Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






The Alien Connection

 

I remember sitting in the dark movie house on a Saturday afternoon. On the screen was a great performer in one of the classic roles of all time . . . Charles Laughton, bent over, carrying a grotesque weight, the hump on his back. He was a freak, a horrible mistake of nature hidden away in the bell towers of Notre Dame, the awful, disfigured creature called "Quasimodo," the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I watched them put him on public display on a wooden turntable in the cathedral courtyard. They whipped him. I don't remember why. Drunk in public or something like that. The crowds laughed at him. Jeered his pain and his humiliation.

Time passed and he rotated on the turntable, bound to it by the ropes. Then thirst set in and he cried out, "Water." The crowd laughed.

Again he cried out for water in that pained distorted speech. The crowd laughed again and someone splashed him with the contents of a slop bucket. And then a beautiful thing happened. The lovely Esmeralda, although terrified by this awful, ugly creature, brought him some water.

And later, when the punishment was finished and Quasimodo's brother took him back into the cathedral, I heard the words. The Hunchback turned his head up toward his brother and with a simple sentence, tore my heart out. "She gave me water." I was glad the theatre was dark so that I could cry freely, and I did.

And then there was another. Boris Karloff. We shivered with fright when the Frankenstein monster came to life. All that awful size and power. Brute dumb force. He'd sneak up quietly behind the heroine and we'd scream to her, "Look out! Turn around, he's behind you." It was terrifying. And then he broke loose. Escaped! Death and terror unshackled. He came across a little girl and we knew that the worst would happen. This brute would kill her! Tear her to pieces. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't wise enough to be afraid! She tried to play with him. And in that instant when we all thought her life had run its course, she offered him a flower . . . and she lived. She had touched something in this monster's being and she lived.

And then, as Spock, I played one of those moments. When in one episode a lady offered me love and completed the connection from Laughton to Karloff to Nimoy. The love connection between human and alien.

There is a moment when we are all touched by the humanity in these creatures that are supposedly inhuman, when the character, Spock, the Frankenstein monster, or Quasimodo, says, "I, too, need love." Millions respond and love pours out because we all need it and we all understand. When one is touched, by a flower or a drink of water, then we are all touched and we can cry for him and for ourselves. Tears of connection. And now I realize that all of this was preparation for the role of Spock. Crying for Quasimodo's heart inside

that awful body. Loving the monster who spared the child. Joining with humanity to share understanding and compassion.



These very simple and obviously human experiences were the best preparation an actor could have to play the sup­posedly ahuman Spock. Spock was not my first experience playing alienated characters.

In 1960, while studying acting with Jeff Corey, I met Vie Morrow. Vie was best known for his work in Blackboard Jungle, and would soon star in the Combat TV series. He had just recently finished work in a New York production of Jean Genet's Deathwatch. Genet's work was available in the underground press, but had never been seen onstage on the West Coast. Eventually, The Blacks, The Maids and The Balcony would be staged. Morrow obtained the West Coast rights to Deathwatch and scheduled the first Genet production to be seen there.

In the cast were Michael Forest as the convicted murderer, "Greeneyes," Paul Mazursky, who later produced, wrote and directed such films as Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and Harry and Tonto, playing a petty thief named "Maurice," and myself, playing, of course, an alienated intellectual. The three characters are in a prison cell in France. Each is struggling to establish or preserve an identity.

Of the three, Greeneyes and Maurice are what Genet might refer to as "natural" criminals. They are in the criminal life by circumstance and design of fate. My character, "Le-Franc," is there by choice. He has made a conscious effort to join the world of the criminal because he identifies with it. Eventually he is rejected by the prison society in the same way a body would reject an unacceptable kidney. This, in spite of the fact that he commits a murder in a desperate effort to be accepted by his fellow inmates. He finds himself totally alienated from both worlds, the society outside, and the one within the prison walls. In a sense, he has done better than he had hoped for. In trying to alienate himself from one group to join another, he has reached pure alien status, and when he recognizes this fact, he enjoys it.

The production attracted a lot of attention within the movie and TV industry. It brought new impetus to my acting career which had been moving very slowly. It was another case in which an alien character brought me closer to public and industry recognition.

I'll never really understand why I was chosen to play Mr. Spock. In a metaphysical sense, there seemed to be a sort of inevitability involved. It would be easy to assume that Gene Roddenberry had some sort of uncanny instinct for casting the proper actors in the proper role. In spite of all his talents, I think it is fair to say that Gene is not infallible.

There have been many occasions in my acting career when I wanted a particular role desperately. In some cases I have campaigned very hard to get a certain part. Most of these campaigns have failed. Once or twice I have succeeded in convincing a skeptical director or producer. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, casting decisions are made in a rarefied atmosphere which does not leave much room for actors' opinions.

When I was called to meet Gene Roddenberry, I assumed I was to be auditioned. I didn't quite know how to react when I discovered that I was being "sold" on the role.

I was teaching acting classes for five years before the first Star Trek pilot was filmed.

In 1960, having been a student in his classes for two years, Jeff Corey asked me to teach for him. I did for two years and then opened my own studio where I taught for three years more.

The approach to the teaching was heavily influenced by the concepts of Stanislavski. In my case, I was particularly committed to the concepts he expressed in Building a Character. I am very much affected by the clothes I wear. Putting on a cape can make me feel quite dashing and romantic. An old work jacket, work boots and an old dirty cap can make me feel quite seedy. The character clothes begin to affect me inwardly as does the make-up. There are various other elements which will lead me to the core of the character. But the externals to me are very helpful.

In 1951, I was cast in the title role of a very modest film called Kid Monk Baroni. It was a tremendous break for a 20-year-old kid in Hollywood only a year. The story is about an Italian boy from New York's East Side, born with a disfigured face. He becomes a boxer. Lee Greenway was hired to do the make-up which required foam rubber appliances to accomplish the facial distortions. When he put them on me—the mouth, nose and forehead—I studied myself carefully in the mirror. I was not a thoroughly trained actor, but instinctively my emotions began to respond to my new appearance. I could begin to identify with the internal life of this face—the insecurities, the retiring shyness, the bursts of anger, the paranoia.

I found a home behind that make-up. I was much more confident and comfortable than I would have been had I been told I was to play "a handsome young man."

Even in Kid Monk Baroni I was playing a character outside of the social mainstream—separate, unequal and alien. I had been raised in a neighborhood rich in Italian culture. Most of my early friends were Italians. Being Jewish, I always sensed some element of difference, of separation. Our friendships stopped abruptly at the door of the church.

When I was 17, I was cast as "Ralphie," the teenage son of the Berger family in an amateur production of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing. The play deals with a matriarchal Jewish family during the Depression. Ralphie struggles and squirms under the domination of the mother, searching for his identity and finally moving into his own life with the help of some insurance money left by his grandfather. This role, the young man surrounded by a hostile and repressive environment, so touched a responsive chord, that I decided to make a career of acting.

I have played a great variety of roles since. But I still feel most comfortable playing characters that continue the line from "Ralphie" to "Monk Baroni" to "Spock." One of my most gratifying acting experiences in recent years was "Tevye" in Fiddler on the Roof. Here again was a man who tried to cope with the dramatic social changes in his society, struggled to hold onto crumbling traditions, and yet was considered alien by the Russian society.

Arthur Miller once wrote, "All plays we call great, let alone those we call serious, are ultimately involved with some aspects of a single problem: It is this—How may a man make of the outside world a home? How and in what ways must he struggle, what must he strive to change and overcome within himself and outside himself if he is to find the safety, the surroundings of love, the ease of soul, the sense of identity and honor, which evidently, all men have connected in their memories with the idea of the family?"

This concept has always excited me, and it is certainly applicable to the characters I have just mentioned. In the broadest sense it applies to Mr. Spock and the Star Trek series.

Several major television characters in recent years strike me as being based on the concept of a man out of his element. "Columbo," the scruffy, hardworking detective, often finds himself dealing with adversaries surrounded by wealth, comfort, nobility and social standing. Almost apologetically he pursues the threads of the crime to the ultimate conclusion until, with a touch of embarrassment, he is forced to conclude that his social superior is the murderer.

"McCloud" is the country boy who should be lost in the Big City. But he makes out quite well. The recent "Petrocelli" is functioning in the Southwest against a built-in resentment of his "Eastern lawyer" image.

My early years in Hollywood were heavily influenced by Marion Brando. The uniform was T-shirt and jeans. The Sunset Strip was very quiet in the early '50s. I worked at an ice cream parlor until 1:00 A.M. and then walked the Strip for several blocks to get to my rooming house. I was stopped regularly by the police. "Where do you live?" "Where are you coming from?" "Do you have any ID?" I got used to it, and eventually they began to recognize me and simply wave as they drove past.

The rooming house was the former residence of Ruth Roman, another Bostonian who had achieved stardom in The Champion with Kirk Douglas. When I left the Pasadena Playhouse after six months, I contacted her. She suggested the house because it was cheap and would put me in touch with other young actors and actresses. Several months later she was to play a Spanish lady in a western called Dallas with Gary Cooper. The film was to be shot at Warner Brothers. In the script, she had a younger brother who had been educated in Boston. He was a bitter young man who was crippled as the result of a gunshot wound in the leg. She gave me the script. I read it, and felt completely at home with this alienated character. My agent arranged an interview. I met the producer and the director who decided they would give me a screen test in two weeks. A tremendous break! I felt confident of getting the role, but even if I didn't, the test would be valuable, because I would be "on film" which could be borrowed and shown at other studios.

Two weeks later, to the day, I was called and told to report to Warners "immediately." I was confused. If I were to be tested I would have had more advance notice. When I arrived, I discovered that work was already in progress and the film was being shot. My character was to start filming the very next day on location. I was to have only a reading. I did it and was sent home.

The next day my agent was informed that the part had been cast with another actor and the company was away on location. The producer, who was in his office on the lot, wouldn't accept a call from my agent or me. I got on a bus and went to the studio, slipped past the guards and up to his office. His secretary phoned in to announce me. He said he was busy. I told her, "I'll wait," and sat down to sweat it out.

I think I'd seen it done that way by John Garfield in the movies of the '40s. About half an hour went by. The secretary was nervous and embarrassed. She tried again, "Mr. Nimoy is still out here waiting." And then I heard the voice over the phone and through the connecting door. "Tell him to get the hell out of here or I'll call the studio police!" "Yes, sir," she said quietly and hung up the phone. "Did you hear him?" she asked. She seemed sympathetic, but she was being forced into the middle of a bad situation and the look on her face said, "He'll do it, too." I said, "Yes, I heard him ..." and left.

The next day, the front page of Variety carried a story about producers and directors on the Warners lot complaining that actors and agents were arriving without appointments and interrupting the work. Security measures would be taken to prevent further incidents of this kind.

It was all perfect. Having been refused the role of the alien in his movie, I played it out in his office, and then was banished from his planet!

I have heard stories told about actors who would "break into Hollywood" by renting a Rolls Royce and spending their time meeting industry people at poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My approach was quite the opposite. It was the jeans and dirty old car routine. "I'm an artist. If you want me, you have to accept me on my own terms and in spite of my differences." Sounds like Mr. Spock, doesn't it? In Spock I finally found the best of both worlds: to be widely accepted in public approval and yet be able to continue to play the insulated alien through the Vulcan character.

 


Date: 2015-02-28; view: 828


<== previous page | next page ==>
Star Trek and Nostalgia | I Am Not Spock
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.008 sec.)