Shatner Rules

decaffeinated version of the one you see on TV. I can’t keep that energy, that intensity, up all the time. I am not even allowed to drink caffeine. Elizabeth’s efforts to keep caffeinated beverages out of my hands are sometimes tantamount to spousal abuse.
RULE: Mention Spousal Abuse in Any Autobiographical Work. It’ll Help Sell Some Copies.
    William Shatner—as you have hopefully learned by now—is a bit of a character. But I’m not the William Shatner character. I’m not the hyper, arrogant, bombastic fellow people are laughing along with. (You’re laughing
with
him, not
at him
, right?) When we meet, I will not lace my fingers together and club you like Kirk, I will not ride on the hood of your car like Hooker, and I will not try and sell you the best deal possible on airfares and hotels like The Negotiator.*
    *Unless, of course, you like saving money! Do I have some deals for you!
    Besides, it’s hard for me to be Shatneresque because . . . well, how do I put this in a “Shatneresque” way?
    I . . .
    Don’t . . .
    Watch . . .
    Myself.
    Yep. When Shatner comes on the TV, Bill changes the channel. I have spent a huge part of my life in the public eye. Everybody’s public eyes but my own.
    I have never felt comfortable watching myself. I didn’t do it early in my career, and I don’t do it now. I don’t like watching my work, or the work of that old devil, Time. On the occasions when I have directed myself in something, when my face appears in the dailies, I actually raise a hand to block out my face. I also can usually find some fault with my performances. My toughest critic is me, but fortunately he doesn’t watch me and attack me in the press.
    Upon meeting Heston, I realized he was one of those guys who didn’t have an Off switch. And I, and my dinner companions, became acutely aware of this after our main course.
    We were all full of sauerbraten, knockwurst, pretzels of the hardest variety, and Gaisburger Marsch. (No idea. I wished it tasted as good as crab gelato.) We had met all the advertising folk; I tried to be my best charming Bill, hobnobbing with the German TV execs, and now all there was to do was eat dessert.
    Heston pushed his chair back and stood, cleared his mighty throat, and declared, “I suppose you would all like to hear me recite some passages from the Bible.”
    Before any of us could get out a “
nein
,” Heston leapt into a performance of the Bible
.
He was “Bible acting.”
    I know “Bible acting.” I did quite a bit of it when I was a young actor. There was a weekly TV show called
Lamp unto My Feet
. I acted on the Sunday morning religious anthology
Insight.
I was in several episodes of a program called
The Psalms
in 1962, which was shot by a young cameraman by the name of George Lucas. (This was before we both discovered the joys of galaxies far, far away.)
RULE: Always Be Nice to Your Cameraman
    “Bible acting” involves speaking in very soft, rounded, accent-free tones. It is quiet, hushed. Words are spoken with great reverence. You must act in a way that suggests you are deathly afraid of waking up the nearby Baby Jesus. And this is what Heston was doing.
    For about thirty minutes.
    “Begat this, begat that, begat whatshisname.”
    There I was, a Jew in Germany, stuffed with brats, getting the full God treatment from Moses. Heston went Old Testament, he went New Testament, no one went to the bathroom. We just sat there, frozen, unsure of what to do or say. How do you stand up and say, “Hey, Charlton Heston, let’s cut to Revelations so we can all get our strudel”?
    You can’t, of course. He’s Charlton Heston, and he’s being Charlton Heston.
    What’s the lesson? You have to be able to
turn it off
. For your sake, and for the sake of your dinner companions.
EPILOGUE
    The event was great, and both Heston and I wowed the German TV audience. At least I think they were wowed, although when I ordered them all to march into Poland they seemed a little dumbfounded. (I guess charisma only gets you so far in Germany these days.)
    When I got home, there was a bill waiting for me from my German hotel. I had spilled a glass of red wine on my room’s white carpet, and the hotel was attempting to charge me $40,000! I told them I was Bill, and that they should send the damage fees to William Shatner.
    I hear he can negotiate his way out of anything.

CHAPTER 14
RULE: Grab Life by the (Golden) Throat!
    T wo men sat in my Ventura Boulevard office