Aside from the overwhelming sense of how much William Shatner misses his friend, another takeaway from his biography Leonard is how long and hard Leonard Nimoy worked until he achieved success. Unlike William Shatner, whose leading man qualities allowed him to make a decent income fairly early on, Leonard Nimoy scrambled to make a living. His move to Los Angeles did help him pick up work in TV and film. Sadly, the parts he got were largely one-offs, and usually limited to just a couple lines of dialogue.
Shatner paints a poignant description of Nimoy's work on projects filmed on location. The crew and cast of these poorly funded productions often literally had to pick up their equipment, and run from one location to another, just to film the next line or so of dialogue. Far from being concerned about continuity, or matching up backgrounds, all that mattered was getting enough natural light to complete the scene!
Even more surprising, Leonard Nimoy's looks largely relegated him to bad guy roles prior to Star Trek. Far from being cast as a wise intellectual like Mr. Spock, or the kind and compassionate man he was, all-too-often Nimoy was cast as a thug, a hired gun, or some other minor villain. So Nimoy struggled to find a way to make his bad guy roles more distinctive. As he was a smoker, he often suggested to the director that he could smoke in the scene. Surely the way he smoked a cigarette would distinguish him from his fellow bad guys, or say something about his villainous character?
"Sorry," the director or TV producer would always say. "We can't have a villain smoking cigarettes if the TV broadcasters pick up commercials from a particular cigarette brand. We don't want to send a message that only villains smoke cigarettes. Or worse still, that villains smoke the sponsors' brand!" In an age when the virtues of smoking marijuana seems to be celebrated by popular culture, and advertised in so many mediums, it's interesting to look back, and see how our perceptions change over time.
Leonard Nimoy would eventually find success through Star Trek, but that would take him fifteen-or-so years of solid acting. Nimoy continually took classes in acting, and any other skill he thought could contribute to making him a better actor. And eventually, his hard work paid off. Like Shatner, Gene Roddenberry invited Nimoy to his new TV show, and handed him the choice role of Mr. Spock on a plate. Someone had finally noticed Leonard Nimoy, and believed in him enough to give him a major part. Even more incredible, Roddenberry fought to keep Nimoy on as Mr. Spock when the studio heads wanted to get rid of that pointy-eared Vulcan.
Why would the studio heads dislike the character of Mr. Spock, you ask? Because he looked too evil, or villainous! That's why.
Dragon Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment