I guess it has to be done. But does William Shatner really need an introduction?
His characters hardly need an explanation, and they aren't even real people.
Even... his... manner of speech... has a... reputation.
Shatner was already an acting star when he made his Hollywood entrance. He came off the Shakespearean stage of the famed Stratford Festival where he had won rave reviews as a youthful gust of Canadian talent. He wasn't an instant hit in the California film industry, but he got work and one of the jobs he took was the role of James T. Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise, whose five-year mission was to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
In truth, it was only supposed to be a 13-episode mission. But under the direction of creator Gene Roddenberry, his serial story Star Trek discovered a new gear television had never seen before, warp speed, and a quirky sci-fi show exploded into a decades-old and still healthy franchise with Shatner at the helm.
But there was more. If you read Shatner's list of credits, there was a lot more. His reputation took a hit as a result, but he insisted on being a working actor, passing up lottery-sized fortunes in exchange for dependable, long-lasting fortunes. And some of those many roles were hits as well, like the cliched cop show T.J. Hooker in the title role, as host of the reality-based series Rescue 911, the comedically egomaniacal lawyer Denny Crane in both The Practice and Boston Legal, and the cult-loved, short-lived sitcom $#*! My Dad Says.
When he isn't acting, he's writing (he has penned dozens of novels, including the entire TekWars series and many in the Star Trek book series). When he isn't acting or writing, he's riding horses and pursuing charity work or being a celebrity pitch-man for various products.
He does love a good fan convention, though. It was Star Trek that invented the things - Trekkies love company - and he is still doing them for all sorts of projects that audiences have embraced over the years. He's the inaugural headliner at Northern FanCon this weekend at CN Centre.
"What happens at a comicon or fancon - the kick the audience has, seeing some of their favourites, intermingling and seeing each other, all the costumes, the question-and-answer periods, the intermingling of fans and celebrities - I still do it because I want them to know what I'm doing, so the word gets out," he told The Citizen this week just prior to his arrival.
At the age of 84, the fact he is busy with marketable products of page and screen is itself a point of interest. He has a new book out, for example, a how-to guide for those in the twilight of their life to navigate the scary waters of new employment at an old age. It's called Catch Me Up.
He is also the narrator of the North American version of an animated show for small children called Clangers that has already won prestige in England. Shatner said this work was like going back to his youth.
"What an interesting challenge that was, to get the right attitude to tell a young child a short story," he said. "I'd been doing that for years with my own kids and grandchildren. I took a different tack than apparently the English version does.
"That's part of the interesting growth an actor can make," he continued, revealing some of his craftwork. "In the beginning you do it because that's the way you'd do it, then you do it because that's the way the character would do it, then you analyze the audience to see what they like best, so you bring in a variety of things. You write the song according to the audience is I guess the best equivalent I can think of."
Ultimately, the Clangers project is a microcosm of why he is an actor in the first place, and one who deliberately avoids blockbuster movies because of the hours and days and even weeks spent twiddling one's thumbs waiting for the cinematic conditions to be right for delivering a few lines over and over again.
"This is what I've had success at in real life," he said. "I was a storyteller when I was a counsellor at a welfare camp north of Montreal while I was going to McGill University. I was in great demand at the bunks because I could tell Edgar Allan Poe stories in the night. The Tell-tale Heart was my big moment. That's what I'm doing on Clangers and no matter how esoterically you want to put it, the actor is always telling a story and that's the magic. It's what I've found intriguing over the years."
Shatner is going back to his coming of age for one other project he has on the go, and it has nothing to do with show business. Want to hear a grown adult melt into a puddle of innocent adolescent excitement? Tell William Shatner you Googled Rivet Motors. I know you're doing it right now.
Yeah. That's a real motorcycle.
And it was co-designed by Capt. James T. Kirk. This summer, he and a team of mechanical designers and camera crew are going to ride it across America.
"From Chicago to Los Angeles - I'm going to do Route 66 and film it all," he said, practically giddy. "I thumbed it when I was 19. Just before I started at McGill I thumbed from Montreal to San Diego to Vancouver back across to Montreal. Part of that was from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66 - they hadn't yet built the intercontinental highways. So I'm going back on this motorcycle I helped design. It may just be a personal odyssey - the people I meet along the way, the fears I feel, the weather I encounter... The romance and the fear is in my fuel mixture. Can I do 2,200 miles on a bike? I never have. What do I see at the end? What happens in the middle? Who do I meet? Can I set interesting people up in advance to meet along the way?"
When he says fear, he means those nerves that motivate any big move in life like leaning in for a first kiss or quitting a despised job without a new one yet arranged.
But he also means it literally.
"I laid my Harley down on MacAdam Road (in Los Angeles) and left some skin on the road, and I thought 'I can't do that anymore' so I said we've gotta make a trike, but you know those new things that have the two wheels in front and one in back? I didn't want one of those. You lose the symphony of line when you have two wheels on the front. It looks ugly. All this came about, by the way, when a sculptor friend of mine said 'I want to design a motorcycle that would be worthy of The Museum of Modern Art' and he drew up something, we worked on it together and with the team from American Wrench, and we formed a company called Rivet Motors."
And the sleek, art deco three-wheeled machine they created looks a lot like a space ship doesn't it?
Shatner and a slate of other celebrity guests will be available to see, meet and speak with during a panel discussion at Northern FanCon on now and throughout the weekend at CN Centre.
