Up Till Now: The Autobiography

appearances. I’d like to represent you for this appearance. And the fee is twenty percent.’
    “I shook my head, then told him that I was already paying anagent ten percent and that I didn’t understand why I had to pay him too.
    “He looked at me and said, ‘The difference between your agent and me is that your agent can’t get you out of here at five o’clock on Friday and I can. And all it’ll cost you is twenty percent.’
    “ ‘Gene, I can’t do that to this agent,’ I said. ‘He got me the job.’ “And then he said, and I will never forget his exact words, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to learn how to bow down and say master.’
    “I told him, ‘You got the wrong guy,’ and walked out of his office. Eventually he backed down and I made that plane, but while we worked together for years afterward that was the end of any semblance of a friendship between Gene Roddenberry and myself.”
    The relationship between Leonard and the producers got so bad during the first season that they actually sent him a memo informing him that he was not permitted to use the studio’s pens and pencils.
    Gene and I had a similar argument about a small medal of honor he wanted me to award to a member of the crew on the show. It had absolutely nothing to do with the plot—and everything to do with the fact that this medal was going to be sold by Lincoln Enterprises. The actors’ contracts called for a minimal participation in merchandise revenue and this was just a clever way to get around that. I refused to have anything to do with the pin—so then they began working on Leonard to wear it, finally pressuring him into doing it.
    Roddenberry sold everything. To check the lighting of each scene the cinematographer would shoot what was known as a light strip. It was usually about ten frames times the number of scenes we’d shoot in a day. Maybe a hundred frames a day. Most people threw them out. Not Roddenberry. He cut out the individual frames and sold them as a piece of Star Trek . He was selling our images.
    Each Christmas the editors would put together a gag reel to be shown at our Christmas party. It’s ten minutes of jokes and bloopers, some of them intentional, many of them not; it was actors at play and actors making mistakes, and it was never, ever meant for anyone except the cast and crew to see. For example, we had one scene that showed Spock shooting an arrow—immediately followed by a sceneshowing Kirk being carried into a cave by members of the Enterprise crew, with an arrow sticking out of my crotch. Several years later I was in Mammoth and someone asked me if I’d seen the Star Trek gag reel being shown at a local pub—Roddenberry had spliced together two or three of these private reels and sold them.
    The battles both Leonard and I fought against the studio actually pushed us together. Eventually we were able to negotiate contracts that included a “most favored nation” clause, which basically meant that whatever perk or payment or privilege either one of us got, the other one would be entitled to the same treatment. Leonard and I became friendly, although certainly not best friends. In fact, I actually believed the entire cast got along quite well. Many years later I discovered that we weren’t getting along at all and that apparently I was the cause of it.
    After we’d shot about half the shows for our second season we began hearing strong rumors that the five-year voyage of discovery was about to come to an early and abrupt ending. NBC was preparing to cancel the show. To prevent that from happening two very loyal fans and friends of Roddenberry, Bjo and John Trimble, initiated a letter-writing campaign. Bjo obtained mailing lists from the World Science Fiction Convention and from notable science-fiction bookstores, as well as fan letters written to the cast. “I just got a call from Gene Roddenberry,” she wrote. “[T]here has been no word on renewing the show for next season, and in fact, it is highly likely Star Trek will die if something isn’t done . . .
    “If thousands of fans just sit around moaning about the death of Star Trek, they will get exactly what they deserve: Gomer Pyle !... So pass the word and write some letters, people.” Some letters? As a result of this campaign NBC received—trumpets blare here—more than one million letters urging the network not to cancel the show. NBC announced, “ Star Trek will continue to be seen...”
    A very logical