Double standard?

Is it just me or do a lot of fans still blast and complain about creator/producer Roddenberry for profiting from his unused (intended to not be used) theme song lyrics and inserting his for-sale medallion into a script but OTOH see nothing wrong with that star Shatner took lines away from the other actors/characters, tried to make sure he always had the most lines-and think the other actors, especially Takei today, were/are ridiculous for complaining about him doing that so long after the fact?

Is it because Roddenberry subsequently presented himself as an enlightened/humanitarian visionary while Shatner admitted he's just an (egotistical) actor who loves being the star? Or do you really think, though both behaviors are old, by the standards of the time Shatner's were standard while Roddenberry's were unusual and exceptionally bad?

 

Do they?

 

Are they really parallel? One is trying to profit directly, the other is being obnoxiously competitive in a job and the monetary gain, if any, would be indirect.

 

Gene Roddenberry engaged in a ton of personal myth-making, to portray himself not only as a singular creative genius, but also as a supposed fighter for women's equality (!) and a uniquely enlightened visionary whose job was to teach the rest of us how to think about society and religion.

In addition, he told self-serving anecdotes for years, stories that later came up short of the truth, and also failed to give credit where it was due. For instnace, he would mention Forbidden Planet, but only to say that he hadn't wanted to copy its abstract music (and granted, he made a good call on that). He didn't acknowledge the creative contributions of Herb Solow and others behind TOS.

It all combined to put him under a critical light later, when more people behind Star Trek had told their side of things, and more documents had been made public. His own myth-making, his attempt to lead a personality cult, led to the bounce-back in how he is perceived.

 

Pretty much. Shatner does a lot of poking fun at his own image, and I think his sense of humor about himself has helped sustain and extend his career. He was also big enough to include his co-stars' objections to him in his Star Trek Memories book. Roddenberry tended to believe his own press and often built himself up at the expense of omitting other's contributions.

All of this. My opinion of Roddenberry as a person cratered out a few years ago. I wrote about it here, along with some stuff about Batman co-creator Bob Kane: http://atomicjunkshop.com/separating-the-art-from-the-artist/

 

Roddenberry to me comes across as totally hypocritical. Pushing equal opportunities while sexually exploiting actresses. Pushing no greed for possessions and money but writing lyrics (and pretty poor ones at that) he never intended to use just to steal 50% of the royalties. Pushing all that perfected humanity while being a coniving, manipulative liar.
Love TOS but do not like its creator.

 

Seems like an accurate assessment to me.

 

He also felt that there would be no smoking in the future, though he himself was a smoker.

Kor

 

An accurate assessment, although if someone has to play devils advocate and defend him for a minute, I'll observe that Roddenberry himself in an interview around 1988/89 did address the contradiction, humbly (and it was rare humility from him) conceding that Star Trek merely expounds on his ideals for humanity, and that he himself frequently fell short of them. Though he never went into specifics.

 

IMO, from a business standpoint it's understandable to some degree that he would hawkishly look out for his own financial gains in a cutthroat industry while at the same time musing that someday the current economy would go the way of the dodo. Likewise, one can sympathize with him recognizing the harm of his smoking habit and hoping that one day nobody would smoke.

On the other hand, the exploitation of women is (if true) criminally scummy and renders everything else moot, and that's an understatement!

Kor

 

Probably because the interviewer only had so much tape.

 

No disagreement here One suspects we only know a small fraction of what went on, too

 

Honestly, could the titles of these threads be a little more descriptive?

Shatner had a percentage of the show so of course he had incentive to try to make it successful, and he was the star. Not saying this excuses his behavior because he's apparently an ass (as a friend of mine learned first hand when she had to work as his assistant for two days), but it's interesting to note that some of the secondary character stuff in the 1st season that got excised was for the better. Unsure if Shatner feedback had a role in the following, but one draft of "The Naked Time" had recently-recovered Sulu telling Kirk to hang-on as Kirk's emotions are getting the best of him, and it was absolutely the right decision to chuck that in favor of Kirk's solo meltdown.

Roddenberry was funny because on one hand he would take credit for things and in other situations he would acknowledge all the other people who contributed to the show. Yes, he certainly did some credit swiping. It doesn't help that fans have taken to giving undue credit for things to others on the show that were Roddenberry's invention (Coon and the Prime Directive for instance, but @Harvey and I will get into that at a future date), thus leading to the conclusion that Roddenberry was stealing credit for things he actually did invent.

But woe be to anyone who got between Roddenberry and money, because he'd run roughshod over them to line his pockets.

 

When the Ferengi were concieved, they might as well have been named Roddenberrians.

 

I'll second this. It's a big pet peeve of mine to see a ton of threads with vague titles like "I Just Noticed Something." It's not that tough to give others an idea of what your thread's about, people. Really.

 

Yeah, but you're probably the only one who thinks that.