On March 22 he turned 93 and celebrated as only he could have done, with the premiere of a documentary in 285 theaters in the United States and his native Canada in which for just over an hour and a half he speaks in detail many aspects of his extraordinary life. Although he has earned a place in pop culture for having played Captain Kirk in the first three seasons of the original Star Trek series made in the sixties and in the seven feature films that continued that story, William Shatner has gone a long way. further in the eight decades in which he has been a professional actor, trying his hand as a singer, writer, film director and horse breeder.
But it has been his work in more than 250 projects in film, television, video games and theater that has made him a true icon, a place from which he has no intention of leaving. The documentary, You can call me Bill, which after debuting at the important SXSW festival in Austin, Texas also passed through Sitges, is the result of the daring proposal of a veteran of the genre, Alexandre O. Phillipe, who He did a long interview with cameras when Shatner was 91 and then raised the funds to use it as the basis for a film by inviting his fans to contribute whatever they could, starting at $100 a head. In total, there were 1,200 who participated as partners of the small production company Legion M, who will share the dividends of the half million that have been raised to date.
In the film, in which there are no other interviewees other than the son of a Jewish merchant from Montreal, with enough fragments of Star Trek so that no Trekkie will miss it, there are few moments in which we learn details of his personal life , beyond a fragment in which he talks about his upbringing in a conservative home with a mother who never showed him affection.
Out of the conversation are his four marriages, including his third to Nerine Kidd, who in 1999 and at the age of 40 drowned in her home’s pool after consuming a large amount of alcohol and Valium. There are few mentions of the three daughters he had with his first wife, the Canadian actress Gloria Rand, Leslie, 65, Lisbeth, 62, and Melanie, 60, who is also an actress, or her grandchildren. Instead, Shatner prefers to talk about his loneliness, his love for animals, and his desire to be reincarnated into a tree, preferably a redwood.
What is undoubtedly surprising in the film is his lucidity and his memory but after all it is about the man who in 2021, and at 90 years and 6 months old, accepted Jeff Bezos’ invitation to participate in the second flight of his Blue Origin ship. , making him the oldest space traveler in history, an experience that he later recounted on the stage of the Kennedy Center in New York in April 2022, in a curious show in which there was room for those who already had 91 will delight the audience with several songs.
In the years that followed, Shatner maintained an intense rhythm of personal presentations at full-house screenings, and although on his website for now he only promises that he will return without saying when, it is also true that he has dedicated the last few months to accompanying the premiere of the documentary with a premiere at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York for which the general public could purchase VIP passes, including one called Captain Kirk, which included exclusive access and a photo with the star of the event for $2,500, another baptized Denny Crane after his character in Boston Legal and The Lawyer, which could be purchased for 495 while The Negotiator, for 225, did not include the photo, but did include a poster signed by Shatner.
General admission, or TJ Hooker, at the modest price of 60, allowed you to see the film and attend a question and answer session with the actor and director, moderated by the prestigious scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Whoever came into this world in Montreal in 1931 is very clear that his time on earth is finite and that is why he talks about death in every interview he gives, and logically he also does so in the film. That’s why he told Variety’s Brent Leng recently: “I turned down many previous proposals to make a documentary, but I don’t have long to live. Whether I die right now or 10 years from now, my time is limited. “I have grandchildren, and this is a way to reach them after I die,” he stated, although he later told her that he had just filmed a commercial for a watch that he had designed himself.
