Up Till Now: The Autobiography

contestants, including Buddy Ebsen, Paul Winfield, Roy Thinnes, Chuck Connors, Tammy Grimes, and France Nuyen are flying to New York on a private plane that, unknown to us, is carrying in its baggage compartment a druid sacrificial stone—and it’s hungry! Or it’s thirsty. Or lonely or whatever happens to druid sacrificial stones to make them need another sacrifice. I played a drunken architect who eventually finds his nobility by fighting unseen ghosts. Ghosts are very popular in low-budget films, by the way, because they can’t be seen!
    The most difficult problem I had to overcome while making this film was dealing with a young actress’s mother. I’ve worked many times with child actors, almost always without any problems. But in this picture the child was possessed by the druid ghosts and I had to choke her. There is a skill to convincingly choking someone on camera; you have to make it look real because the camera is close but obviously you can’t really choke them. I was very careful, but apparently not careful enough for her mother. No matter what I did, this woman complained. Too hard, too tight, too long. The child was very embarrassed—being possessed by the devil had turned Linda Blair into a star, so if necessary she was prepared to be choked for her art.
    It was while I was busy working on these shows and movies, and pretty much unknown to me, that the entire Star Trek industry, an industry that would eventually cover the entire civilized world, was slowly coming into being. The original episodes were being syndicated...
    Let me pause right here again. Did I happen to mention my favorite Italian restaurant? Now, I am aware it has been said about me that I am a man of many great passions and that I do tend to get overenthusiastic about things, that perhaps on occasion I might haveeven exaggerated. All right, it’s true that when I find something that is really special I feel a great desire to share it with everyone. But what’s wrong with that? For example, I would argue that among the very few common goals shared by most of civilized mankind is the eternal search for the perfect chicken parmigiana. So when I chanced upon it, should I not convey that discovery to others?
    I certainly don’t get that enthusiastic about everything, only about things that I believe are the very best in the entire world and only those things that truly matter. For example, Café Firenze in Moorpark is simply the finest Italian restaurant in the world. That’s just the way it is. You have to trust me on this, but you have never had better chicken parmigiana in your life. You have to taste it, I mean, you won’t believe it. You’ve never tasted anything like it. What I do when I go there is, rather than ordering, I tell the chef, “Surprise me,” and I’m always surprised! Of course, if I wasn’t surprised, then I would have been surprised by that. That’s how good it is!
    My daughters find it amusing when I get really enthusiastic about something. When I insist that they share it with me, or try it themselves. Oh, it’s just Dad being Dad again. But when they try it, they discover that maybe I did know something. Let me give you another example. When you leave Café Firenze, there’s a gas station several blocks away on the right. I mean, it looks like a normal service center, but in this place they have an air pump that contains the finest tire air I’ve ever encountered. It’s really amazing. Until finding this place I had always believed that all tire air was the same, but for some reason when you put this air in your tires the car rides more smoothly. I don’t understand it, what could it be? How could they have improved air? They can’t, can’t be done, it’s just air, but you have to try it. I mean, you must. It’s truly superior air.
    As I was writing, the original episodes were being syndicated all over the world and wherever it was shown the program gained a dedicated following. There was no real explanation for it, just that people watched it and liked it. This growing popularity hadn’t affected my life, I’d already received all the checks to which I was entitled so I wasn’t making any money from it. And then in early 1973Gene Roddenberry called and said he’d sold an animated version of Star Trek and wanted me to be the voice of Jim Kirk. And so it began.
    This was my first experience doing a voice-over for animation. It’s the strangest form of acting I’ve ever