Up Till Now: The Autobiography

protect the life of an old college friend who had become a United States senator. In Hawaii, according to The New York Times, Hooker “runs into hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, the hula-hula and a hint of hari-kari.” When I found myself lying on the edge of a cliff being hit over the head by a sword-wielding stuntman, blood pouring down my face, I knew that either Hooker or I was done. We did end up with ninety episodes, enabling the show to go into syndication, where it eventually disappeared.
    Actually, I didn’t have to get hit over the head with that sword to know that I wanted to direct—that realization had come much earlier. I’d worked with literally hundreds of directors in my career, including some of the greatest directors in the history of early television, but for me the best directors were those people who left me alone. I would always approach a role with my own thoughts and my own plan about how I wanted to create a character. Obviously they would stage the scene and tell me where to move, and if it made sense I’d move there. But too often in television young directors want to be artistes , they get an opportunity to direct an episode of T.J. Hooker and want to use it to build a career. So they try to reinvent the show, talking about subtext and motivation, creative lighting. Here was the motivation on Hooker : we had seven days to shoot an hour show within our budget.
    It’s the job of the actors who work there every week to protect the integrity of the program. Because I cared about the quality of the show I tested every new director. And if they didn’t know what they were doing I would complain about it. That was my job. We had a young director one week who had drawn elaborate sketches of how he wanted the action to flow. He literally had planned the entire show beat to beat. This was the show that was going to earn him an Emmy, which would lead to an opportunity to direct a major motion picture. So I looked at his sketch and asked, “Just tell me one thing, why do you want to begin this scene with me walking out of the storage closet?”
    Obviously the desire of the director to create art and the intention of the actor to get it done can lead to conflict on the set. Some directors believe the worst question an actor can ask is “Why?” Why do I move there? Why I do react like that? “Because I’m the director and that’s what I want you to do” is not the correct answer.
    There was little mystery to directing for me. I could say, “I want this camera right over there,” or “Let’s backlight this,” or “You come running across the parking lot and leap onto the hood of the car and grab hold of the wipers and hold on,” so obviously I had the necessary technical knowledge. And the producers of T.J. Hooker gave me that opportunity.
    I had already completed one arduous directing assignment— I’d directed my wife, Marcy, in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . My friends, if you can successfully direct your wife in a highly dramatic role, you certainly can direct a TV show. Eventually I directed eight episodes of Hooker , as well as the opening-credit sequence that we used for most of the series, and Leonard Nimoy directed one. That was the price he demanded to appear in an episode. That, plus money.
    Two years after the series ended I was directing my first major motion picture, the $30 million Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . Gene Roddenberry and Paramount executives had seen the episodes of Hooker that I’d directed and were so impressed by my ability to articulate an atmosphere within the confines of the capabilities of modern filmology that they realized I was the perfect choice—actually the only choice—to direct the fifth and most intellectually challenging film in the Star Trek saga.
    And if you believe that you also believe I saw an alien in the desert. That is not exactly the way it happened. In the original TV series I was signed to be the star, and Leonard was a co-star. I was paid a higher salary. But eventually Leonard’s Spock became so popular that we were both given a Favored Nations clause, meaning whatever I got he got, and whatever he got, I got. If I got a raise, he got the same raise; if he got a cold, I got it. At the time I didn’t think it was totally fair, but I accepted the reality of the business. And then, as we were making the third film in this series of very successful movies, Leonard decided he would act in it only if he were allowed to