by George Takei
I was proud to be a part of it. But I wanted to be prouder; I wanted Sulu to be doing more. My ship may have been moving steady at warp three, but I wanted to do more than merely announce that fact. I saw that Leonard was constantly working with the directors and feeding his thoughts to the producers. So I began my lobbying campaign for Sulu. I peppered Gene Roddenberry with character-defining ideas, personal histories, plot possibilities, anything that might give Sulu more prominence. Gene was receptive and said he would devote more attention to developing my character. But the season was coming to an end, and that potential would have to be realized next season. The hiatus was almost upon us.
Almost on cue, as if some great schedule keeper up above knew I would soon be among those actors “between engagements,” I received an offer from Batjac Productions for a role in the feature film version of the best-selling book The Green Berets. Batjac, I knew, was the production company of the movie star John Wayne, who would be starring in this film. My brimming cup was now overflowing. To immediately follow the first season of STAR TREK with a feature film starring an icon! I was overjoyed.
But the excitement was mixed with some apprehension. This movie was about the Vietnam War and I knew that John Wayne was an outspoken supporter of our being there. I, on the other hand, was strongly opposed to it in a public and vocal way. But I wanted to do the film with the legendary actor. My politics and my career ambitions were colliding, and I felt I had to be honest with John Wayne.
When I met with him in his office at Warner Brothers Studio, I openly laid out my quandary. He listened attentively, his eyes looking straight at me with that slight John Wayne squint that I knew so well from close-ups. It was a curious feeling to know it was me he was looking at and not Ward Bond or Lee Marvin. He shook his head in that self-effacing way that was so John Wayne and drawled, “I respect your opinion, George. I know a lot of people feel the same way. David Janssen and Jim Hutton, who are also in the movie, feel as you do.” I hadn’t known that. Then he got a vulnerable look in his eyes, and he continued, “But I want you guys in this movie because you’re the best actors for the job. I need your help. I’ll need your ideas to make this a good movie. And I’ll try to do what I can to make this a good movie.” He was forthright, persuasive, and charming. After all, he was John Wayne.
But I also saw the John Wayne guts and fortitude in his tackling of this film. The war in Vietnam was the single most burning issue facing America. It was devastating a small Asian nation and tearing our own country apart. Yet Hollywood would not touch this conflict with a ten-foot pole. It was too controversial. Only John Wayne had the courage and the power to take on this vital, important subject, making the first Hollywood film to deal with the Vietnam War. I had to respect that, so I decided to do The Green Berets and hope for the best.
The production was to be filmed on location—thankfully not at the actual locale—but at Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia. There at Fort Benning, the explosions would be courtesy of the special effects department.
As I was preparing to leave for Georgia, Gene Roddenberry gave me a good-luck gift to take along—a wonderful, tantalizing present that sent the adrenaline shooting through me. Gene handed me a set of scripts being readied for the next season of STAR TREK. “Here’s something to whet your appetite while in Georgia.” He smiled as he shook my hand. I quickly flipped through them. As promised, they had much more for Sulu in them. Among the scripts were “The Trouble with Tribbles,” “The Gamesters of Treskilion,” and “Bread and Circuses.”
I flew off to Georgia and the filming of The Green Berets already salivating over the next season of STAR TREK.
* * *
The Green Berets was a total John Wayne movie. It starred John Wayne. It was also directed by John Wayne, although Warner Brothers sent my old director from A Majority of One, Mervyn Leroy, to be on the set as backup. And, although we had a script by Clare Huffaker, and the author of the book on which it was based, Robin Moore, was always on the set, it was rewritten by John Wayne. The titular producer was Michael Wayne, his son. The Green Berets was not only a complete John Wayne movie, it was a John Wayne war movie. The good guys against the bad guys; “us” versus “them.”
His directorial style was also very John Wayne—big, broad, and straightforward. You hit your marks, and you said your lines. All the roles were cast to visual type. Whatever nuance or color there might be in the characters, the actors had to bring themselves.
I was cast as Captain Nim—the “good Vietnamese,” as Wayne referred to him. Nim was a disciplined, dedicated, and a fiercely determined man. I decided to have some fun with this character and contribute my own perspective to a very John Wayne statement. I decided to play Captain Nim as a ruthlessly cutthroat militarist who no longer knew why he was fighting. Only that he was fighting—and that he had to prevail over the “enemy,” whatever the cost. Wayne liked the interpretation.
For verisimilitude, I wanted to speak some lines in Vietnamese, so I got the studio to hire a dialogue coach for me. He was a gentle little man named Mr. Phuc from the Vietnamese language school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I worked long nights with him back at the Camillia Motel, where we were staying, to get the right accent as well as the hard, calloused intonation that I wanted for Captain Nim. But to get Mr. Phuc’s soft, delicate voice to read lines with the brutality of the ruthless militarist was very difficult. It was like trying to get a shy Chihuahua puppy to bark like a raging Doberman pinscher.
It was, however, not half as difficult as trying to keep the cast and crew from roaring with laughter every time I needed his assistance on the set. One of the assistants would shout into his portable loudspeaker across the battlefield to summon my dialogue coach. It was not so much the sight of that sweet little man scrambling across sandbag barricades and leaping over trenches; it was the singularly American mispronunciation the assistants gave to his simple Vietnamese name. As Mr. Phuc raced across the battle-scarred landscape to the set, the cast and crew howled with laughter at the loudspeaker voice bellowing, “George needs Fuc! Get Fuc on the set! Mr. Fuc to the set, please.”
To create Vietnam in Georgia, Wayne populated the location with crowds of “Vietnamese” extras dressed as peasants or Viet Cong guerrillas in black pajamas. During a break, I happened by a cluster of village women in coolie hats chatting in the shade of a pile of sandbags in what sounded like Japanese. Vietnamese peasants conversing in Japanese? I stopped and talked with them. I discovered that most of the women extras were Japanese nationals. They had married American G.I.s in postwar Japan and were now living near the base where their husbands worked. Under those coolie hats and Vietnamese guises, they were charmingly incongruous Japanese ladies. Before I knew it, I had a dinner invitation at the home of one of them, Yoko Collins.
She and her husband, Calvin, who was retired from the Army and ran a local gas station, had a lovely family: good-looking son Wayne, who it turned out was named after John Wayne, and two beautiful daughters, Nova and Shani. Yoko had also invited her fellow extra friends, all of whose names combined the story of their lives—names like Yuriko Gustafson and Midori Jones. The dinner, too, was a delightful combination of Japan and southern America—chicken teriyaki with corn bread.
After dinner, Yoko and her friends brought out their samisen, a three-stringed Japanese banjo, and sang Japanese folk songs. Then Calvin dragged out his guitar and regaled us with his songbook of country music. Yoko occasionally joined in and harmonized with her hubby in her Japanese-accented country sound. You haven’t heard real down-home country until you’ve heard “Country Road” sung by the sweet duo of Cal and Yoko.
The aftermath of a world war was creating a new kind of people in Columbus, Georgia. Cultures, instead of colliding, were combining to make musical harmony and beautiful children. America was evolving again. It made me wonder what the country might be like another generation from now after this current war which we were re-creating on film ended.
Those eve
nings I spent at the Collins home were wonderful respites from the ferocious Captain Nim, who was now living and crawling under my skin. In some ways, I was foreshadowing the dark, Gestapo-like, parallel universe Sulu of the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of STAR TREK’s upcoming season. Always, even while I was on the Vietnamese battlefields of Fort Benning, Georgia, a part of my mind was on the new season of STAR TREK starting up back in Hollywood.
The scripts that Gene had given me were getting dog-eared with anticipatory readings and rereadings. But as summer turned brown with wear and our shoot was making slow progress, my anxiety started to mount. The Green Berets was already behind schedule. I had to be back in Los Angeles to begin work on the new season of STAR TREK. I asked Wayne if some accommodation could be made to get my scenes done earlier so that I could leave. He was quite understanding and agreed to move my scenes up.
Then, that proverbial rain that falls on a blessed life began to fall. It started to fall and it continued to fall—day after rainy day. Not quite forty days and forty nights, but to me it seemed like forever. And as the rain continued to pour, I sat looking out the window of my motel room. With each rain-soaked day, I watched my hopes gushing right down that muddy Georgia gully into the raging Chattahoochee River. The rain continued and washed away whatever chance I had of making it back to Hollywood in time for the start of filming the second season of STAR TREK.
16
Return to Tomorrow
I RETURNED TO LOS ANGELES heartsick and resentful. The scripts I had taken with me to Georgia had all been filmed, save for “Mirror, Mirror.” The lines I had so anxiously committed to memory had already been spoken by someone else; the spirited lobbying I had mounted to enhance Sulu’s role had all been for naught. I had gained nothing but a new competitor—the person to whom I had lost all my lines, an actor named Walter Koenig. I was prepared to dislike this interloper, this thief of my efforts. All right, I’ll admit it—I hated him! Sight unseen, I churned with venom for this Walter Koenig!
Jealousy is an ugly emotion. I knew that. I wanted to think I was a better person than one who coveted another’s success. But this was something that belonged to me. I was the one who worked for it. I was the one who cultivated the opportunity for a whole season. And yet, this Walter just sailed into our second season on the wings of fate, wearing that silly Prince Valiant wig, and plucked off the fruits that rightfully belonged to me. It was so unfair.
The show that I returned to was titled “Return to Tomorrow.” Tomorrow indeed! It was like returning to the dinner table after briefly excusing myself only to find my meal cold and half eaten by someone else. At least the production people showed some good grace and consideration for my feelings by not including Walter in this script. Or was this the same capricious fate trying to spite him now? Whatever the circumstances, I gloated. I was as petty as I could be.
Walter was in the next show, “Patterns of Force.” However, Sulu was not! This was alarming. Were they trying to keep us apart? Were we going to be alternated from one show to another? My worry increased commensurate with my growing dislike of Walter.
The following show, “The Ultimate Computer,” was a morality tale about the machines man creates and how they come to embody both its creator’s weaknesses as well as his strengths. If a machine were to be made by me at this point, it would have been boiling internally with the greenest of jealousy, lubricated by the black grease of malice, and bristly on the outside with the most lethal of assault weaponry. I couldn’t guess what kind of machine Walter might have built. Probably a sleek, slippery, high-tech burglary device. Both Walter and I were together in this script. In dramatic structure, this would be called the obligatory confrontation, the showdown.
I walked into my dressing room that morning and was greeted by a puzzling display. There were two sets of uniforms hanging in the closet. There were two pairs of boots placed by the couch. Why would the wardrobe people leave two sets of costumes in my dressing room for me? Greg Peters, the assistant director, happened to be rushing by. I asked him about the double costumes.
“Oh, sorry we didn’t let you know,” he apologized. “We’re short of dressing rooms, so we’d like to have you and Walter double up just for today. I’ll let Walter know. He’s already in the makeup room.” And with that abbreviated advisement, he was off.
Insult upon injury! The veins in my scalp started to swell up. Were they deliberately trying to inflame the hate that was already raging within my all-too-human soul? Now were they trying to incite mayhem? My blood was boiling, when I heard soft mutterings outside my door.
“I hate it. I hate it!” someone was mumbling. The door opened, and there was Walter Koenig, lips curled with animosity, his eyes glowering with loathing. When he saw me, he repeated again, looking right into my eye, “I hate this!”
“Well, I don’t like it any better either!” I shot back, glaring right at him. He seemed startled by the intensity of my response.
“You do, too?” he asked, his eyes suddenly wide with innocence. He seemed puzzled.
“Of course I do. I don’t like it any better than you do.” I repeated fiercely. He looked embarrassed and smiled sheepishly.
“Well, at least you don’t have to wear it,” he said. Then with renewed intensity, he added, “I feel ridiculous with this on!” Now he sounded fierce, and I was puzzled. What was he talking about?
“Wear? Wear what?” I asked. This conversation was getting bizarre.
“This stupid wig! I thought you said you hated it too.” I looked at the big, shaggy mop on his head, framing that baby face with a pageboy hairdo. He looked so juvenile, so cloyingly precious, and also absolutely mortified. I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “I hate this!” he wailed. “I feel like a walking joke!”
Even in my hatred, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for Walter. He looked so pathetic. All the bile that churned inside me began to dissolve at the sight of another actor reduced to public humiliation every time he stepped in front of the camera. It was a sad and pitiful plight.
Walter, I learned, was to be the bait for the young teenaged girls’ viewership. The character of young Ensign Pavel Chekov had been created for that purpose. Actually, Chekov was a copy of a copy. The pop group the Beatles was the single biggest phenomenon in show business, then at the peak of their celebrity. Replicating their teen popularity on series television was another mop-haired musical group known as the Monkees. The teeny-bopper heartthrob of this bunch was a talented young English boy named Davy Jones. Ensign Chekov was supposed to be the futuristic, Russian-accented version of Davy Jones, who was himself replicating the Beatles right up to the crown of his thickly thatched head.
As Walter told me of his plight, I saw that under that silly wig was a man damned by his sensitivity and his intelligence. If he were dumb and thick-skinned, he could probably have breezed through it. But unfortunately, he had the judgment and taste to know that he looked totally preposterous. As he continued talking, I discovered that he was also quite articulate. He went on and on comparing the shaggy helmet he wore to a dust mop, a rag-doll wig, a bird’s nest, a Shih Tzu lapdog perched on his head, et cetera. I realized that this was a man equipped with a true gift of kvetch. Walter was the quintessential poet-bellyacher.
As I listened to him complain, I learned that he, too, had gone to UCLA and that he, too, had a brother in medicine; we had things in common, and I saw that he was an ambitious actor excited by the opportunity of being part of a quality television series, just like me. The hate that had tempered down to pity, then tolerance, was now softening to a recognition of our matching lives and shared ambitions. We were in this together. Walter was now a part of the team. He was fact, a given that I had to live with whether I liked it or not. I decided to accept that reality. Besides, he seemed to be an interesting guy. He probably would complain long enough and hard enough and get that stupid wig taken off his head. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he was providing his own, very ample hair for Ensign Chekov.
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We were all ambitious actors, every one of us, each elbowing the other for our own place on the set and in the script. Walter may have gotten Sulu’s lines by fate, but he got his wig off by his own kvetch. Leonard was constantly inventing new aspects of Spock, like the neck pinch and the Vulcan greeting. Jimmy was coming up with ideas and lines for his character, Scott. Nichelle reminded me of Thelma Oliver from Fly Blackbird! always easing herself slightly past her chalk mark, toward the camera. De seemed to be the only one not overburdened with driving ambition. He was the old pro who came in, did the work, and went home to his wife in the San Fernando Valley.
But for the rest of us, the competition was always lively and healthy. This was part of what kept us on our toes and made life on the set interesting. Except for one irritant—a problem that grew with each new episode but about which we were powerless to do anything.
Dorothy Fontana, that sweet lady I had met as Gene’s secretary when I went in for my first interview, had been promoted to the position of script consultant. She would occasionally give us an advance peek at an early draft of a script, which might contain a wonderful scene for our respective characters or even a fun line or two of dialogue. Our minds would rhapsodize privately in anticipation as the script was being developed.
But when the final shooting script was delivered, the eagerly awaited scene or line would now be in someone else’s mouth, and invariably, it was Bill’s. He was the star of the series. There would always be reasonable justifications for the change. And reasonable arguments could be made to counter them. But Bill was the star. That was the one inarguable fact. Even if an idea had originated with one of us, if Bill wanted it, he got it. Even if I tried to ad lib an entirely appropriate “Aye, sir” to a command, he would nix it, claiming it would take away from the rhythm of the scene. This despite the fact that some of us had precious little to do in so many of the scripts. But Bill seemed totally immune to the sensitivities or the efforts of those he worked with.
