William Shatner is 95 years old today. He was born on 22 March 1931.
I have difficulty believing Shatner is still alive. Not only that. He’s still active. In fact, he recently shattered his shoulder when thrown from a horse! (People, please! Horses are evil. Stay away from horses!)
I’m not a huge fan of William Shatner. But people often claim that he’s a bad actor. Or that he over-acts. He doesn’t! People are really talking about the roles he plays. But even there, it’s wrong. He performs Captain Kirk with much subtlety when it is called for. But sure, he throws himself into big speeches when the time comes. That is how it should be!
Most people think of him as something of a one-trick pony. There’s Star Trek. And there’s TJ Hooker. But he is so much more than that! Shatner is a star in the traditional Hollywood sense of the word. Yet his credits on IMDb are more like those of a character actor. The man loves to act!
On this site, I’ve written about a number of his films. These include The Intruder, The Devil’s Rain, and The Babysitter. He also, of course, starred in one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone.
But I like William Shatner best when he is histrionic. And so, we will watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. His performance compares so well with Ricardo Montalban’s performance. Montalban is another excellent actor who is often dismissed as overly theatrical. And we get to see the two men interact even though they are literally never in the same location!
Image cropped from William Shatner by Super Festivals under CC BY 4.0.
You’re completely right that Shatner was hammy on Trek when the writing was hammy. (Nimoy, who generally had better-written scenes, could be pretty hammy, too — think “rock monster” or “Spock goes hippie.”)
I think people consider Shatner a ham actor because, in real life, he’s COMPLETELY a ham; he never stops being in “trying too hard to please” mode. (Nimoy was and Takei is far better at avoiding this.) But he wasn’t a bad actor! Not at all.
I think it is that there is something Shakespearean about his acting. He was quite able to do subtle. But he was rarely cast in roles that needed it. Have you seen The Intruder?
No I haven’t seen The Intruder! But it just went on my library list, thanks!
Typecasting is such a Hollywood staple. It’s been around since Day One. If you resist it, the celebrity press writes about what a prima donna you are, so it’s accept it and cash those checks (like Shatner/Willis did), or push back on it, and suddenly all you can get are bit parts in episodes of Mannix or something.
I kinda would have liked Shatner/Willis to get stuff like the Jack Lemmon part in Glengarry Glen Ross. (David Mamet is a dick and that play/movie is shallow, but you know the kind of part I mean.) The guys we know for being Big playing Small. (Lemmon always played Small.) They might have sucked at it. Or they might have brought something amazing to it (the biggest personalities often have insecurities inside: I’m sure you’re familiar with Shatner’s version of “Common People”!).
But typecasting meant, uh-uh.
I agree with everything about typecasting. But I’m most glad you mentioned that Glengarry Glen Ross is shallow. People tend to think it is so deep. But it isn’t. That isn’t the way people behave. Not even in high-pressure business settings. What Mamet has created is the kind of environment he fetishizes. Because he’s a horrible man. He wants to convince the world that everyone else is as horrible as he is. It’s also just so neat a plot. It’s more like a newspaper puzzle than a portrait of anything resembling life.
But back to typecasting. Note Jonathan Pryce. Contrast that character to the one he plays in Ronin. There are damned few American actors (or stars, anyway) who have that range. I’m not sure if we do so much typecasting because actor training sucks or if actor training sucks because there is so much typecasting. Sean Bean’s birthday is coming up and if I had more time, I would use the opportunity to compare him with Robert De Niro in the chalkboard scene. De Niro is a great actor in the very limited range he has. But hell, Nicolas Cage has more range! I think people assume De Niro is the ultimate actor because he plays almost exclusively “alpha” types. “Oh, look how he intimidated Sean Bean in that scene! That must make him a better actor!” Of course, Bean could have played either role. De Niro absolutely could not have played both roles. And it isn’t just viewers who think this. John Frankenheimer goes on and on about De Niro in the commentary for the film. Like he was the only actor in it. It’s almost like he was paid to publicly suck De Niro’s dick like that.
I haven’t seen Ronin. Would you suggest it, despite Mamet’s contributions?
Frankenheimer had talent but he COULD really be a jerk sometimes. He agreed to replace a struggling first-time director (who the producers were kinda railroading off the project) on The Island of Doctor Moreau; he coulda offered to help the guy. Instead he took over and treated everybody like crap. (Plus he constantly dissed the 1932 version, which is a fun movie.)
I liked how you qualified that it’s American stars who don’t seem to have a ton of range; we’ve always had great character actors! I just had to look up Richard Jenkins to see if he was American (he is); that guy’s got such range that I almost feel like he’s a Brit doing an American accent.
FFS! I didn’t even know Mamet worked on it! It is worth watching. The acting is very good and the car chases are better than anything up to that time. The script has a major structural problem where the main character changes at the last minute (literally). Jean Reno should have been the main character throughout. But I guess we couldn’t have that because they had to wedge in a scene where De Niro fucks Natascha McElhone.
Now that I think about it, of course Mamet worked on it! The film is emotionally off. The only characters who seem real are Reno and Bean. The climax of the film depends upon a man acting like a psychopath. When I first watched it, I thought, “Humans don’t act that way.” I know that populating films with psychopaths makes them seem gritty but they also make them unrealistic. It’s amazing to me that writers like Mamet and Wes Anderson are so loved because they create unrealistic characters. What is wrong with people?
Just requested it. To actually see a decent car chase sounds interesting enough. DeNiro sex scene, though… well, DVDs have fast-forward buttons.
Wes Anderson I can forgive. I find his shit tedious, but it doesn’t offend me. Mamet’s something else. So is Paul Thomas Anderson (no relation). They’re both constructing fake characters to make “statements” about The World We Live In. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is considered a great masterpiece and it’s laughably awful. The fact that Blood is adapted from a Upton Sinclair novel pisses me off, and I hope Upton’s ghost haunts Anderson and make his Oscars look, in the dark, like haunting skeletons.
While Mamet’s strictly of the “everybody’s an asshole, and grownups like me have learned to adapt to it” school of fake cynicism. No, David, you and your friends are assholes. You’re the teenagers who suck up to bullies. The grownups are the ones who try to remind teenagers that it’s possible to behave like a compassionate adult.
I wouldn’t expect much from the chases. For their time, they were outstanding. But everything in them has been done over and over. Of course, since you don’t tend to watch those kinds of films, they may be new! As for the sex scene, there is thankfully no nudity. It just annoyed me from a plot standpoint.
I have not been able to make it through There Will Be Blood. I’ve tried twice. It seemed like your typical Oscar-bait “This film features so many horrible people it must be great” nonsense. But since I mentioned it, if you haven’t seen this Late Night With Seth Meyers fake trailer for Oscar Bait, it’s really good.
Thanks, Oscar Bait was great! I loved Amber Ruffin saying “whitey” in a French accent. The tiny pause she does before saying it is gold. What timing!
That was my favorite part of it too. She was one of the three writers of it. The last time I watched it, I paused so I could read the credits. And the whole idea of having a scene repeated but in French is just too funny given the context.