Brent Spiner Interview (another one!)
Jason Snell
(I scanned this in from dot matrix. Forgive the errors.)
[Note - Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. My thanks to
them - ed.]
BRENT SPINER PROVIDES INPUT ON DATA AND HIS NEW ALBUM
By SHIRLEY JINKINS
c.1991 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Starfleet Lt. Cmdr. Data probably wouldn't understand Brent
Spiner at all.
An intriguing dichotomy, Data would say, since Spiner, the
20th-century actor-turned-singer, is actually father to the man,
er, machine. He portrays Data, the 24th-century android officer, oh
the syndicated hit TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation. "
But in real, terrestrial life, Spiner is outgoing, funny (Data
doesn't have the hang of humor yet), and not above a little lie or
two. ("I felt that, when Elvis died, a little piece of him came
into me. I'm kidding you.")
And this, while discussing Spiner's new album and Natalie Cole's
hit LP of duets with her famous father:
Spiner: "I wish I could've done an album with my dad, but
unfortunately he died when I was 10."
Star-Telegram: "Gee, what a shame. So your dad was in show
business?"
Spiner: "No, actually he was in the furniture business. That's
another reason why we never did an album together."
Data, of course, is programmed to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and at great length. He's positively positronic.
Back before all the technology, Spiner was delighting Fort
Worth, Texas, audiences during the early 1970s in a pair of Casa
Manana theater productions and, ever the dutiful android, Spiner
hasn't forgotten.
"I certainly do (remember)," Spiner said during a phone
interview last week from the "Star Trek" set. "I almost came (to
play at Casa) again, when I was in New York. Casa Manana was the
one and only, quote unquote, summer stock experience of my career."
Spiner worked with guest director Cecil Pickett at Casa, whom he
calls "one of the great teachers of all time."
Spiner should know. He was Pickett's student, both in high
school and at the University of Houston.
He went to Bellaire High School in Houston, a place full of
influences for an aspiring student actor.
"The principal of the school was Dana Andrews' brother. In my
drama class were Randy and Dennis Quaid, and Cindy Pickett (Cecil
Pickett's daughter)," he said.
"It's funny, but in New York I studied at the Strasbourg
Institute for a while. I never see any of those people, but I run
into people from my high school all the time."
(Intriguing, Data would say.)
Spiner got his Equity card at the Houston Music Theatre, "but I
was just a kid in the chorus." He never worked at theaters in
Houston, but left for New York after college graduation. He did a
number of off-Broadway plays, finally landing in a public theater
production of "The Seagull" with Joseph Papp. He went on to
appear in the Broadway musical productions of "Sunday in the Park
With George," "The Three Musketeers" and "Big River."
Spiner moved to Los Angeles in 1984, appearing in the Westwood
Playhouse production of "Little Shop of Horrors," the Woody Allen
film "Stardust Memories," and guest roles in the TV series
"Cheers," "Night Court," "Twilight Zone" and "Hill Street
Blues."
Spiner's Casa experience, in the productions "Promises
Promises" and "Cabaret," was in bleak times for the theater,
because "Cabaret" in the summer of 173 wasn't just the last play
of the season, it was almost the theater's last play ever.
Squabbles with Actors' Equity and an ensuing boycott of Casals
non-Equity slate of plays that summer threatened Casals future.
"I remember we were picketed on opening night by Rip Torn and
Geraldine Page," Spiner recalled. "To be picketed by those people
was an honor! We were kids then, we needed the work and we were
doing jobs."
Spiner anticipates a return to the stage one of these days,
after "Star Trek: The Next Generation" runs its course.
But can he ever really walk away from the cosmos, given the
extraordinarily long lives of major "Star Trek" characters?
"As a machine, I have a feeling Data's days are numbered.
Data's an innocent, and that gets harder and harder for me to do as
I age," said Spiner, 40. "Ironically, Data's days are numbered,
by my own biology."
Androids, you see, do not grow old, while the people who play
them do.
Spiner said he isn't privy to any inside information about
Data's possible fate, though.
"My only advance over the fans is I see the scripts before they
do," Spiner said, adding that he doesn't have much input into the
character himself. "I really don't. Other than that they're lines
on a page, and I try to make them live."
Always a tough job, but particularly when one's character isn't
alive in the usual sense.
"Nothing really prepared me for it (the Data role), but I think
it's been a good lesson," Spiner said. "The more of a blank
tablet that I present, the more the audience adds their own colors
onto it. ...
"In the places where I say, 'I am a machine. I do not feel
anything,' people will write in and say, 'Oh yes, you did! I saw
it.' And I really didn't."
Data isn't the only Spiner character with a fan following.
There's also Bob Wheeler, the hangdog hayseed who appeared with his
hapless clan on several episodes of "Night Court" several years
ago. He's still seen on reruns.
Spiner's new album, on the independent Bay Cities label, is
called "Old Yellow Eyes is Back" in deference to both Data and
Frank Sinatra, one of Spiner's heroes.
It includes the standards that he grew up listening to, such as
"Embraceable You," "When I Fall in Love" and "Carolina in the
Morning."
Spiner also listened to rock and roll as a boy, which is where
Elvis comes in.
"I keep wanting to do this episode of 'Star Trek' where the
Enterprise crew finds Elvis," Spiner said, "living in the 24th
century."
--
Jason Snell / jsn...@ucsd.edu / University of California, San Diego
"There is freedom within, there is freedom without--
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup."
-Neil Finn
--
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