The Final Shatner/Nimoy Fued

Actually he was just quoting me, and I meant to type dual, having a bit of fun with the incorrect spelling of feud and the fact that it reminded me of the oft mixed homophones..

 

Shy isn't a term usually used to describe his personality, but if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt, go right ahead.

 

According to David Gerrold, who defended Shatner on his Facebook page to people who criticized his decision to keep a prior commitment and miss Nimoy's funeral, the two were still friends and still very close. Since he knows/knew both men and I don't, I'll take his word for it.
As for counting lines, perhaps he did. But that doesn't mean that a strong friendship can't develop anyway. I have great friends who I often want to clobber. And I'm quite sure many of my friends resist the urge to kill me on many occasions.

 

To me it's a little crappy of fans to condemn Shatner for not cancelling a charity commitment to attend a funeral. We don't know how Nimoy would have felt about it, but we do know that Shatner has expressed his regret.

They were friends, but I never got the feeling from what I've read that they were close.

I don't see many people considering how all this affects Shatner. Give the old dude a break. People from his life are dying all around him. That has to be a sobering experience.

 

This line counting crap again? It was a contractual thing that Shatner's agent got him. It all traces back to Jonathan Harris on Lost in Space. Harris was cast in a supporting role, but his performance quickly elevated him to being the star. The nominal stars, Guy Williams and June Lockhart, soon found that they had small supporting roles on their own show. It was humiliating.

The agents of every leading man in Hollywood took note. Nobody wanted their client to be the next Guy Williams. So they asked for contract clauses promising that no one in the cast would get more lines than the star. Put it in writing. When Nimoy's character took off and his role got bigger, Shatner had to go through each script to ensure it was in compliance. He didn't want to get bulldozed by Spock's popularity.

Years later, Harlan Ellison publically blasted Shatner for counting lines while going over the script for COTEOF. Ellison knew nothing about it from a business standpoint, and just assumed that it was pure vanity on Shatner's part. Ellison was simply an uninformed jerk in the matter.

Also, Nimoy's funeral was moved up a day at the last minute, to spare his family from fans who were going to crowd in on the published day. Shatner was on the other side of the country, and caught short by this sudden schedule change. Bill had to make a quick decision.

 

Actually what I heard was Nimoy heard that Shatner wasn't coming to the funeral, and THAT's why he gave him the cold shoulder.

But seriously folks, some fans like to think they are "in the know" when if comes to celebrities, but the truth is they know jack sh*t, just like they know about any other stranger to them, and that being the case, really have no business opining. Not that that stops them.

 

I'd take his word for it if Shatner himself hadn't stated that was not the case.

 

Many actors and performers are often quite introverted in real life. They find it easier to interact with people when they're "on." And meeting and interacting with someone on a one-to-one basis is a very different thing than performing in front of a crowd of strangers.

Nimoy hugs Shatner at the end of Shatner's video "Mind Meld" and tells him "You're my best friend." This all follows a pretty frank and revealing conversation/interview between the two where they talk about such personal subjects as Nimoy's alcoholism, the death of Shatner's wife, and the TOS cast's animosity towards Shatner. This is the type of stuff they wouldn't be willing to discuss during a typical interview, but were willing to go down that road with each other, because they had a trust. They were close.

 

Tosk & Jonny ... right on & right on. Shatner wrote a whole book, "Leonard," explaining how close they were, describing Nimoy as the best friend he ever had in his life, and admitting that it all fell apart at the end. Nimoy didn't speak about it publicly; in an appearance on Piers Morgan on CNN about a year before his death, he tried to be diplomatic when asked if he & Shatner were still friends. "We don't have that kind of a relationship anymore," was as much as he revealed.

The fact that they were very close and then had a falling out is not in dispute, it's just that the reasons for the dispute are unclear, hence my starting this thread to see if any fans had any more info. But it seems not.

 

"KIRK UNIT...DISCLOSE THE INFORMATION!!"

 

Since Shatner himself doesn't even know the reason, it seems to be a mystery that will be left unsolved.

 

We just hope they were as close in real life as their characters were in the show! They had some animosity in the sixties due to Shatner getting jealous of Nimoy's increased mail and fan adulation too apparently. Wonder how they got over that large hurdle as well?
JB

 

That's certainly a different dynamic from television of the '90s and onward where a lot of shows are ensembles and it's pretty accepted that that can help the show gain more popularity and it seems even a lot of big stars think surrounding themselves with talent and making the shows more popular helps them too.

I doubt that the writers would have ended up giving the captain a small supporting role but I guess that fear is more understandable in an era that was more single-star-focused.

 

From what I understand, they became more allied when the movies came around and the favored nations clauses in their contracts thrust them together more on things like the TMP rewrites. I'm sure they had more in common in terms of shared life experiences by that time as well.

 

And yet in the tv series you can almost feel their friendship! Must show what very good actors they were I guess!
JB