Up Till Now (25 page)

I know Robert Wise was a wonderful director, just not for this film. He hadn’t been a fan of the series, so he never understood its appeal. He was a very nice person, a master technician, but he didn’t have a clue about
Star Trek
. What I admired most about him was that he never left the set. He sat in his director’s chair and he watched whatever was going on. If it took two days to set up the lighting for a scene, he was there every minute directing the lighting crew. When they were decorating the set, he was there to tell them where to hang the photographs. The only time he left was for lunch and an occasional bathroom break.

Neither Leonard nor I could stand the picture. We were bound together by our mutual need to try to save this movie. It was just so ponderous, so serious. We had seen each other many times since the series had ended, but it was while making this film that we actually became friends. Good friends. We did everything we could to try to inject some humanity into it. Typically, in each episode after we’d destroyed the alien, we’d have a humorous wrap-up scene on the bridge. Our characters had an opportunity to play off each other. In the movie script I had a few lines thanking each member of the crew for coming out of retirement to save the universe. When we were rehearsing the scene Leonard ad-libbed a very clever line. I started by telling Dee Kelley, “I’ll have you back to Earth shortly.”

To which Dee replied, “Oh, Captain, you know, I might as well stay.”

Then I turned to Leonard, and told him, “Mr. Spock, I’ll take you back to Vulcan.”

I don’t remember the line that was written for him, but he said, “Captain, if Dr. McCoy is to remain onboard, my presence here will be essential.” It was a great line, perfectly defining the relationship between Bones and Spock, and everyone laughed. But after the rehearsal Wise told us, “You know, the feeling is that the humor is inappropriate.”

That was the problem with the script. It was just too absurdly serious.

The night the film opened I snuck into a theater in Westwood. The moment the theme music started the entire audience started cheering. They were screaming—and the picture hadn’t even started yet. It was amazing. The audience had been waiting a long time for this film. Although it received generally poor reviews, it was a substantial commercial success.

Honestly, I don’t remember precisely what I was thinking as I sat in that dark theater watching this movie. I might have been thinking about how incredibly fortunate I was to be at the center of this phenomenon. I might have been smiling as I remembered the decade of rumors and false starts we’d gone through to finally get to this theater. And I might well have been thinking, thank goodness, if this thing is successful I won’t have to do any more quiz shows!

How can I describe all the quiz shows on which I appeared? What’s another word for “every single quiz show ever done in the entire history of television?” Trust me, I’m going to tell you the truth about this or my name isn’t William Shatner. I’ve got no secrets. I mean, can you think of any reason I shouldn’t have done quiz shows? Who are the two men who created many of the greatest quiz shows in television history? Should I stop asking questions? What do you think the number one answer was when I asked that question?

The popularity that I’d gained from
Star Trek
made me a welcome guest on game shows. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, who produced so many of those shows, really liked me. There were a lot of actors, the Robert De Niros of the industry, for whom doing a quiz show or a game show might have been considered a bit of comedown, but it hasn’t been one for me at any time in my career—especially at
that time. Game shows were fun and I enjoyed doing them. They provided great exposure—it was very good publicity for whatever project I was doing—but mostly for me. And finally, by any ordinary standards the money was good. Maybe not to the $10 million per picture actors, but to me. If I hadn’t enjoyed doing these shows, well, I would have done them anyway. We would tape five shows in one day, and I could just hear my father telling me what to do. “Are you crazy? You’re going to turn down a thousand dollars for one day’s work? You know what I could have bought for a thousand dollars? And you call that work? Sitting there and playing a game? I’ll tell you what work is!”

Among the game shows I did were
Hollywood Squares, The $20,000 Pyramid
and
The $25,000 Pyramid, Rhyme and Reason, Liar’s Club, Tattletales, The Cross-Wits, To Tell the Truth;
I was the celebrity guest on the premiere episode of the
Blankety Blanks
show. That’s not censorship, that was the name of the show,
Blankety Blanks
. On
The Storybook Squares,
the Saturday morning children’s version of
Hollywood Squares,
I appeared dressed as Captain Kirk—that was okay, on the same show Paul Lynde was dressed as the evil queen from
Snow White.
I even rolled on
Celebrity Bowling
. I could continue but you get the idea: if they wanted me, I was there.

Here’s one game that you can play along with me:
Masquerade Party
. On this show the celebrity guest came out dressed in a costume that hid his or her identify. Based on the costume the panel asked questions until they figured out the identity of the guest. The mystery guest in this sentence is dressed as Cap’n Andy, the captain in Jerome Kern’s classic
Show Boat,
and the set was the deck of a paddle-wheel steamer. Can you guess the identity of the guest? All right, here’s the clue the mystery guest gave on the show, “We’ve got a lot of
stars
on our boat!”

Give up? Okay, it was me! As was very well known, I had played the role of the... captain of a starship! Now, I never said these shows were difficult, just fun.

A very good writer named Sean Kelly once approached me with the most unusual concept for a game show that never went into
production. It was called
Land-A-Million,
and obviously he approached me because I had my private pilot’s license. The way this show worked was I took off with the contestant in a small plane carrying a million dollars in cash. To qualify, the contestant could not have ever piloted a plane in his life. As soon as we got to five thousand feet I bailed out. And then, if the contestant was able to land that airplane he got to keep the money. I don’t know what happened but this show never went into production.

Almost all of the game shows were taped all day Saturday in New York. So I’d get on the red-eye Friday night in L.A. and land at JFK at 6 A.M. I’d take a cab to the studio and be there by eight o’clock, nine o’clock at the latest. I’d hoped to sleep a few hours on the flight, but usually I failed, so I was tired before we started. We would shoot five shows in one day. In several of the theaters my dressing room was up several flights of stairs and I would have to change my wardrobe between each show. So I’d be rushing up and down four or five flights four or five times a day while I was already exhausted. The fact that I was enjoying myself would get me through the first three shows, but those last two were difficult. There were times I just got really giddy. On
The $20,000 Pyramid,
for example, the celebrity would say several words or names or events that fit into a specific group or category to try to get the contestant to identify that group or category. For example, I might say Vincent van Gogh, Mr. Spock, and Evander Holyfield to lead the contestant to the desired answer: people with strange ears. Or I might say
Land of No Return, Dead of Night,
and
The Fright
to get the correct answer, movies William Shatner never should have made.

One Saturday Leonard and I taped five shows against each other. My partner and I were winning the fourth show and were playing the bonus round, in which she was going for the $20,000 prize. I don’t know about other celebrities, but when I was playing these games I really wanted to win, I really wanted to be entertaining, but mostly I really didn’t want to look like an idiot. The contestant and I were sitting in the winner’s circle. My task was to give her enough examples to lead her to the correct answer for $20,000, which was
“Things that are blessed.” I wanted to see this nice woman win all that money. I was thinking quickly, things that are blessed, things that are blessed. Okay, I got one. And I gave her my first clue, “You’re blessed!”

That woman probably didn’t need all that money anyway. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I’d told her the answer. I’d cost her the bonus. So I did the only thing possible considering the incredibly stupid mistake I’d just made, I went berserk. I started screaming. Laughing hysterically, or perhaps manically. I picked up my chair and heaved it out of the winner’s circle. There was one rule: you can’t use the answer in the question. One rule, and I broke it.

And just in case I didn’t feel stupid enough, they began the next show by running the tape again—as an example of what not to do!

I liked playing the
Pyramid
. It was a challenging show. Once they didn’t have a good opening for the show so Mark Goodson asked me to go out and have some fun—be both the contestant and the person giving the clues. Well, I took it seriously. Strangest thing that ever happened to me. The board with the answer on it was behind the contestant so the interrogator could see it. I started playing against myself—I sat in the interrogator’s chair where I could see the answer and I gave the clues, then I raced around and sat in the contestant’s chair. I got so involved in playing the game that by the time I sat down in the contestant’s chair I’d actually forgotten the correct answer. I’m telling the truth. I completely lost sight of the fact that I knew the answer. It was a great opening spot, and they used it for several years.

Naturally I had some game show disappointments; I never made it to the center square on
Hollywood Squares;
in fact, contestants most often referred to me as “William Shatner to block.” On
Celebrity Bowling
I believe Hugh O’Brian and I were beaten by Robert Culp and Marty Allen, although Marcy and I did well on
Tattletales
.

Many years later I made the transition from permanent celebrity guest to host of two game shows. But before I tell you about that I’ve just gotten some very exciting news: I now have 53,038 friends on my MySpace page! For someone who had so few real friends growing
up, that’s incredible—53,038 friends. They include laura, my bmf Big Chris, Che Guevara, old Hairball, The Dark Prince of Rainbows, the great Sid Caesar.com, and Flatface IV. I certainly hope all my new friends aren’t going to be angry when I don’t invite them to my home for one of my
Monday Night Football
parties. And I’m not sending out birthday cards either!

Okay, hosting game shows. I’ve hosted two of them. The Food Network bought syndication rights to a Japanese cooking show,
The Iron Chef,
and translated it into English. It became a big hit so the UPN network bought the rights to the concept and hired me to host
Iron Chef USA
. Obviously it was not a traditional question-and-answer show, but it did have contestants, or challengers. Basically, four elite chefs comprised the Gourmet Academy and on each episode their cooking superiority is challenged by other chefs. The combatants are given a secret ingredient and, on our show, had one hour to prepare five different dishes—which are then judged by four celebrity judges.

On one show the secret ingredient was crab. We gave the chefs live crabs and they had to create five crab dishes. A young chef made a . . . ready for this? A crab sorbet. Okay, perhaps it doesn’t sound too appetizing but when you actually tasted it, it was worse. It was fishy and crabby. So he was eliminated right away. One of the other contestants made a pasta dish with crab, and was eliminated when a celebrity judge decided, “This spaghetti isn’t like my mother makes. I don’t like it.”

Wait a minute, I thought, is it fair to judge food that way? As chairman I wasn’t permitted to criticize one of the judges, but I thought, what kind of frame of reference is that? It’s not like my mother makes? Well, of course it isn’t, that’s not your mother. That’s a renowned chef. Maybe you’d prefer a piece of toast with some jam on it? Personally, I’d love that. But would you rather have an egg soufflé with a bit of caviar on top? I wouldn’t, that sounds awful, I want my buttered toast for breakfast.

That was going through my mind as I was chairing the show. Several weeks later I was reading an article about the great chefs of the
world. One of them has a small restaurant outside Barcelona. At this restaurant he gives his customers what amounts to basically one spoonful of a dish so they can truly understand its taste, and then they go to the next dish. Apparently he bought a carload of tomatoes and an air machine that aerated the tomatoes and allowed him to get to the essence of the taste of a tomato. It was the pure taste of tomato. And as I read that I realized that the young chef had done exactly that, with his sorbet. He had given us the absolute essence of the taste of crab. I understood that this young chef and the master chef in Barcelona were tied together by their desire to bring their artistry to the consumer.

None of that helped the game show, though. After we’d done two or three episodes the network management changed and we were out of the kitchen.

Show Me the Money
was a much more traditional game show. Contestants got money. Several years ago I appeared at ABC’s Up Fronts, the promotional event held every year to promote the coming television season, representing
Boston Legal
. In the guise of my suave and sophisticated character, the brilliant litigator Denny Crane, I appeared onstage in a greatcoat, top hat, and cane, accompanied by a line of dancing girls. I proceeded to dance my way into the hearts of those in attendance. But unbeknownst to me, in the audience was the president of Endemol, the company that produces Howie Mandel’s
Deal or No Deal,
and several other quiz shows. He had a concept for a new big-money quiz show that was quite different from
Deal;
for example, instead of twenty-five beautiful girls holding briefcases worth a certain amount of money, this show had thirteen gorgeous dancing girls in little cages holding scrolls worth a certain amount of money.