself extra time when attending a headbanger awards banquet. It takes forever to get through the metal detectors.)

I usually ask myself this a couple of times a week, and while sitting there drowning in the sonic assault of the speakers at this heavy metal melee, I pondered,
How did I get here?

But I guess music has always been part of my life in a way. When I was a child, my father would come home from his clothing business on Saturdays and put the Metropolitan Opera broadcast from New York on the radio. I would often close my eyes and wonder what the singers looked like. (I doubt they looked anything like the singers on the black carpet at the Golden Gods Awards. Those fat ladies at the opera could sing, but none of them could wail like these metalheads.) In college, I directed some musicals, and even took some voice lessons as a young actor. And now, at the age of eighty, I have three full-length records under my belt.

Yes, three.
The Transformed Man
,
Has Been
, and . . .
Searching for Major Tom
. It's in record stores now. You might want to purchase it and listen to it while reading this book. (Headbanging while reading keeps you from looking too nerdy. )

Searching for Major Tom
started in 2010 when the head of Cleopatra Records, Brian Perera, visited my office. He sat on the very couch that once held the Foos Brothers when we began discussions of
Has Been.

“We'd love for you to sing on an album for us,” he asked.

“I don't sing,” I replied.

“Oh, I know. But sing—like you do—on an album of science fiction songs.”

I began to look for a way to wrap up the conversation quickly. I explained that I didn't want to do an album of science fiction–themed tunes. Would I be holding a toy laser gun on the front cover? Would the songs be punctuated by sound effects? This had “novelty” written all over it, not worth my time.

Brian thanked me, and left some sheet music on my desk for these “science fiction songs.” Later, I began to go over some of the lyrics. One was “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, which—judging from Bowie's ever-changing appearance over the years—I assumed was autobiographical.

But no, it was about a character named Major Tom. And he appeared in more than one of the songs on my desk. He is the title character in a song by Peter Schilling, there was another tune called “Mrs. Major Tom
,
” and then there was the sheet music to Elton John's “Rocket Man,” which is basically about Major Tom.

FUN FACTNER:
William Shatner became one of the first artists to cover “Rocket Man” when he performed it at the Saturn Awards in 1978.
SECONDARY ADDITIONAL FUN FACTNER: Cee Lo sent a thank-you note after William Shatner became one of the first artists to cover “Fuck You
.
” Are you reading this, Elton John?

It occurred to me then that this didn't have to be a novelty album full of random sci-fi songs; it could be a
concept
album that tells a story, much like
Has Been
and
The Transformed Man
. This could be an opportunity to blow some minds. And—if we got the right musicians on board—blow some speakers.

Searching for Major Tom
began to take shape once Adam Hamilton hopped on board as producer. We began to tell a story of an astronaut at a crossroads in his life, while deep in outer space. And we began to assemble songs and artists who would help me tell the story.

What are the songs? Who are the artists? We recorded Deep Purple's “Space Truckin',” with Johnny Winter on guitar—one of
Rolling Stone
magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time—and “S
he Blinded Me with Science” with Bootsy Collins on bass, a man who has spent plenty of time in the outer reaches of the universe. I cover U2's “In a Little While.” Michael Schenker from the Scorpions rocks like a hurricane with me on Tea Party's “Empty Glass.” I croon “Lost in the Stars” with jazz great Ernie Watts on sax. I cover Golden Earring's “Twilight Zone,” which has nothing to do with gremlins on planes or guys obsessed with fortune machines.

“Space Cowboy” by Steve Miller? I do it, with my pal Brad Paisley (he provides the cowboy, I handle the space). Peter Frampton comes alive on a version of Norman Greenbaum's “Spirit in the Sky,” while two of the loudest musicians ever—guitarist Wayne Kramer (from the MC5) and drummer Carmine Appice (who has been in nearly ever band that ever was)—back me up on Hawkwind's “Silver Machine.”

You indie rock types will “dig” (am I using that right?) the Strokes' Nick Valensi's work on “Major Tom,” while classic metal fans can “jam” (not sure about that one) with Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore on our cover of “Space Oddity.” Alan Parsons plays on that one, too, taking time off from his Project.

I land on Duran Duran's “Planet Earth” with Steve Howe from Yes, I “Walk on the Moon” with Toots of Toots and the Maytals, Dave Davies from the Kinks helps me blast off with the Byrds' “Mr. Spaceman,” and I was “Learning to Fly” with my own take on the
latter-day Pink Floyd classic. Together, we put all these songs together to make a real rock opera. And unlike
Tommy
, you don't need to be stoned to figure out what
Searching for Major Tom
is about.

Who else is on the album? Mike Inez from Alice in Chains, John Wetton from Asia, Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream, guitarist Steve Hillage, keyboardist Patrick Moraz, Manuel Gottsching from Ash Ra Tempel, Warren Haynes from the Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule, and the lovely Sheryl Crow. Plus too many others to mention.

In putting this project together, Adam Hamilton, along with music industry heavy-hitter John Lappen, brought me my own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It truly rocked.

Have you ever heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and said to yourself, “I wish William Shatner would perform this.” Well, wish no more! I cover it on this album. The whole thing! Queen liked long songs—they must have been fans of
The Transformed Man.
I found the whole thing
magnifico
! And Galileo! Even Figaro!

The second to last song on the album is “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath. In the context of our album, this song represents hell to Major Tom, who is teetering on the brink of life and death.

I went into the studio with Adam and laid down my vocals for this blackest of Black Sabbath tracks, and then stepped back into the bright light of Los Angeles and went on my way.

But a few weeks later, Adam called me and wanted me to hear the guitar track that Zakk Wylde had laid down for the song.

Have you heard of Zakk Wylde? (My spell-check program hasn't.) He is one of America's preeminent hard rock guitarists. He played alongside Ozzy Osbourne for many years, and now fronts his own heavy metal band, Black Label Society. He's this massive, scary-looking guy with long hair and a long, braided beard. I don't think he has ever worn a shirt with sleeves.

And when I heard his guitar work,
I
was transformed.

It was raw. It was powerful. It was . . . fucking gnarly. (I
must
be using that one right, right?)

So raw, in fact, that I went back in the studio to re-record my “Iron Man” vocals. I had to do justice to the blistering, six-string assault created by Zakk's Gibson Les Paul.

Bill kicks some serious ass recording his version of Black Sabbath's “Iron Man” for his newest album in 2011. (
Courtesy of Paul Camuso
)

My original track wasn't dirty enough. It wasn't Ozzy Osbourne, it was Ozzie Nelson. (Ask your grandparents, kids.) I needed to scream.

While screaming, I realized that heavy metal is nothing more than raw energy. That's what defines it. And I needed to tap into that energy with all my might. My voice is very important to me, but that afternoon, all I cared about was screaming—voice be damned.

FUN FACTNER:
Recording
Searching for Major Tom
is the reason there was almost a 
$#*! My Dad Says
episode called “Ed Needs a Lozenge.”

I began to school myself in the metal arts. There is now Iron Maiden on my iPod. They are one of the few artists on my iPod. And they have so far made nice with the assorted jazz tunes and NPR podcasts I've downloaded. Although I think
Fear of the Dark
can most certainly beat up
A Prairie Home Companion
.

And with the album done, I found myself in a stretch limousine, headed off to the Golden Gods Awards. I didn't know what awaited me. Elizabeth and I wore black, I knew that much. And I tried to prep for all the questions I'd be asked on the black carpet.

QUESTIONS ASKED OF WILLIAM SHATNER ON THE BLACK CARPET OF THE REVOLVER GOLDEN GODS AWARDS

 

Why are you here?

What are you doing here?

Why the hell are you here?

Do
you
know where you are?

Seriously, why are you here?

Do you know where I can get my parking validated, dude?

I eventually made it down the carpet, enjoyed a long interview with former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, posed for pictures with Sebastian Bach, and then later entertained more questions from Sebastian Bach. Dude's got a mancrush!

Eventually we made it to my shared Metallica waiting area. They still hadn't showed up when it was time for me to be presented with my award. Elizabeth took the
RESERVED FOR METALLICA/WILLIAM SHATNER
sign as a souvenir. That's a pairing that shouldn't happen. There is such a thing as “too” metal.