Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica, who just died February 7, admitted that he and Dirk Benedict never became true friends. They were cordial and professional, but mainly saw each other as rivals.
2 Random thoughts
- Thread starter tosapanic
- Start date
Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica, who just died February 7, admitted that he and Dirk Benedict never became true friends. They were cordial and professional, but mainly saw each other as rivals.
He died over a year ago.
I'm good on all the other facts.
Except that you said "Dirk Benedict" when Starbuck was actually played by William Conrad.
Oh, man. I'm messed up!
Yeah, how dare he keep an obligation to the charitable organization he agreed to help! What a jerk!
For crying out loud, people, Shatner wasn't even in the same country. It's not like he decided to ditch the funeral so he could go golfing.
I think that this was only true back in the TOS days, where they had a genuine rivalry. By the time they got to the movies, they grew much closer due to shared life experiences. Watch Shatner's film Mind Meld and you'll realize how close they truly were. It's about 60-90 minutes of Shatner and Nimoy in conversation, talking about some very delicate subjects (including Nimoy's alcoholism and the death of Shatner's wife Nerine). Do you think that Nimoy would have agreed to do such an interview at all if he & Shatner hadn't been close? And at the end of the conversation, they hug each other as Nimoy quietly tells Shatner, "You're my best friend." It's obviously genuine.
And I don't know about you, but I tease and playfully insult my closest friends all the time. It's one of the marks of true closeness that you can say things like that to your friends and they won't take offense but just laugh. If I genuinely, truly, don't like someone, I generally don't bother engaging them in any way.
I think you're misreading their vibe depending upon the vintage of the interviews. By the 80s/90s, they were thick as thieves.
Yeah, how dare he keep an obligation to the charitable organization he agreed to help! What a jerk!
For crying out loud, people, Shatner wasn't even in the same country. It's not like he decided to ditch the funeral so he could go golfing.
I think that this was only true back in the TOS days, where they had a genuine rivalry. By the time they got to the movies, they grew much closer due to shared life experiences. Watch Shatner's film Mind Meld and you'll realize how close they truly were. It's about 60-90 minutes of Shatner and Nimoy in conversation, talking about some very delicate subjects (including Nimoy's alcoholism and the death of Shatner's wife Nerine). Do you think that Nimoy would have agreed to do such an interview at all if he & Shatner hadn't been close? And at the end of the conversation, they hug each other as Nimoy quietly tells Shatner, "You're my best friend." It's obviously genuine.
And I don't know about you, but I tease and playfully insult my closest friends all the time. It's one of the marks of true closeness that you can say things like that to your friends and they won't take offense but just laugh. If I genuinely, truly, don't like someone, I generally don't bother engaging them in any way.
I think you're misreading their vibe depending upon the vintage of the interviews. By the 80s/90s, they were thick as thieves.
I thought he was in Florida. I'm pretty sure he could have made it to the funeral if he really wanted to. He didn't and thats just the man he is. Like it or not. I would have done it just to show respect. I know Shatner is a legend and he might have first world problems with too much fan attention but he just seems to act like an a%^^%le a lot of the time. He just seems to me to be up himself.
This doesn't mean he's evil or even close to it. Shatner helps out at charities.No-one ever said he's done anything to hurt the careers of his fellow actors except maybe steal a few lines.And no-one blames him for protecting his own career. He just thought of himself as the star and everyone else was beneath him.
Nimoy and Shatner were friends at some stage. Nimoy was Shatner's best man at one of his marriages. I also saw them speak at the 2101 Vegas convention and they seemed pretty close. They did a hysterical skit over GENERATIONS where Nimoy kept assuring shatner that if Spock were there Shatner would never have died.. Yeah I don't think it was faked.(Although they are actors). Didn't Shatner recently admit they hadn't talked for ages because of some feud towards the end of Nimoy's life,
That's my experience as well. It's not as if you don't like people or feel antipathy towards them, it's just that they are co-workers or associates and not friends. Yes, there are people you might genuinely not like. I had a few of those but as far as as finding true lasting friends at work it's been pretty rare.
Regarding the timing of Nimoy's funeral and Shatner's not attending, no, he couldn't have made it, unless he completely ditched his charitable obligation in Florida. The pushed up funeral and the charity event were scheduled to occur at exactly the same time. By that I mean that the charity event was scheduled for 1:00 PM (estimate) EST and Nimoy's funeral for 10:00 AM (estimate) PST, which, compensating for timezones and such, is exactly the same moment. Unless Shatner could have been literally in two places at once, he would have had to miss one of them, and as he was already in Florida, he stayed there. There was no diss, and there was no intent to do so.
^
This.
And they were estranged at the end because Shatner used some footage of Nimoy for a project without Nimoy's permission after Nimoy had declined to participate in it. That caused the problem.
Shatner should have known better than to do that. He himself is super protective of his brand and would never let someone get away with something like that.
It's too bad that a long friendship ended on such bad terms. That's life though - sometimes death catches you before you can make up and sometimes fights are never resolved even if one person wants to fix things.
This.
And they were estranged at the end because Shatner used some footage of Nimoy for a project without Nimoy's permission after Nimoy had declined to participate in it. That caused the problem.
Shatner should have known better than to do that. He himself is super protective of his brand and would never let someone get away with something like that.
It's too bad that a long friendship ended on such bad terms. That's life though - sometimes death catches you before you can make up and sometimes fights are never resolved even if one person wants to fix things.
I understand that that was the case with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, too. The two of them weren't on the best of terms when Lennon was killed in 1980 and so McCartney was left with a lot of unresolved feelings about the relationship. It's sad, but it happens.
Similar threads
