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"FacebookPinterest\n\n PART I\n\n The Jelly\n\n My God, the bracing and embracing enthusiasm that is SHATNER! The music it makes, the staccatos and sforzandi and delirious swings of tempo and motif! Behold, now, Shatner, jamming, deep into a riff about the human palate (though the subject could be anything), the worlds open to it, and the worlds it can open: &amp;quot;For me, for me, you can&amp;#39;t go too far pushing for MORE coffee taste. More BURNED. More GROUND. That&amp;#39;s for me! This is my QUEST. Andrew, do you understand when I tell you that I QUEST?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I believe I do.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;You asked about a scallop, did you?&amp;quot;\n\n I did not.\n\n &amp;quot;I give you an URCHIN! Have you tried it, Andrew? Have you?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I\u2026&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;The CANDY of the ocean! An UNBE-LIEEEEEEV-ABLE taste!&amp;quot;\n\n Others in this Lexington, Kentucky, bookstore coffee shop look up from their plates. Shatner appears to be on the verge of yelling, but then\u2026the guillotine. The full stop. So very Shatner. Now the words are slow, the notes nocturnal, an almost inaudible coo. &amp;quot;Soft, Andrew. And sweet! And of the ocean. Briny and free. Unsullied by rice or lemon. Or &amp;#39;soy.&amp;#39; The jelly of it, Andrew\u2014&amp;quot; now rising again\u2014&amp;quot;the JELLY! No, wait! More like a CLOUD. Something you wouldn&amp;#39;t believe could sustain a set shape! A sweet cloud of meat, Andrew. A SWEET CLOUD OF MEAT!&amp;quot;\n\n Here, now, 95 percent of my mind and soul wants to float away on Shatner&amp;#39;s sweet cloud of meat. If I were Shatner, the figure would be 100, and you&amp;#39;d never hear from me again. Regrettably, I am not Shatner. None of us is. So out comes that lame, schooled, 5 percent voice, the one that tries to parse, rather than sway to, the music of Shatner\u2014and to distinguish Shatner the man from the aurora that is SHATNER.\n\n &amp;quot;I get the impression,&amp;quot; I say, of the cappuccino, &amp;quot;that if they achieved your Platonic ideal of what a cappuccino should be, you&amp;#39;d be heartbroken, because it&amp;#39;d be over.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Then I&amp;#39;d find another quest! I mean\u2014&amp;quot; he reaches over a low divider to point at the food of a wide-eyed diner in an adjacent booth, his finger almost touching the food\u2014&amp;quot;what&amp;#39;s the ultimate turkey burger? Stacey! Come here!&amp;quot; The barista. Shatner has intimately acquainted her\u2014everything Shatner says and does, no matter how mundane, is intimate and urgent in equal measure\u2014with his quest for the perfect cappuccino. It is time for his verdict. Stacey approaches with a tremulous smile, arms hugged to her chest. &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;ve come closer, Stacey, you&amp;#39;re getting there,&amp;quot; Shatner says, extending his right hand. Oddly, Stacey offers her left hand for him to take.\n\n &amp;quot;Ah, the hand she wipes with,&amp;quot; he says suavely.\n\n Near the end of the last century, during a Late Night with Conan O&amp;#39;Brien appearance, Shatner said that for years he&amp;#39;d wondered about this SHATNER he kept hearing about at Star Trek conventions, some kind of mythical presence. A man? A god? Finally, Shatner said, he realized: He was SHATNER.\n\n Now, watching him caress Stacey&amp;#39;s wiping hand, I wonder: Is this Shatner, or SHATNER? Either way, is the latter an amplification or a distillation of the former? Does the one begin where the other trails off, or are they two distinct entities somehow occupying a single space?\n\n\n\n PART II\n\n The Snake That Eats Its Tail\n\n Start by stripping the story of William Shatner&amp;#39;s past fifty years to its signal plot points:\n\n (1) A hardworking stage-and-screen actor (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Howdy Doody, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek), though always employed and successful, spends decades in a kind of critical quicksand in which the harder he struggles to be taken seriously, the more he is regarded as a preening boob who, unable to suspend viewers&amp;#39; disbelief, invariably plays himself\u2014that is, a preening boob.\n\n (2) Because he is canny or shameless or both, this actor joins the laughter, taking on acting and nonacting gigs that wink at and capitalize upon the perception that he is a hack and a has-been (Airplane II, the Big Giant Head on 3rd Rock from the Sun, the Priceline &amp;quot;Negotiator,&amp;quot; Miss Congeniality).\n\n (3) His ongoing role as joke-within-a-joke grows ever larger and funnier, ever more self-referential and -reflective, the cosmic snake eating its own tail, until 2004. It is then that Shatner begins a five-year stint, first on The Practice, then on Boston Legal, in a role\u2014as a blustery, buffoonish lawyer named Denny Crane who trades on long-lost greatness\u2014that is so frankly a point-on mockery of William Shatner&amp;#39;s career and symbology, that is William Shatner, that it&amp;#39;s at first embarrassing to watch. It is also in 2004 that Shatner follows up on his 1968 LP, The Transformed Man\u2014a compilation of spoken-word cover songs unlikely to be supplanted as the most ridiculed album ever made\u2014with a CD called Has Been, a collection of original prose poems set to music by Ben Folds. Anyone ever subjected to The Transformed Man gasps, &amp;quot;How dare he?&amp;quot; Yet something about Has Been, a combination of the acid wit, self-laceration, and unabashed yearning Shatner exudes, makes the album great\u2014and unlikely to be supplanted as the most critically acclaimed album of its kind ever made. Boston Legal is an even greater revelation. Something Shatner brings to Denny Crane, something sad and lonely, wise and true, and\u2014can one say it?\u2014genuinely talented punches through all the kitsch and cheese. Not only does Shatner suspend disbelief and disappear into Denny Crane more than he has with any other character he&amp;#39;s ever played, but the previous fifty years of Shatnerology are instantly recast, inverted\u2014retroactively subject, it seems, to the inverse physics of some parallel universe. William Shatner, in fully embracing the notion that William Shatner should not be taken seriously, is at last taken seriously as an actor, and is nominated six years in a row for an Emmy, winning twice.\n\n (4) The lionized Shatner does not banish the snickered-at Shatner; they coexist, matter and antimatter, so that the Emmy-winning Shatner is also the Shatner who stars in the only all-Esperanto-language feature film ever made\u2026is also the Shatner who authors the TekWar series of sci-fi novels and comic books\u2026is also the Shatner who auctions a kidney stone he&amp;#39;d passed, stent and string included, for $25,000, donating the proceeds to charity (after dismissing the initial $15,000 offer as lowball)\u2026is also the Shatner who hosts his own talk show, Shatner&amp;#39;s Raw Nerve, on the BIO channel\u2026is also the Shatner synonymous with the paraphernalia-cum-forum for public spats that is williamshatner.com. (On whether he was offered a part in last summer&amp;#39;s Star Trek, directed by J. J. Abrams: &amp;quot;J.J., nobody ever came to me and said, &amp;#39;We have a cameo,&amp;#39; okay?&amp;quot; On not being invited to George Takei&amp;#39;s 2008 same-sex nuptials: &amp;quot;Finally at the age of, I think, 70, he decides to come out of the closet and say, &amp;#39;I&amp;#39;m gay.&amp;#39; Like, who cares? Be gay.&amp;quot;) &amp;quot;If you look at his r\u00E9sum\u00E9,&amp;quot; says David E. Kelley, the legendary television producer and creator of Boston Legal, it&amp;#39;s just\u2026ridiculous.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Ridiculous&amp;quot;\u2014how better to characterize the fact that at the age of 78, William Shatner is among the handful of living Americans whose fan base consists of avid 10-year-olds (&amp;quot;Excuse me, Mr. Priceline, may I please have your autograph?&amp;quot;), 40-year-olds (&amp;quot;Excuse me, Captain Kirk\u2026&amp;quot;), and 75-year-olds (&amp;quot;Excuse me, Mr. Crane\u2026&amp;quot;).\n\n Tellingly, the greatness of Shatner&amp;#39;s Boston Legal performance arises from its ambiguity, the unresolved questions it generates both about Denny Crane and the man playing him. Denny, for those who never watched the show (which concluded in December 2008), is just plain fucking wonderful. He&amp;#39;s a megalomaniac prone to chirping his own name aloud during sex, in casual conversation, and in court. (&amp;quot;Denny Crane! My poop doesn&amp;#39;t smell. Comes out in pretty colors. Pastels. Denny Crane!&amp;quot;) He may be suffering from Alzheimer&amp;#39;s or &amp;quot;the mad cow,&amp;quot; as he calls it. Or he may be using his &amp;quot;condition&amp;quot; as pretext to say, eat, smoke, shoot, and grope whatever and whomever he wants. (He bangs a cocktail waitress in a coat closet at one of his own wedding receptions.) Watching Denny Crane divides your consciousness. You experience him as Crane rather than the actor playing him, even as Crane delivers lines whose only purpose is to remind you that he is being &amp;quot;played&amp;quot; in every sense both by William Shatner and the nova of meanings that is SHATNER. Take, for instance, this amusing exchange between Shatner/Crane and a guest star who just happens to be played by Tom Selleck:\n\n shatner: [You and I] have something else in common.\u2026 We&amp;#39;re both leading men. We&amp;#39;re like stars in our own show. Only the star doesn&amp;#39;t have only one leading lady. Though sure, sometimes at the end of an episode it looks like he&amp;#39;s settling down with someone, but the next week she&amp;#39;s not there\u2014it&amp;#39;s somebody else! It&amp;#39;s a way of holding up viewer interest.\n\n selleck: You&amp;#39;re a strange man, Denny.\n\n shatner: Strange leading man.\n\n Or this upsetting exchange, between Crane and one of his firm&amp;#39;s senior partners:\n\n shatner: I&amp;#39;m the big gun on this boat, the captain! And you&amp;#39;re nothing but a skinny, overpaid deckhand.\n\n sp: No. I am the deckhand who steers the ship because the captain isn&amp;#39;t up to it anymore.\n\n &amp;quot;There may have been a point in Bill&amp;#39;s career when the jokes stung, where people were not taking him seriously enough,&amp;quot; says Bill D&amp;#39;Elia, who ecutive-produced Boston Legal and directed seventeen episodes. &amp;quot;But by the time I met him, he didn&amp;#39;t care, and I think that freed him to play Denny in a way he might not have been able to earlier in his career. I think he was able, at that point in his life, to embrace the parody and then let it go, so that it wound up being a perfect\u2014and perfectly timely\u2014melding of actor and role.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I wish I was never great,&amp;quot; Crane quietly tells his best friend, played by James Spader. &amp;quot;Because\u2026I remember. When God strips you of your talent, he should at least have the decency to strip away the memory of having had it.&amp;quot; The line unnerves and cuts to questions at the very heart of both Crane and Shatner: How much does he know, and how much has he known\u2014and when? Is he daft and blessed with some kind of stupid luck? Or has he been in on the joke from the beginning?\n\n Which brings us to the question of Mr. Tambourine Man.\n\n\n\n PART III\n\n The Horse&amp;#39;s Breath\n\n On an album consisting entirely of preposterous cuts, the most preposterous on The Transformed Man was Shatner&amp;#39;s cover of Bob Dylan&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Mr. Tambourine Man.&amp;quot; And that cut&amp;#39;s most preposterous moment comes at the end, when Shatner unleashes the Man&amp;#39;s name four times in a row. The first is an aggressive bark. Mr. Tambourine Man! The second and third are furtive, edgy, out the side of the mouth. Missertambourineman. The fourth and last is unhinged, the throat-ripping shriek of a boar being gored on a pike.\n\n Allow me to explain further just how meta is this business with &amp;quot;Mr. Tambourine Man.&amp;quot; When Transformed Man (featuring &amp;quot;Captain Kirk of Star Trek,&amp;quot; per the album&amp;#39;s cover) was released, it generated a thunderclap of disbelief and mockery. How could it not? The reverberations of that thunderclap continued for thirty years. Each new role, each new career phase, brought press coverage\u2014coverage that made repeated reference to that album, to that cut, to that screaming. The references were obligatory, necessary to put Shatner in context and, to some degree, in his place. There was no way William Shatner was ever going to escape &amp;quot;Mr. Tambourine Man.&amp;quot;\n\n That is, until he did, thirty years later, in 1998, when he escaped &amp;quot;Mr. Tambourine Man&amp;quot; by\u2014of course!\u2014publicly acknowledging that there was no escaping &amp;quot;Mr. Tambourine Man.&amp;quot; Because it was in 1998 that Shatner became the commercial character now known as the Priceline.com Negotiator, a character who began as a spoken-word artist backed by a band of hipster rock musicians as he performed/desecrated everything from Young M.C.&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Bust a Move&amp;quot; to Cheap Trick&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;I Want You to Want Me&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; coffeehouse gigs. A character, in other words, whose raison d&amp;#39;\u00EAtre was the allusion it made to the self-regarding preposterousness that was William Shatner&amp;#39;s The Transformed Man. As Shatner himself says, &amp;quot;The Negotiator is an invention I had a big hand in. When they were writing it, they didn&amp;#39;t quite know how to handle this new campaign they were doing. Yes, it started with the songs. But how to handle them? Then I realized: The Negotiator is insane! He&amp;#39;s INSANE, Andrew! His very life depends on his ability to convince you that you\u2014you, Andrew\u2014have to get this bargain!&amp;quot;\n\n The odd phenomenon whereby make-believe Shatner begets real-life Shatner begets make-believe Shatner, and so on, began to spread. Which is how (to name just one example) Shatner&amp;#39;s role as a beauty-pageant host in the 2000 Sandra Bullock vehicle Miss Congeniality led to his hosting the fiftieth-anniversary Miss USA pageant a year later. (It is impossible to witness James Spader&amp;#39;s steady, unapologetic physical bloating over the five-season run of Boston Legal and not suspect that Shatner&amp;#39;s emphatic speech patterns aren&amp;#39;t his only contagious quality.)\n\n Cognizant as Shatner is of the butterfly effect associated with Transformed Man, it hasn&amp;#39;t occurred to him that there might be something &amp;quot;ironical&amp;quot; about naming one of his horses Mr. Tambourine Man. This becomes apparent as Shatner shows me around one of the farms outside Lexington where he keeps horses. We come upon a stall and there he is. He&amp;#39;s 2 years old. He&amp;#39;s beautiful.\n\n &amp;quot;This is Mr. Tambourine Man,&amp;quot; Shatner says, and then, when I burst into laughter, &amp;quot;What&amp;#39;s so funny?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Well, let me ask you,&amp;quot; I say. &amp;quot;While training this horse, have you ever\u2026unleashed one?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Unleashed one?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re kidding, right?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;One what?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;MISTER TAMBOUREEEEEEEEEEEEEN MAAAAAAAAAAAN!&amp;quot;\n\n Shatner laughs hugely.\n\n &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve never thought of that, but maybe I will!&amp;quot;\n\n Never thought of it?\n\n &amp;quot;You know,&amp;quot; I say, &amp;quot;Kelsey Grammer once said something interesting about you to our magazine.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Kelsey&amp;#39;s a friend of mine! What&amp;#39;d he say!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;About your acting technique. He said, &amp;#39;It&amp;#39;s total self-delusion, and it works!&amp;#39; &amp;quot;\n\n Again, a huge laugh. Then, &amp;quot;Well, what&amp;#39;d he mean by that?&amp;quot;\n\n What did he mean?\n\n &amp;quot;I think he was suggesting that you&amp;#39;re some sort of accidental genius, someone so far up his own ass that he somehow manages to come out the other side with something truly sui generis and brilliant to officer.&amp;quot;\n\n William Shatner arches an eyebrow and then responds to this assessment in the most remarkable way.\n\n &amp;quot;I want you to do something now, Andrew.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Okay.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I want you to kiss Mr. Tambourine Man.&amp;quot;\n\n I stand there for a moment. And then, if only because William Shatner has asked for it, I lean into the stall and lay my mouth upon Mr. Tambourine Man&amp;#39;s nose. It is almost impossible to look into the eyes of a horse and not judge yourself. I think there is something about this that Shatner knows in a deep way.\n\n &amp;quot;Kiss him. I want you to kiss Mr. Tambourine Man, Andrew! Go ahead, KISS! Smell his breath! I want you to smell Mr. Tambourine Man&amp;#39;s breath! Go ahead! Tell me what you smell! What do you SMELL, Andrew? Tell me!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Cormac McCarthy once described the smell of a horse&amp;#39;s breath as being like &amp;#39;news from another world,&amp;#39; &amp;quot; I say.\n\n It&amp;#39;s a perfect thing for McCarthy to have written. But later that afternoon, after Shatner and I have parted ways, I begin to regret having been referential rather than reflective with my answer.\n\n In the moment, though, Shatner responds in a thrilled and quiet voice\u2014that is, with grace.\n\n &amp;quot;Hay,&amp;quot; he whispers. &amp;quot;Hay and earth!&amp;quot;\n\n I don&amp;#39;t know what to say to that, so I go with, &amp;quot;Take me through those &amp;#39;Mr. Tambourine Man&amp;#39;s you do at the end of the song.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Sure!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;The first one, the holler\u2014what&amp;#39;s that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Where is he? Let&amp;#39;s try to find him!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Why&amp;#39;s he hiding?&amp;quot;\n\n Shatner darts his eyes right, then left, leans forward, and discreetly mumbles the answer under his breath. &amp;quot;Because the authorities are after him\u2014you just can&amp;#39;t carry drugs around like that! And because there&amp;#39;s that orange light. Beaming down! Surrounding me!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;And the second and third ones, where you&amp;#39;re starting to get loud?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Oh! I&amp;#39;m getting a little nervous now. Need my fix! Starting to suspect he&amp;#39;s gone.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;And then the last\u2026&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Pure. Fucking. TERROR.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re having me on. You really thought it through like that?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve got the shakes, man! Mr. Tambourine Man. He&amp;#39;s\u2026gone. Oh, fuck, he&amp;#39;s GONE! WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?&amp;quot;\n\n He may be the son of a Montreal schmatte man, Shatner, but he&amp;#39;s a goddamned American treasure. No two ways about it. Completely self-originating, yet also our creation, a living, breathing expression, in exaggerated form, of the country&amp;#39;s underlying anxiety about its own greatness\u2014whether it&amp;#39;s spent, and perhaps whether it ever was.\n\n\n\n PART IV\n\n The Lovemaking\n\n Behold Shatner, at a county fair in rural Kentucky, clad in gray topcoat and white snap-brim, pacing an American saddlebred named Courtier around a ring. &amp;quot;Hello, Dolly!&amp;quot; treacles out of a calliope. There are fourteen other competitors, nearly all pageant-pretty sylphs possessed of plumb-line posture and three taut buns (one hugged by black lace to the back of the head, the others tiny and arced beneath second-skin riding pants). Yet your eye goes to the man, that man with the bowed legs and outthrust gut and butt\u2014the two cantilevering each other\u2014more thick than fat, like a potbellied iron stove, face as red as raw chuck with ertion, dollop-y pinwheels of sun cream reemerging through the pores, yet wholly in the moment, wholly unselfconscious\u2026 Say, is that the Priceline Guy?\n\n It&amp;#39;s an absurd sight gag\u2014he&amp;#39;s gotta be delusional, right?\u2014which only becomes more so after Shatner wins a pink fifth-place ribbon the size of a sunflower and saunters over from the horse ring, topcoat and all, to take in a tractor pull.\n\n &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s a John Deere!&amp;quot; someone remarks of a tractor losing its tug-of-war.\n\n &amp;quot;No, it&amp;#39;s going backwards, it&amp;#39;s a Dear John!&amp;quot; Shatner exclaims, causing scores to turn and see\u2026James T., Denny, the Negotiator, all of them at once, and\u2026freeze.\n\n SHATNER!\n\n What is it? An essence. Fleshly. Something you know and feel, as surely as you see the slate gray sky outside your kitchen window and smell the fresh-brewed coffee inside it\u2014yet something that cannot be apprehended directly by any one (or more) of the five senses. SHATNER: as sensible yet inexplicable as saying &amp;quot;Bless you!&amp;quot; when someone sneezes (or saying &amp;quot;SHATNER!&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;Bless you!&amp;quot; when someone sneezes, which at least is more onomatopoetic).\n\n Resistance is futile, of course. You aren&amp;#39;t in Shatner&amp;#39;s presence ten minutes before he reverse-engineers your emotional state; first, you adopt those conversational rhythms of his\u2014everywhere, the jelly!\u2014and then, by God, you start to feel the enthusiasm of your words, an enthusiasm inevitably heightened by your knowledge that this is WILLIAM TIBERIUS FUCKING SHATNER! you are dealing with, the most meta, the most absurd, human being in Western Civilization, and you fall in love with that meta-absurdity, the bonanza of impunity and laughs it generates.\n\n Know this: William Shatner has been suspended in a perpetual state of lovemaking, a glowing bubble that radioactivates every word and gesture made by the man afloat within it. He will speak with a delivery that borders on the maniacal about\u2026whatever\u2014coffee! urchins! And because you are not SHATNER, you will think, What&amp;#39;s this about? Where&amp;#39;s it going? What&amp;#39;s the point? But then Shatner, having had his say about the jelly, will just sit back and smile at you emphatically. What&amp;#39;s with the smile? It&amp;#39;s part of the story\u2014the end of it, a punctuation mark that&amp;#39;s half exclamation point and half challenge. You need more? It&amp;#39;s also a way of asking you to consider what it was you liked about the &amp;quot;story&amp;quot; as he was telling it. Was it the content? Couldn&amp;#39;t have been, because there wasn&amp;#39;t any. No, it was the electric element of the telling\u2014the SHATNER of it. What is the point? you ask. You might as well ask what the point of lovemaking is.\n\n Here, then, is SHATNER: a man who sinks his teeth into even the most pedestrian of moments of any given day, who cracks their bones to greedily suck at the marrow of them, lips glistening and parted, eyes on fire and darting here and there to make sure others are watching\u2014to make sure others are feeling the love, too.\n\n And now Shatner makes love with me, and me with him, as he speaks\u2014seemingly about how he came to be a breeder and rider of competitive American-saddlebred horses but really about the nature of\u2026everything.\n\n &amp;quot;Thirty years ago. San Joaquin Valley. Wandering around, near where I&amp;#39;d been involved in a Shakespeare festival. And in the middle of nowhere, at the foot of the Sierras, I come upon it. Like Brigham Young, This is the place! I find a person to live in the house and take care of the land, who asks, Why don&amp;#39;t you run a horse? So I go to an auction, and I&amp;#39;m sitting with an acquaintance&amp;#39;s son, a beautiful little boy, and I&amp;#39;m talking with some animation to him, my hands going up and down like this, and then next thing I know the auctioneer yells SOLD! What do I do? Say I raised my hand accidentally and look idiotic?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;If it was an honest mistake, why not?&amp;quot; I offer.\n\n &amp;quot;Honesty was beside the question.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;???&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Because it wasn&amp;#39;t a mistake.&amp;quot;\n\n Huh?\n\n &amp;quot;Don&amp;#39;t you see, Andrew, there are no mistakes. I was ostensibly there to buy a horse, was I not? And Fate said: YOU ARE BUYING A HORSE. Why fight fate?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;You felt\u2026a hand at work?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t think in terms of God.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;A force other than William Shatner, then?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I believe that when things happen, they happen with a PURPOSE,&amp;quot; Shatner declares.\n\n &amp;quot;You can&amp;#39;t change them. I have been accused of never saying no. I am INDISCREET, it is said, is it not? With my roles. With my endorsements. With my books. With all that I am involved in. But I am not a big believer in No. What if I had tried to renege on that horse? I&amp;#39;d only have embarrassed myself. A flaky actor pretending at being a cowboy. No, I ACCEPTED it. I moved with it. I believe in MOTION. I believe in CHAOS. I believe in taking what happens as inevitable. Lightning STRIKES. It RAINS. You get ILL. You get NOMINATED. The photon SHATTERS the molecule, the electrons SHOOT OFF in all directions, and I BEHOLD the mineral around me!&amp;quot;\n\n The what?\n\n &amp;quot;THINGS SHOOT OFF!&amp;quot; Shatner exults. &amp;quot;That&amp;#39;s our lives!&amp;quot;\n\n Things shoot off: SHATNER!\n\n &amp;quot;And now, if you are DENYING what has happened by attempting to undo it, you make your position immeasurably worse. You cannot UNDO, you cannot DENY what has happened, you miserable boy! WHEREAS if you GO with the forces that are at work, you MAY find, as I have found MANY times in developing a script, that you&amp;#39;re required to find a THIRD way of doing it. Their way, your way, a THIRD way. Free your mind. Become enriched by the event. Yes. We don&amp;#39;t do white flour. That&amp;#39;s another big thing in your article. Allergic reactions to all kinds of food. It&amp;#39;s a huge factor in building muscle and eating.&amp;quot;\n\n What?\n\n &amp;quot;Then, one day, while shooting a Hooker\u2026&amp;quot;\n\n Of course, Shatner refers here to T. J. Hooker, the early-1980s television show that served as a vehicle for the Caligulan feast of a toupee that The Washington Post once dismissed as a &amp;quot;goony rug&amp;quot; but that is now universally acclaimed as the greatest hairpiece of the twentieth century.\n\n &amp;quot;\u2026we took a break and piled into a car and drove out and\u2026there was a horse in a stall, and it was like seeing a beautiful woman. Holy cow. I stopped. I asked. American saddlebred. That was my introduction. And that beauty has carried me through such\u2026&amp;quot; A pause. &amp;quot;\u2026joy and such\u2026&amp;quot; A longer pause. &amp;quot;\u2026tragic, fraudulent, ugly circumstances. And it has carried me through by teaching me humility. Because getting on a horse and riding with arrogance\u2014look at me! behold my mastery!\u2014isn&amp;#39;t riding at all. No, you ride with humility. I am here. I am with you. I would like to work this out with you. Now you ask, What joy?&amp;quot;\n\n William Shatner leans forward, clasps his hands, and levels a look of insistent expectation. A moment passes. I nod to show comprehension. He tilts his head. And then, in a softer, lower voice: &amp;quot;Now. You. Ask.&amp;quot;\n\n At last I realize that he&amp;#39;s literally issuing an instruction. I obey.\n\n &amp;quot;What joy?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;What joy! I am telling you, Andrew, of the joy that can happen when you and the horse are running up a trail, and you and that horse are talking to one another\u2014&amp;#39;Come now\u2026don&amp;#39;t turn too fast, don&amp;#39;t turn your head that way, no no\u2026&amp;#39; But Bill, I want to turn my head this way! This is what I&amp;#39;m used to! &amp;#39;Come now, no no, I am with you, I am listening to you, be with me\u2026&amp;#39; Okay, I am listening\u2014and suddenly the two are unified, so that that horse running is you. You are running. Andrew, you are running!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I am running.&amp;quot;\n\n SHATNER!\n\n &amp;quot;You are enthralled, Andrew! You are in a blissful, joyful, ecstatic state! And I had this just this morning. We got up at dawn, Liz and I&amp;quot;\u2014Shatner&amp;#39;s fourth wife, Elizabeth\u2014&amp;quot;and I drove this horse of ours, a former champion, now a breeding stallion. Hasn&amp;#39;t competed for years. But we saw him in a demonstration a few weeks back that made us wonder if he could come back to the world championships next month for one last hurrah. And Andrew, I tell you, for me this morning, it was\u2026orgasmic. The same unity you feel with your partner at a supreme moment of making love? The same unity great lovemaking has when you&amp;#39;re in love with the person you&amp;#39;re making love to, when there is already a union of spirit and your bodies are unified? THAT is the same feeling I had this morning. I have had it on horses. I have had it as an actor. Where I am in the midst of an act of love to the audience or the camera. And this morning, when I took him out to see if he still had it in him, I knew right away! He was excited! He remembers. The JOY! The PRIDE! We people, we can&amp;#39;t tell what the horse is thinking. We like to anthropomorphize. But I tell you, that horse was saying, LOOK AT ME! I am HERE! Watch as I puff myself up!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;What&amp;#39;s this horse&amp;#39;s name?&amp;quot; I ask after he finishes.\n\n &amp;quot;Boston Legal.&amp;quot;\n\n\n\n PART V\n\n The Transformed Man\n\n &amp;quot;I have known terror twice in my life,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You surely know of the greater of those terrors.&amp;quot;\n\n We&amp;#39;re in his Los Angeles office on a Monday morning. Something David Kelley says about Shatner helps to make sense of what&amp;#39;s going on here: &amp;quot;I think you need to follow him around for a week to understand the extreme of him, the abrupt of him.&amp;quot; By which he doesn&amp;#39;t mean curt, but rather the degree to which Shatner&amp;#39;s day-to-day and even hour-to-hour life is a series of slam cuts. Less than thirty-six hours ago: the Horseman of the Aporkalypse. Now, seemingly after just a beat, here&amp;#39;s Shatner, serious as a heart attack, speaking of his third marriage.\n\n &amp;quot;Leonard had warned me,&amp;quot; he says of his best friend and former co-star, Leonard Nimoy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;d wanted him to meet Nerine, to tell him we were going to get married and to ask if he would be the best man. After, Leonard called me and said, &amp;#39;You know she&amp;#39;s an alcoholic, don&amp;#39;t you?&amp;#39; Leonard had been an alcoholic himself, so he knew. I said, &amp;#39;But I love her.&amp;#39; &amp;quot;\n\n On the evening of August 9, 1999, Shatner returned to his Studio City home to find Nerine, to whom he&amp;#39;d been married less than two years, naked at the bottom of the deep end of their swimming pool. The details of this have been well covered. Suffice it to say that it was terrible. &amp;quot;I found myself coming out to Kentucky for no particular reason and just wandering around, blind, bumping into people, not paying much attention, bursting into tears.&amp;quot; Also suffice it to say that the terribleness of Nerine&amp;#39;s death was compounded by (still circulating) rumors that Shatner engineered it. (She did suffer from alcoholism, was acutely drunk when she died, and was conclusively determined to have broken her neck on the bottom when she dived into the pool that night.) For the purposes of understanding how Shatner became a far better actor in the past five years than he was in the previous five decades\u2014because, as Bill D&amp;#39;Elia suggests, he&amp;#39;d reached a place where nothing could touch him\u2014it is worth considering the death of his third wife.\n\n It is arguably the other terror, though, the weirder, less well-known one, the one that began even before Shatner met Nerine and continues to this day, that explains the transformation. If the death of his third wife made him untouchable in a certain respect, it is the other terror that has left him\u2014and that in turn left Denny Crane\u2014&amp;quot;touched&amp;quot; in the ancient, supernatural sense of the world.\n\n &amp;quot;It began seventeen years ago,&amp;quot; Shatner says. &amp;quot;Suddenly but quietly. Marcy [his second wife] and I were walking along the beach in Malibu, and I said, &amp;#39;Doesn&amp;#39;t it seem to you that the waves are louder tonight?&amp;#39; She just looked at me.&amp;quot;\n\n It was tinnitus, a persistent, ever crescendoing ringing in the ear that defied a cure.\n\n &amp;quot;Like the loud sound of an unoccupied radio station or television station that is\u2026what do you call it?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Screen snow?&amp;quot; I offer.\n\n &amp;quot;Yes. But there is a harder element to it. I think of it as an evil sound. I&amp;#39;m listening to it now. It&amp;#39;s like a fuse\u2026SHITCH-ssssssssssssssssss\u2026going on and on and on and on, and you LIVE in the anticipation of the explosion that fuse is crawling toward.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;An explosion that would bring release?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Death.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Does it change?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;It never has. For the first five or six years, it slowly and steadily became louder. I just thought that if I buried myself as much as I could with work, that I would be able to force it out of my mind. But it kept. Getting. LOUDER. I saw every doctor. Every specialist. I remember one man I met, a world-renowned expert. He had it. He&amp;#39;d gotten his more or less at the time I&amp;#39;d gotten mine, and our progressions were very similar. And as we talked, we both acknowledged, out loud, for the first time, what we each had not been, alone, man enough to admit: that we would never experience a silent night again. Those moments out in the country, the starlit sky, the sound of a single cricket, were gone. Or those nights where there was only the breeze on the waves of the sea: gone. And we began to cry. Even at this moment, as I speak to you, I have to work to discriminate between what I am hearing in my head and the sound that is occurring outside my head. It is horriffic.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;William Shatner cannot stay silent,&amp;quot; I say, and only later reflect upon the various levels at which this is so.\n\n &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re onto something. In those first years, I&amp;#39;d have the television on all night. It affected my marriage. I became suicidal. I thought about the ways [to kill myself]. But then, for some reason, I don&amp;#39;t really know, I stopped. And I went in another direction. I sought to\u2026embrace it. To go INTO it, to make that sound a part of my body, or perhaps to make my body part of that sound, do you see? In biblical times, in ancient scrolls, when there is mention of people, mad people, holy people, tuning in to the sounds of the planets, to the sounds of the UNIVERSE ITSELF, to angels, do you think they were talking about tinnitus?&amp;quot;\n\n This was the mysterious essence of Denny Crane, the way he seemed attuned to some cosmic frequency no one else could hear.\n\n &amp;quot;This is where the &amp;#39;Wha\u2026?&amp;#39; came from!&amp;quot; Shatner says. &amp;quot;There would have been no &amp;#39;Wha\u2026?&amp;#39; without the tinnitus.&amp;quot;\n\n This is a trademark gesture of Crane&amp;#39;s that Shatner and I have discussed at length\u2014his knack for greeting the frozen stares of others in response to something appalling he&amp;#39;s said or done with an incredulous open-palmed shrug and a half-breathed, half-spoken &amp;quot;Wha\u2026?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot; &amp;#39;So I shoot a gun in the office? So I grab some dwarf&amp;#39;s ass?&amp;#39; &amp;quot; Shatner says. &amp;quot; &amp;#39;What is WRONG with you people that you fail to understand?&amp;#39; &amp;quot;\n\n And then the phone rings. It&amp;#39;s Conan O&amp;#39;Brien. There&amp;#39;s an emergency. Can Shatner come and do this afternoon&amp;#39;s taping? Sarah Palin delivered her resignation speech yesterday, and it was\u2026madness. A sublingual splatter. Dangling participles to which dangling participles had attached themselves like barnacles. Will Bill please, please, come onstage and, with a stand-up bassist and a bongo player behind him to frame the moment, deliver select portions of her speech as if it were the most profound stream-of-consciousness Beat poetry ever composed?\n\n Is grass green? Does the sun rise in the east?\n\n It&amp;#39;s beyond meta. Transformed Man redivivus via the Priceline Negotiator. It is, to borrow Shatner&amp;#39;s own word, insane.\n\n This is precisely what David Kelley&amp;#39;s talking about. The slam-cutting: death\u2026suicide\u2026supernatural voices in the head\u2026onstage, asking a delirious Tonight Show audience in a low, sober voice, &amp;quot; &amp;#39;The cold, though, doesn&amp;#39;t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?&amp;#39; &amp;quot;\n\n At The Tonight Show, Shatner does his piece and then abides in his private greenroom. That night&amp;#39;s other guests, all ostensibly more A-list than Shatner, gather one by one to pay homage. Such is the nature of SHATNER: first the members of the Fray, then Judd Apatow, then Meryl Streep. She seems nervous. She should be. What are fifteen Oscar nominations in the face of SHATNER? &amp;quot;William! Oh, William!&amp;quot; she says. Shatner, remaining seated, extends a hand, which she takes and kisses. &amp;quot;William, you are brilliant.&amp;quot; After a time, the no-name in the room requires an explanation.\n\n &amp;quot;This is a gentleman from GQ magazine,&amp;quot; Shatner says. &amp;quot;Andrew Corsello.&amp;quot;\n\n Ludicrously, he places the accent on the first syllable.\n\n &amp;quot;Cor-sell-oh,&amp;quot; I mumble.\n\n Shatner doesn&amp;#39;t miss a beat. Just turns his head in my general direction, though not his eyes, which stay with Streep. &amp;quot;You say Cor-sell-oh, I say Cor-sell-oh,&amp;quot; he quips.\n\n SHATNER!\n\n After the lesser stars are gone, Shatner turns and says, &amp;quot;Did I tell you that I woke up thinking of you the other morning? I&amp;#39;ve got an idea for an article for you! I was up early, sitting outside having a cup of tea. There were the greening mature trees, in the fullness of the flowering of the summer. The trees were voluptuous, Andrew! Swaying in this breeze. And there were great birds wheeling overhead! And the chimes, the wind chimes, were striking so beautifully, and everything was in rhythm. And I began to think\u2014are you ready? Bells! Where do they come from? Whence their mystical role in human history? BELLS! They vibrate, Andrew. They vibrate, and the sound leaks out. Into the infinite. And I vibrate. And the vibration of the bell goes through me. BELLS! WHERE DO THEY COME FROM? What is the meaning of them?&amp;quot;\n\n William Shatner then interrupts himself. To scream.\n\n &amp;quot;MY GOD!&amp;quot;\n\n The greenroom has a flat-screen television, and something there has caught his eye. I look. Monkeys. Monkeys in cowboy hats. And chaps. With crops. Riding Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas outfitted with saddles.\n\n They&amp;#39;re racing.\n\n &amp;quot;MY GOD!&amp;quot; Shatner exclaims again. &amp;quot;IT IS MAGNIFICENT! YES!&amp;quot;\n\n This is as large as Shatner gets. Which by definition means as large as any man on the planet gets. Or so I think. Because at that moment one of the monkeys lifts a paw off its saddle and begins waving it triumphantly. His competitors have tumbled off their saddles or strayed from their lanes, but he&amp;#39;s still going, and goddamit, he knows it.\n\n &amp;quot;MY GOD, YES!&amp;quot; yells William Shatner, finally at his apotheosis and embracing all that is before him. &amp;quot;YES!&amp;quot;\n\n andrew corsello is a GQ correspondent."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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