Shatnerian. Shatnerica. Shatnerologist.
Hytok
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-ettel1031,0,6631749.story?coll=ny-entertainment-bigpix
Forging new frontiers
Just when you think the ubiquitous William Shatner has done everything, he
surprises you. The widely known -- and roundly ridiculed -- entertainer is,
at 73, at the top of his game.
Shatnerian. Shatnerica. Shatnerologist.
The man's a brand!
Love him or hate him, laugh with him or at him, William Shatner is a
universally known commodity. He's the Coca-Cola of actors.
Some fans prefer the Classic taste of "Star Trek," the NBC space drama that
vaulted the demonstrative thespian to fame in the 1960s. Others grew up on
the New version in uniformed cop "T.J. Hooker" of ABC's '80s hit. Then
there are devotees of Shatner's spinoff products -- the low-calorie Tab of
his TV guest shots and chat-ups; the Vanilla writer of sci-fi novels and
memoirs; the C2 recording artist of albums such as the indescribable new
"Has Been"; even the Diet version of those funky Priceline ads.
And some consumers wonder why the heck you'd ingest any sort of Shatner
sugar water at all.
But the product keeps on selling. Fads come and go. William Shatner reigns
eternal.
Today, at 73, he's on top once more, not only by starring in another TV
series -- ABC's revamped (and lots loonier) law drama "Boston Legal"
(Sunday nights at 10 on Ch. 7) -- but also last month by winning an Emmy,
for God's sake, in doing it. He's even getting -- gasp -- critical raves,
for his over-the- top portrayal of self-proclaimed courtroom legend Denny
Crane.
And talk about chutzpah. While Shatner is still being skewered for his 1968
"rock" album, "The Transformed Man," which made mincemeat of such gems as
"Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (his aggressively hallucinatory talk-sing
has widely been decried as among the worst recordings ever), the man goes
and releases another disc. Shout!Factory's new CD, "Has Been," produced by
alt-rocker Ben Folds, is a recitative odyssey around the musical galaxy,
making peculiarly magnetic stops at such varied planets as electronica
("Common People"), gospel ("You'll Have Time"), western ("Has Been"),
country ("Real") and intensely personal free verse ("What Have You Done").
Shatner told music industry trade paper Billboard he considers his aural
art "word jazz." Which is perfect, really, considering it pretty much
describes the haltingly overwrought "Star Trek" declamations of Capt. James
T. Kirk that made his portrayer so imitable. Hogging the close-up camera
and heaving dialogue like darts, he'd virtually huff and puff and threaten
to blow your house down. Actually, make that huff. And puff. And threaten!
To blow. Your house. down!
Bombastic or brilliant? Self-indulgent or sublime? Does it really matter?
Lots of fans find it both, and delightfully so. Shatner's unique technique
was mesmeric enough to earn him the kind of fame that never disappears
completely but merely dims temporarily, inevitably flaring again like
Christmas lights annually hauled out of the attic.
"Star Trek" remains on TV every day, everywhere, in one way or another: in
cable repeats or well-worn home VHS copies, and now the new DVD season sets
of what is majestically called "The Original Series" to distinguish it from
those less-consummate sequel shows. (The second-season DVD box hits shelves
Tuesday. Paramount released the first Aug. 31, and the third and final
comes out Dec. 14.)
The same grandiose acting style serves Shatner well nearly 40 years later
on "Boston Legal," in which he's essentially the captain of a new crew,
this time David E. Kelley's gonzo lawyers ("Ally McBeal," anyone?), who
once again are led by an outsized ego. But if Capt. James T. Kirk (who
loved proclaiming his entire name) seemed oblivious to his own arrogant
domineering, Shatner's new Denny Crane is acutely aware of his importance
and preens quite purposely -- shouting down dissenters with "I'm talking!"
or dissuading a gun-toting complainant by casually assuring him, "Clients
come in here all the time wanting to shoot me." Crane suggests the man go
ahead and pull the trigger, to "immortalize" him in justice "folklore."
Camera hog?
Shatner, too, has been immortalized, not necessarily by his accomplishments
or his undeniable charm, but by his breezily overbearing being. It wasn't
long after "Star Trek" that word was making the rounds from his series
co-stars that lurking beneath what George Takei (Mr. Sulu) called Shatner's
"aggressive show of fondness" on the set was a manipulative camera hog.
"For whatever reason, Bill needs to control the action and be the center of
attention," wrote Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) in her memoir, "Beyond Uhura,"
detailing the ways in which Shatner glommed key lines and edged others out
of camera range, as though "he was the Big Picture and the rest of us were
no more important than the props."
Takei's own book, "To the Stars," observed: "Bill seemed totally immune to
the sensitivities or the efforts of those he worked with... . His driving
determination seemed to blind him to everything around him."
Appearances such as Shatner's 1986 "Saturday Night Live" host stint --
featuring a "Trek" convention sketch in which he mocked the show's fans,
suggesting they "get a life" besides living in their parents' basement
obsessing over the show -- only reinforced his image as an unmindful
narcissist. And since everything Shatner does somehow comes across larger
than life, so did his egotism.
Lampooning Shatner became a pop-culture sport inspired by everything from
his more extreme Kirk histrionics to his ever-evolving toupees. (Despite
the drastic unreceding of his hairline since his TV "Trek" years, Shatner
still insists those are his natural locks.) Trying to hold on to Kirk's
youthful heroism while heading toward Social Security in the 1980s
big-screen "Trek" adventures didn't help, and neither did the ludicrous
God-seeking story of "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," widely considered
the worst "Trek" film ever -- and not coincidentally co-written and
directed by one William Shatner.
In the meantime, he was also putting his name on "Star Trek" novels, the
"TekWar" sci-fi oeuvre, three volumes of self-serving memoirs, video games
and so many other endeavors that he turned himself into a franchise.
Shatner Inc.'s wide-ranging impact could be both appreciated and spoofed,
the dichotomy making perfect sense, in a work such as 1998's "Encyclopedia
Shatnerica" (Renaissance Books). TV archivist Robert E. Schnakenberg spent
300 pages alphabetically chronicling the minutiae of what he called the
Shatnerverse -- movies, TV appearances, friends/enemies, shifting body
weight, traffic incidents, fruit salad (Shatner detests it) and, yes, the
meaning of life.
The growth of the World Wide Web only mushroomed the availability of
Shatnerbilia. The official site, WilliamShatner.com, sees Shatner and
daughter Lisabeth keeping flocks of fans informed of his every undertaking
-- writing memos on global warming and playing paint ball (no kidding in
either case) -- and selling Shatner books, photos and autographed
everything. But cyberspace also allowed Shatner detractors -- or perhaps
his more cynical aficionados -- to gang up on this celebrity ubiquity.
Witness the Web's interactive Should I Stalk William Shatner Test
(www.apeculture.com/games/shatner .htm), or the animated terpsichorean
Shatners of The James T. Kirk .Macarena Page (www.wednesdayweb .com/kirk)
or, most impressive, the tongue-in-cheek First Church of Shatnerology
(www.shatnerology .com).
That last one, a self-labeled "lunatic millennium cult," worships
everything about Shatner -- "creator and lord of Bad Acting, almighty,
eternal, and bloated, incomprehensible, infinite in ego, misunderstanding
and every imperfection" -- right down to "the TerrificallyTall fur-piece
that resides on the noggin of our master/prophet/puppeteer."
New credibility
So, is William Shatner a joke? If so, the joke may now be on us. In "Boston
Legal," his Denny Crane character plays powerfully off all the attitudes we
think we've experienced in Shatner/his on-screen creations. The overweening
assurance, the overachieving imperiousness, the "driving determination," as
Takei said, seeming "to blind him to everything around him."
Series creator Kelley said of Shatner in a conference call with reporters
last month that "When I was conceiving the character, he first came to
mind. And I'm not sure exactly why."
Maybe we are. As Kelley explained, "It's a character that we want to always
walk the line and never be quite sure if he's either genius or crazy."
Shatner in a nutshell? That's his mystique. You're never sure if you're
loving his work or loathing it. You're always trying to discern how much is
assertive acting and how much is personal pomposity. Kelley can submerge
enough double and triple meanings in some of that "Boston Legal" dialogue
to make the viewer's brain spin.
"Don't waste your time trying to get into my head," Crane flatly tells a
colleague mystified by his motivations. "There's nothing there."
But the line wouldn't resonate if Shatner didn't deliver it dead-on
perfectly -- fleetingly and without emphasis, in this case -- leaving us
wondering exactly what it's telling us. Crane's a compelling enigma, one
you can't stop watching.
And Shatner, Kelley was saying, "just seemed to me to be the most organic
guy to play this guy." Of course. Denny Crane is downright Shatnerian.
Jolan Tru
--
Filippo "Hytok" Simone - L'oracolo sampdoriano di Sunnydale
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