On the Shatner Problem. · 11:30pm Aug 14th, 2017
The following was written up as a reply to this blog post by FoME, but by the time I finished typing up the following rant, I realized it pretty much needed to be posted as its own separate blog.
The following is a long-winded, ranty analysis of why William Shatner has the reputation he has, and why people need to remember that yes, he IS actually an actor.
I have to say, I did not realize Grand Pear was Shatner for that first scene. Beneath all the memes, that man really can act.
This is the thing that pisses me off about Shatner parodies: it leads to nobody giving a good actor credit. Shatner has the same training as an actor Nimoy had. But a perfect storm of factors led to the reputation he has today:
1. Shatner routinely received bad direction on Star Trek. Directors wanted him to make unnecessary dramatic pauses and evoke lines in an over-the-top way.
2. When Shatner blew up, so did his ego. After Star Trek, roles in which he doesn't ham shit up are few and far between. (Watch him in Airplane 2, where he legitimately doesn't give a shit--it's the closest to the Shatner from that famous Twilight Zone episode he'd been in years at that point.)
3. By the mid-70s, Shatner had been lampooned already to the point where he started to self-parody. This is where the infamous "spoken word albums" came from--it's like that one really really bad American Idol contestant that somehow decided he was good and put out albums, not realizing nobody was laughing with him.
4. The infamous "KHAN!" scream in Star Trek II, which has unfortunately become the "defining moment" of Shatner as an actor through memetic mutation and generational misexposure. The problem here is that the Khan Scream is always taken entirely out of context: That scream is not Shatner the actor being an obnoxiously large ham, it's Kirk the character playing up his anger and frustration and helpless rage as part of his plan to trick Khan into falling for his trap. Maybe one in twenty people actually get this. Even among Trekkies it's hard to find people who actually understood that scene.
5. Post-80s further parodies of Shatner, such as Animaniacs, Futurama, and Littlest Pet Shop, which were, by that point, frankly parodies of parodies, making the situation so much worse.
6. Shatner himself refusing to get it that the parodies were BECOMING him and "giving them what they want" for so many years.
The end result? When we see Shatner do some genuine, no-ham acting, it's viewed as unexpected.
I'm legitimately unsure if I should apologize for my comment or not.
Pretty much. Yeah, agreed.
Well too be fair how often do we get to see Shatner do any serious acting? The only exposure I ever had with him was in comedic situations. I can't remember the last time he had a serious performance in any TV shows or movies.
The good thing about not knowing much about most TV shows, is that this kind of thing flies right over my head.
Instead I asked "Shatner? Sounds familiar."
There was a comedy special filmed in my hometown, “Shatner’s World” as part of a one-man-show tour he was doing. I recorded it and love watching it, the man has lived an incredible life and really is a great actor who has worked alongside some of the biggest names of his time. But, yeah, he’s got a reputation now and kinda likes playing it up for laughs. My biggest exposure to him is “Weird or What”, a paranormal mysteries show where he constantly plays up the lovable fool angle, where they make like he has to do several takes to flub his lines, or he forgot his cell phone in a tub of ice cream, or he admits that some of his books were written by ghost writers as he literally goes over to check on a guy in a bedsheet working on a laptop.
But yeah, agreed, the guy is a serious actor and it’s good to remember that.
Can I be frank?
Only if I can be Bulwinckle!
... I didn't know Shatner did Grand Pear until just now.
4634711
Nah, you shouldn't. It's unfortunately a common sentiment and I don't hold it against you. It just...I needed to get that out. ^^;;
"KHAAAAAN!" wasn't Shatner's greatest moment.
Wait about a half-hour or so, when he's rushing through the battered Enterprise to reach engineering, trying to save Spock from certain death, only to realize he's too late. Everything about those scenes through Spock's funeral were a masterpiece. Shatner makes me cry every time I see STII, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen it. That little chin quiver when he says, "Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, his was the most... human" kills me.
Screw everyone who says Shatner can't act. They just aren't watching the right scenes.
I know he's a talented actor, but I still enjoy the parodies for their own sake, one of my favorties being the song Shatner Of The Mount by Fall On Your Sword which remixes an interview he did for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
*blinks at Item One* Wait, seriously? All those weird pauses and rushed sentences weren't his own choice? They were the result of bad direction? I had no idea.
I used to see a lot of him because of Rescue 911, not Star Trek. Still, it's how I came to know about Shatner in the first place.
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Generally speaking, TV actors do what the director tells them to. A bad director can ruin anything.
4634964
Wow.
It helps that, as RHJunior commented in a MLP fic, that Shatner gets it, and can enjoy playing the part of the enormous ham, much as a certain English actor does. ( "Gordon's ALIVE!" )
Heh. Brian gets it. Bill gets it. Why do so MANY people fail to realize that being a Big Ham is FUN?!
This is the equivalent of being surprised that the guy who voiced the Poop emoji is a trained theatre actor.
4635000
Because they don't possess the humor of truly great and talented actors?
4635093
Um. No. That is literally the exact inverse of this. People are surprised Bill Shatner is a solid, skilled actor because he is excessively parodied and self-parodies often. Patrick Stewart is a respected, renowned, acclaimed actor...who nobody can believe accepted the role of the fucking poop emoji in the worst movie ever made.
Now, we just need Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kaye Mulgrew, and Scott Bakula as the extended Pear family.
I'd consider that a feather in the ol' cap, wouldn't you?
Mr. Shatner did get his start in Shakespearean stage acting, which is for several reasons a very broad and, by modern standards, hammy style. It’s true STrek direction was terribly uneven, and no doubt that contributed, but it’s also true he was disposed toward just that sort of overwrought performance, by all accounts I’ve read.
That said, the William Shatner of thirty-six is profoundly different from the William Shatner of eighty-six; whatever his style in his youth, he’s had fifty years of experience and maturity to broaden and mellow his ability.
4635109
You misunderstood my statement. Imagine Patrick Stewart continued to do bit parts and cameos in bad movies for paychecks, and in 30 years there will be people surprised he did anything serious at all. (Granted, there are better companions, but I'm lazy and wanted the Star Trek comparison.)
when I saw the title I thought it would be about something completely different
I never heard the bit about the directors being the cause of him pausing all the time. I read/saw something about it being Shatner trying to remember his lines.
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Might be some either/or there. Also, I've heard that Shatner was notoriously hard to work with on-set. But Star Trek has been plagued with a history of weak directors damaging episodes. There are a lot of GREAT directors who do Star Trek too, don't get me wrong. But for every Winrich Kolbe or Jonathan Frakes, you get one like the asshole who directed TNG season 1 "Code of Honor", a director universally hated by the entire industry.
the mark of a great actor is being able to do that which noone thinks they are able. maybe in the back of his mind he has been planning this kind of thing.
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do x-men movies count?
I have to agree with this. The man won two Emmies for the Practice, he can act! Of course, he does lean into his own parodies often enough that he shares some of the responsibility for what his reputation can become.
Nicholas Cage has a similar problem. If you judge him by say, the top ten movies he's ever been in, you would say he's a fantastic actor. But if you watch the other 200, you'd say he's on balance a terrible ham, when he's really just a good actor with terrible money management problems who can't say no to a script.