Roddenberry was a dirtbag

[erastus25]

I find this discussion so refreshing.

Let's pointlessly bring up nasty things about dead people, and by doing so feel so much better about ourselves!

Gene who....lol

He was human...enough said

Well..he WAS a Hollywood Producer.... All the stories about "The casting couch" have a basis in fact throughout Hollywood from the 1910's at least till the 80's (and in isolated cases beyond that)..

So he was not all sweetness and light...neither are many people in Hollywood or beyond...


Flawed creatures are we...

Approriately said.

He was a complex person as many of us are.

I agree with most of these sentiments. There really is no point for us to go back and trash the guy for what he may or may not have been. Perhaps it's best just to say "he's human, just like the characters on his TV show."

At the same time, a better understanding of Roddenberry could give us a better understanding of Star Trek and of the era in general. TOS spouted many ideals about equality for all races and all people, etc. yet regularly left equality for women out of the equation. This seems to mirror GR's personal life quite well. By understanding him we get a better idea of why ST was made the way it was, and also an idea of the nature of the climate of change of the culture at the time.

I think in the long run his contributions to the world outweigh whatever negatives might be ascribed to him.

Tell that to his first wife and also to Majel Barrett. Then again, she knew he was a dirt bag when she was having an affair with him during marriage #1 so she's really no better than he was. Note to Majel: As you sow so shall you reap.

I'm sure Majel is quite happy reaping a crapton of money off the ST franchise. Must be nice to go from being a C-level actress to a multimillionaire.

 

[TheLonelySquire]

Yeah, I've never understood the Roddenberry cult of personality, myself. I give him points for putting the thing together in the first place. I give him points for packaging it and selling it to the network.

I can't give him much credit for being an overly imaginative writer of SF-flavored television; 'Captain Kirk has a fistfight with God' wears thin fast, and 'crew visits planet which curiously resembles something out of Earth's history and can therefore be conveniently shot using sets, costumes, and props that just happened to be lying about the studio backlot' is a clever conceit from a TV production point of view but a little weak in SF/literary merit. I think the only one of GR's storytelling peccadillos that does not grow tiresome with me is his fascination with sex and beautiful women, because hey, I'm a guy.

And no, I can't give him a lot of credit as an admirable human being, for reasons already cited in the OP.

He was a TV producer, and one of middling quality at best; he was far better as a salesman. Seems to me that he got the message that no one was too interested in buying what he had to sell (literally and figuratively) after TOS; all he had to his credit was a string of pilots that never got off the ground. He caught lightning in a bottle with Trek, and the limit of his 'vision' seems to me to be that he recognized that people did like Star Trek, and since actually producing television programs was no longer a steady paycheck for him he could parlay being The Great Bird Of The Galaxy, The Visionary Creator Of Star Trek into a paying prospect. So he reinvented himself as the Great Humanist Dreamer.

The thing is, the vast majority of what I like about Star Trek happens to be stuff that other people dreamed up--Gene Coon, Dorothy Fontana, Theodore Sturgeon, et. al. If you want to know what pure 100% Roddenberry Trek looks like, watch "The Cage" (pretty good, but with clunky bits here and there), TMP (I like it, and a lot of other folks do, but it's far from universally beloved), and first season TNG (well, er, least said soonest mended). And I think part of that is because Roddenberry started buying into his own PR. There's kind of a steady downward slope you can plot by connecting those three points, and I suspect it's inversely proportional (if that's not mixing mathematical metaphors too egregiously) to how much he believed he was The Great Visionary. Star Trek went from being (intended as) a workable idea for an entertaining TV show, with a bit of substance at its core (Hornblower in Space/Wagon Train to the Stars, with the added wrinkle of using SF concepts to tell stories about socially relevant issues under the network radar) to being some kind of weird Gospel According To Gene about how wonderful and perfect (and therefore devoid of dramatic conflict or much useful storytelling potential) everyone will be in the future.

I guess I can't blame the man. Given the choice, I'd far rather be perceived by the public as this wonderful visionary prophet than as a womanizing, pill-popping boozehound of a TV producer, too.

But we all know that GR was only one of those two things, no matter how much he'd have preferred we believe otherwise (and how much some people still want to see him).

Hating your avatar, lovin' your post

I'm rereading Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (Solow and Justman) and while he certainly did have a vision, he also was a complete lowlife scumbag.

How many women did he cheat on while married twice? Countless. His boozing and pill popping are legendary. He also was proud of his philandering ways.

He was just a man of low, low moral fiber.

Just sad.

I'd love to hang out with THAT Gene far more than with Utopia-Gene(tm), seriously, sounds like a fun guy

And this is why I weep for society's moral values.

 

[TheLonelySquire]

I find this discussion so refreshing.

Let's pointlessly bring up nasty things about dead people, and by doing so feel so much better about ourselves!

Gene who....lol

He was human...enough said

I agree with most of these sentiments. There really is no point for us to go back and trash the guy for what he may or may not have been. Perhaps it's best just to say "he's human, just like the characters on his TV show."

At the same time, a better understanding of Roddenberry could give us a better understanding of Star Trek and of the era in general. TOS spouted many ideals about equality for all races and all people, etc. yet regularly left equality for women out of the equation. This seems to mirror GR's personal life quite well. By understanding him we get a better idea of why ST was made the way it was, and also an idea of the nature of the climate of change of the culture at the time.

I think in the long run his contributions to the world outweigh whatever negatives might be ascribed to him.

Tell that to his first wife and also to Majel Barrett. Then again, she knew he was a dirt bag when she was having an affair with him during marriage #1 so she's really no better than he was. Note to Majel: As you sow so shall you reap.

I'm sure Majel is quite happing reaping a crapton of money off the ST franchise. Must be nice to go from being a C-level actress to a multimillionaire.

No doubt she is happy with the money. And perhaps since she had no problem stealing him from his first wife, she didn't mind also being cheated on.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

^ Precisely.

Gene was not a prophet, just an immoral man back in the day and a great opportunist.

 

[TheLonelySquire]

^ Precisely.

Gene was not a prophet, just an immoral man back in the day and a great opportunist.

Yep. I do give him a ton of credit where it's due. I just think that his personal failings hurt a lot of people.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Perfect people have nothing to say.
Exhibit 1: TNG.

 

[Esteban]

Assuming here that the glass house from which the OP casts stones is spic and span.

Roddenberry had many faults, dutifully recorded by many--but mostly after he died.

He also created, sold, and produced Star Trek. He had help in all three areas, sure, but he's the guy who did it.

"Low moral fiber"? Who's to say? I think a few Drusillas along the way can spice up any man's marriage, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Kegek]

I think in the long run his contributions to the world outweigh whatever negatives might be ascribed to him.

Tell that to his first wife and also to Majel Barrett.

I'd wager Majel Barrett got a lot out of her marriage to Roddenberry. Money, fame, steady employment on the Star Trek spinoffs, and a status as the custodian of his legacy - and through that, Earth: Final Conflict and Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda - after his death. Perhaps here too, the positives outweigh the negatives; but I guess only Majel would know for sure.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

I don't care if he was a dirtbag.

I simply enjoy to watch his TV show...I don't have to like the guy, just his show.

 

[erastus25]

I don't care if he was a dirtbag.

I simply enjoy to watch his TV show...I don't have to like the guy, just his show.

I think we have a winning comment!

 

[KayArr]

This is a great book! I only read it a year ago, and I loved it! It actually gave me a renewed respect for Shatner and gave some layers to Nimoy. It made me really think that the secondary cast did a lot of whining--it's a 60s show, there's one star, perhaps two or three--but it was never meant to be an ensemble. I can never look at Nichelle Nichols the same way again, or take her very seriously, either.

Of all the things that Rodenberry did, I think I that he should be censured most for writing those theme song lyrics and stealing half the royalties. The womanizing and other stuff--well that's a Hollywood producer. But messing around with a musician's bread and butter? That was lower than low.

 

[Valandil]

Hah.

I'm quite frankly horrified by the ill-deserved moral superiority on display in this thread. Before that sets the moderator-alarms ringing, this is not an attack.

Just think about it.

It seems, especially recently, that the more famous the individual, the less their positives are focused on, but rather their flaws are ridiculed and thrust into the spotlight. By attacking these flaws, as one poster says, certain people seem to make themselves feel better about their own flaws.

Oh my word, Gene cheated on his wife! That's black and white. Gene should instantly be sent to Hell! Well, for one thing, a significant portion of men have cheated, and secondly, there's two sides to every single story.

Gene was a visionary. Gene was flawed. Most visionaries are flawed. You're probably flawed too. Please, get over it.

 

[KayArr]

Eh...it's a great book. It's a great book about the crafting of a t.v. show. As I said, most of Rodenberry's flaws are same-old same-old--but writing those lyrics? Not just anybody in the world would do that!

Still, we wouldn't have Trek without him, so go Gene. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't honor all the other guys who pitched in. A cult of personality is not a good thing, acting like all of Trek came from one mind is bad history. Giving due credit to everyone else doesn't mean taking away anything from Roddenberry, necessarily.

He's a hero and a dirtbag--'nuff said.

 

[Gepard]

Hah.

I'm quite frankly horrified by the ill-deserved moral superiority on display in this thread. Before that sets the moderator-alarms ringing, this is not an attack.

Just think about it.

It seems, especially recently, that the more famous the individual, the less their positives are focused on, but rather their flaws are ridiculed and thrust into the spotlight. By attacking these flaws, as one poster says, certain people seem to make themselves feel better about their own flaws.

Oh my word, Gene cheated on his wife! That's black and white. Gene should instantly be sent to Hell! Well, for one thing, a significant portion of men have cheated, and secondly, there's two sides to every single story.

Gene was a visionary. Gene was flawed. Most visionaries are flawed. You're probably flawed too. Please, get over it.

I think this has more to do with, as it was mentioned upthread, the near-deification of Roddenberry, especially by some people around these parts. There's a tendency to paint nearly every creative decision he made, at least in the TOS/TMP years, as golden, to the point of acting like he was somehow solely responsible for everything that happened in the classic Trek years.

A prime example of this came when a certain poster claimed that Roddenberry designed the Enterprise because Jeffires "only" did a bunch of drawings and showed them to Roddenberry, who did the real hard work of approving the final design. This kind of fawning adoration for everything Roddenberry did, to the point of depriving others of credit, is, IMHO, the driving force behind threads like this. Roddenberry was human, not some super-genius, and people want to take his public image down a notch accordingly.

Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Michael]

Hah.

I'm quite frankly horrified by the ill-deserved moral superiority on display in this thread. Before that sets the moderator-alarms ringing, this is not an attack.

Just think about it.

It seems, especially recently, that the more famous the individual, the less their positives are focused on, but rather their flaws are ridiculed and thrust into the spotlight. By attacking these flaws, as one poster says, certain people seem to make themselves feel better about their own flaws.

Oh my word, Gene cheated on his wife! That's black and white. Gene should instantly be sent to Hell! Well, for one thing, a significant portion of men have cheated, and secondly, there's two sides to every single story.

Gene was a visionary. Gene was flawed. Most visionaries are flawed. You're probably flawed too. Please, get over it.

Oh come on, this board is generally VERY pro-Roddenberry. Almost to the point of a personality cult. The guy didn't reinvent the wheel, you know. So I think it's only fair to discuss his flaws once in a while.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

I'd argue he was as human as any of us, but I doubt you bitter angry people would hear me up there in your ivory towers.

 

[KayArr]

Sure, he's human, but do you really think that stealing credit, stealing money with trickery (the lyrics), and serial cheating are really the norm? I'm not saying he was Hitler or anything close to it, but he was certainly no saint or anything close to that either.

 

[Kegek]

Oh come on, this board is generally VERY pro-Roddenberry. Almost to the point of a personality cult. The guy didn't reinvent the wheel, you know. So I think it's only fair to discuss his flaws once in a while.

Well, I think the two extremes are a bit disheartening, honestly. Roddenberry was neither a visionary nor a blackguard. Claiming either exaggerates his talents or his faults.

On the one hand, he just was a guy who pitched an intriguing idea for a TV show, gathered together a lot of talent, and for an instant captured lightning in a bottle - and became immortalised for the act.

On the other, well, it's not like he was burning infants at the stake. I must confess to not being interested in the private lives of people I never met who lived on another continent; however greatly I might enjoy what they produced.

 

[Defcon]

Gene was a visionary.

No, he was not. He was a one-hit wonder TV writer/producer. Nothing more and nothing less IMO.

 

[KayArr]

He was a t.v. visionary, maybe--but no sci fi visionary. And really...one-hit wonder tv producer sounds about right. Nah--that's not fair either. He created something that allowed others with similar values to build into something great and very important to me and my world view, so props to him for that. He was also a womanizing cheat. He can be both, it's o.k.