Shatner Rules

was November 1969. Thanksgiving was just around the corner, and I was on all fours, in a dense tunnel of underbrush on California’s San Clemente Island. My bow and arrow were slung over my back, and there was barely any room to move. I was hunting.
    What was I looking for? What was my prey? A wounded wild boar—one that might come charging at me at any moment, with my arrow sticking out of its bristly hide.
    Star Trek
’s five-year mission had recently been cut short at three years, and in that very moment I wasn’t concerned with forever being known as Captain Kirk. In that tunnel, I was now concerned with forever being associated with the newspaper headline ACTOR KILLED BY PIG.
    There was only one way out of this tunnel for the massive, tusked, wounded beast, and it was through me.
    Now, I have stared down formidable beasts before in the course of my career. Remember Lee Van Cleef? He was a sinister layer of marinara in many a spaghetti Western. In 1963, I was acting in an episode of the anthology program
The Dick Powell Theatre
, in which I played a Swedish (of course) rancher fighting off a hostile land grab by his bigoted neighbors. I played the part with a thick Swedish accent, and in some scenes I wore a too-small bowler hat with a feather.
RULE: Take Some Stuff off Your Résumé
    Never mind that rule. The entire episode is on YouTube. You can watch nearly everything I’ve ever done on YouTube, good and bad, highlights and lowlights. Nearly every week, things I’ve done in my career that I’ve long forgotten about come charging back at me, courtesy of YouTube, like a wounded pig in a tunnel.
    Which is why I started talking about Lee Van Cleef, right?
    Lee was well over six feet tall, a huge man, powerful. And like a wild boar, he had a cold, calculating look. Even when the cameras weren’t rolling, he was an intimidating figure. He was missing part of one of his middle fingers, but it didn’t matter—his whole body had a way of flipping you the bird.
    And he and I had to fight in this show.
    A movie fight consists of throwing blows, missing by a foot, and actors snapping their heads back. But I was still kind of new to this whole movie/TV acting business. During filming, Lee and I were throwing punches, while I was predominantly occupied with not knocking off my too-small bowler hat.
    And I took one swing and hit the tip of Lee Van Cleef’s nose.
    Cut!
    Take two! I swing again, and clipped his nose again.
    Cut!!!
    Take three. And my fist once again connected with Van Cleef’s snout.
    Let’s take five!
    Even though this was a few years before
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,
I could hear the Ennio Morricone music sting as he sauntered over to me. He got right into my face, obscuring the sun and all of my hope for the future, leaned down, and growled, “If you do that again, I
will
 . . . knock . . . you . . . out.”
    Terrifying, which brings me to one of the most important of Shatner Rules, which is . . .
RULE: Don’t Punch Lee Van Cleef!
    (NOTE: Lee Van Cleef died in 1989. This should probably be the easiest rule to follow.)
    While in the tunnel, I figured that if I could survive my encounter with Lee Van Cleef, I could certainly survive my encounter with a wounded wild pig. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and trudged forward.
    How did I get into this situation? Well, I love Thanksgiving. I love to say the word “Thanksgiving.” It’s a beautiful word and the intrinsic meaning of the word, to me, is “love.” And I would be spending that Thanksgiving—the Thanksgiving of 1969—without my loved ones.
    I had just divorced my wife Gloria, and she and my daughters were spending the holiday elsewhere. I would be alone. And do you know what’s more terrifying to me than a wounded and angry wild boar? Being alone.
    I hate being alone. I’ve spent most of my life filling up my existence with reservoirs of company, family around me, friends. I cherish the people I love for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they keep me from being alone. I went through a lot of loneliness as a child, as a kid, and as a young man, and I fear it more than anything.
    (NOTE: If you are seated next to William Shatner on an airplane, please be quiet. He doesn’t hate being alone THAT much.)
    Fortunately, a couple of days earlier,
Star Trek
cinematographer Al Francis called me and invited me over to his house for the holiday. I was thrilled. I asked, “What can I