Communications were down and the captain looked confused. “These computer guys are working in my office,” William Shatner muttered, “so I don’t know where we should go to talk.” The 77-year-old was standing in the lobby of his Studio City office, which is lined with more photographs from his beloved equestrian pursuits than his interstellar acting career. He looked at the ceiling and then the door. “I know: Let’s go to Starbucks. I don’t have my wallet, though. Will you buy me coffee?”
Wow, Mr. Priceline paycheck can’t pay for a cup of joe?
I'm joking, of course; I was genuinely thrilled to spring for a triple-shot decaf for the man who gave us all James T. Kirk, the bane of the Klingon empire and the master of the strained staccato delivery. I wasn't the only one a little geeked to see the venerable old space cowboy; the barista got the “Star Trek” icon's autograph on an empty cup and then customers kept coming by our table to shake his hand. One gushed about “Boston Legal,” and another, oddly, expressed a passion for those Priceline.com ads. “Maybe coming here,” Shatner whispered, “wasn’t a good idea.”
Shatner is shorter than you think and bow-legged after all those years in the saddle, but the main impression he makes is as a man of fairly intense focus. He brought a stack of notes to the café and scanned them, then looked up like a professor about to start his lecture. “Let’s begin, we have plenty to talk about.” I sat up a little straighter and looked at my tape recorder to make the sure the red light was on.
And there was a lot to talk about. There is a new “Star Trek” film coming, and Shatner is peeved that he won’t be in it (more on that later), but it’s just about the only thing he isn’t in. This past weekend he popped in on “Saturday Night Live” and Sunday night he may well be picking up his third Emmy for his sublimely kooky role as lawyer Denny Crane, the scene stealer on “Boston Legal” (and previously on “The Practice”). “Boston” returns for its final season on Sept. 22.
There’s also Shatner’s sometime-career in music, his recent autobiography and the deep shelf of sci-fi novels with his name on them, as well as his pitchman work. There’s also a brand new venture: The actor is getting into the comic-book business by partnering with Bluewater Productions Inc on adaptations of his novels about heroic deep-space struggles. Two books, "Man o' War" and "Quest for Tomorrow," will each be given a mini-series treatment, while his far more famous "TekWar" will be an up-ended series. (Darren G. Davis, president of Bluewater, tells me this "TekWar" will also be more faithful to the original novel than the 1990s television series of the same title, which itself yielded a Marvel Comics adaptation.) There will be a fourth title, also, based on a new Shatner concept that is still under wraps.
“With all of these comics, I have final approval," Shatner told me. "This is not a licensing arrangement, this will be me involved very directly throughout the process. They are going to do adaptations of my ideas and also sequels; they will be in the stores in March of 2009. I loved comics as a kid. I used to sit under the sheets with a flashlight and read Superman when I was 6 in Montreal and now, with the comics as they are today, it’s thrilling, really.”
Shatner kept tabs on comics through the years, and he has a soft spot for the old Gold Key comics based on the original "Star Trek" television series. "Oh, they were great. They always made me look so skinny." He also watches the current rage for super-hero movies with a bit of longing. "I would have loved to have been in a super-hero movie. Any of them. To be Superman? Or Captain Marvel? Who wouldn't love that?"
Shatner will have his name emblazoned in the title of the new comics, and it would have been a nice tie-in if the early issues were coming out amid the hoopla of his appearance in the next “Star Trek” film, the J.J. Abrams reboot set for May, but that’s a party he is not invited to. Only Leonard Nimoy, sharing the role of Spock, will be returning to the cast, which will otherwise feature young actors portraying Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew fresh from Starfleet Academy.
“There is no need for me to know anything because I’m not a part of it. They will have an extraordinary campaign when it comes about, and my dear friend Leonard will be part of that and I would have loved to have been there with him. I am very happy for Leonard, my good friend, though.”
But wait, didn’t Shatner’s Kirk die on screen in “Star Trek Generations” in 1994? He rolled his eyes. “It’s science fiction! If we’re trying to put together the DNA of a dinosaur dead for a 160 million years, why can’t scientists take a molecule that’s floating around and bring back Kirk?” Shatner shook his head and watched the traffic on Ventura Boulevard. “It was weird for me to hand over the movie reins to Patrick Stewart in the last movie. It’s strange to say goodbye. But it isn’t any more strange than saying goodbye to ‘Boston Legal,’ which has been part of my life these past few years in an extraordinary way.”
It was on “The Practice” that Shatner first appeared as Crane, an aging attorney with a slippery grasp of ethics and, at times, reality.
“For me, it has been the greatest fun I’ve ever had as an actor. I’m already in a nostalgic frame of mind. We have about two months left of shooting ‘Boston Legal.’ I will mourn and grieve the loss of this show. I won't miss getting up and driving to Manhattan Beach at 5 a.m., but i will miss the people. And David Kelley: I looked with relish each week when the script came in to see what new madness David had come up with for me. I have worked with very few geniuses, but David Kelley is a true genius. The efficiency of his ideas is perhaps the best in television. 'Boston Legal’ always had dual currents as the main flow of its history. On the one hand it was a comedy — outrageous, farcical, almost demented — and the other one was as a dedicated political treatise in which a very erudite man.”
On “SNL” this past weekend, Shatner spoofed his pitchman work for Priceline by pretending to coach Olympic hero Michael Phelps about maintaining "integrity" when it comes to accepting endorsements. The crux of the gag is that Shatner would do anything for a buck and, well, he was the guy who in 2006 sold a kidney stone to Goldenpalace.com for $75,000. The money went to charity, though, so the real knock on Shatner isn't that he's money-hungry, it's that he's starving for the spotlight. (The kidney stunt got Shatner on “The View,” by the way.) When the aging actor talks about his latest Emmy nomination, it’s clear that for him the platform is more important than the paycheck.
“Look at Lance Armstrong and Brett Favre, these guys that keep coming back. It's the roar of the crowd and being told how great you are. It's like that with the nominations. It makes you part of the happening. When you’re not nominated, when you’re not on the scene, then you’re not happening. No matter what you or anyone else says, when that light is not on, you’re in the dark. You don’t know who you are until someone cheers your name. And spells it right.”
-- Geoff Boucher
Original here
After checking out Death Magnetic for the first time, I set my headphones on my desk and reflected on Metallica's return to form. From start to finish, Death Magnetic simply gets better with each song. The most surprising aspect of the album is that the first single, "The Day That Never Comes", is the weakest song on the roster yet it still kicks ass. There's not one Metallica fan who could convince me "Cyanide", "The End of the Line", "Broken, Beat & Scarred", or "My Apocalypse" aren't as aggressive, tight, and explosive as their early songs. Each song is completely in the "Battery" and "Four Horsemen" wheelhouses with roots in the Black album and heavy layers of Ride the Lightning. Listen to "My Apocalypse" a couple of times and you'll understand why a lot of naysayers are eating their words. To those who continue to whine about how Metallica has never been nearly as great their early days... Grow up already! The days of Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, and And Justice for All are gone. They're never coming back, and I'll tell you why...
Metallica's sound, songwriting, and style could never ever be the same as their early days because Heavy Metal and Trash died a sudden death with the emergence of Grunge. The dark, epic and melodic anthem aspects of metal (ie: Fade to Black, Sanitarium... even most of Iron Maiden's tunes) gave way to a more uneven and experimental alternative Seattle sound from bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. Don't the fans of Metallica's early years get it by now? Very few bands of the traditional Heavy Metal and Trash eras survived. Many once unstoppable Monsters of Rock of the glory days of Heavy Metal were kicked to the wayside somewhere in time (<-- Iron Maiden nod for those who care) around 1990, with several fading into obscurity and many never to be heard from again. Dio, Dokken, Sepultura, Exodus, Saxon, King Diamond, Napalm Death, Kings X, Merciful Fate... the list goes on and on into Venom, W.A.S.P. and more. They were all amazing, but the times changed. As a new era of hard and heavy riffs emerged in the '90s amd '00s, bands like Cannibal Corpse, Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie, Korn, Deftones, and Slipknot can hardly be called traditional Heavy Metal in the same light as he bigger bands of the '80s. Alternative, Industrial, and "Nu" Metal, sure.
While most of the Metal bands from the glory days can be found in the "where are they now graveyard", bands like Slayer, Megadeath, Pantera, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden didn't have an easy time of staying relevant over the past twenty years. Although we said goodbye to Pantera's Dimebag Darrell a few years ago, they somehow found a way to survive throughout the '90s and into the '00s. Hell, even Lemmy and Motorhead survived. So too has Metallica, only they've survived as the top heavy metal band in the world in the past 20 years despite the many transformations they've undergone. Some changes were good and some were bad, but Metallica has been selling out the same stadiums and arenas as they were as openers in the glory days of Heavy Metal. It wasn't Dokken, Dio, Megadeath, Maiden or Sepultura headlining Lollapalooza at a time when Metal and Trash were dead, it was Metallica.
The more I listen to songs like "Cyanide", "All Nightmare Long", and "The Unforgiven III", Death Magnetic should have been a follow up to the Black album. But at that time, Heavy Metal and Thrash were dead. So would Metallica have died, too? It's certainly highly possible since the evidence is there with other bands of the era. If anything, Metallica has never been predictable. Can you fault a band for trying to adapt to the many changes in music over the years? Although Metallica purists loath Load and Reload, even St. Anger, would a Master of Puppets sound have worked for the band from 1990 to 2008? Should James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich have been forced to write songs as if they were 18 years old when none of us are the same as we were in high school? As its original fan base grew up and entered adulthood, so did the members of Metallica.
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