Paramount then brought in Harlan Ellison, who created a story about the Enterprise time traveling back to the prehistoric era to save the future by fighting a race of giant reptiles. This was about the same time that Chariots of the Gods, a book by Erich von Däniken claiming that alien visitors had revealed their secrets to the ancient Mayans, was a huge sensation. During story meetings, a studio executive suggested Ellison add some Mayans to his concept. When Ellison explained patiently that in prehistoric times there were no Mayans, the executive said brightly, “Nobody’ll know the difference!”
While the first Star Trek movie was in development, Star Wars was released. It became a worldwide sensation. Suddenly, there was a clamor for science fiction, and Paramount was uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. They had what was by now a proven show to drive right into that niche. Instead, they dropped the project.
About a year later, the studio announced it was going to boldly go where no one had gone before: it was going to start a fourth television network, and Star Trek: Phase II was going to be its first original series. Their problem was that Leonard didn’t want to put the ears back on. Having been involved from the first pilot, he had spent more time aboard the Enterprise than any of us and just didn’t want to do it anymore. His career was progressing comfortably, and he just wasn’t interested. Additionally, he also was involved in a very complicated lawsuit with the studio about merchandising revenue. And his relationship with Roddenberry was almost nonexistent. During an argument, Roddenberry had told him, “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be who you are today!”
Whether it is accurate or not, it certainly wasn’t the right thing to say to a man with great pride and talent who had earned everything he’d gotten in the business. Leonard responded, “Don’t do me any more other favors.” So when his agent called to tell him about the offer, he supposedly responded, “If you ever call me again about Star Trek, you’re fired.”
The concept of making Star Trek without Spock was like making My Fair Lady without Eliza Doolittle—the dance numbers were going to be very awkward. I didn’t try to talk him into it. Leonard did not make decisions rashly; they were well thought out, and once made, he did not easily change his mind. Finally, the studio offered Leonard a good deal to appear in a minimum of two episodes out of every eleven that were shot. Paramount added some new characters, including another Vulcan, and was in preproduction when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released and began breaking box office records.
The series idea was dropped. Almost instantly, the goal became a movie. They changed the sets, they changed the costumes, and they brought in director Robert Wise, who had won Academy Awards for both The Sound of Music and West Side Story. He also had directed the 1951 science-fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was probably why the studio hired him. The problem was that Wise had never seen an episode of the show and didn’t seem to understand its appeal. His wife and his father-in-law were big fans, though, and made it clear to him that without Spock there was no Star Trek. Leonard finally had Hollywood clout. They needed him desperately. Leonard was starring in Equus on Broadway, and Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg flew to New York to meet with him. Leonard held his ground against a man recognized as one of the best negotiators in the industry; he would not agree to appear in the movie until his lawsuit was settled.
The lawsuit was settled within a few weeks. An hour after Leonard received his check, he got a copy of the script. We also negotiated very good deals for this movie; at that time, nobody truly appreciated the real value of this franchise. Leonard and I received a very good payout from Paramount based on a rather obtuse phrase my attorney found in our contracts.
The problem was that the studio didn’t have a story to tell. We started filming without a completed script and would get new pages every day, sometimes several times a day. The script was ponderous; perhaps to save money, it was all talk and very little action. Maybe some studio executive should have realized that in Wise’s previous science film the earth had stood still. It didn’t move at all. That was the problem with our script.
It was the amazing special effects—in addition to the wonderful stories—that had made both Star Wars and Close Encounters such huge hits. But we ended up with a lot of grand ideas that most often didn’t make a lot of sense. There was no suspense, no intrigue, no buildup, so there was no real climax. I mean, literally, there was no climax; no one had figured out the ending of the film. Most importantly, though, the tone was all wrong. Wise didn’t get it. I remember when we were rehearsing the first scene, in which Kirk was thanking the members of the crew for coming out of retirement to save the universe. In fact, this was setting up the sequel. Kirk told Dee Kelley’s McCoy, “I’ll have you back to Earth shortly,” to which he replied, “Oh, Captain, I might as well stay.”
Kirk turned to Spock and told him, “I’ll take you back to Vulcan.”
The line in the script was perfunctory and bland. Leonard ad-libbed the perfect answer, “Captain, if Dr. McCoy is to remain on board, my presence here will be essential.”
It was a line that accurately described the relationship between Spock and Bones, a line that would cause every fan to smile knowingly—but Wise didn’t get it at all. Instead, he told us, “You know, the feeling is that the humor is inappropriate.”
Thud. Leonard and I realized if this project was going to be as good as we all wanted it to be, we had to get involved. We began spending a lot of time together in our dressing rooms, more time than we’d ever spent together, trying to find ways to bring the movie alive. We struggled with it, but we were able to come up with some pretty decent concepts, and several of them did make it into the movie. To add action, for example, Kirk discovered Spock’s spacesuit was missing and realized Spock had set out on his own, so Kirk put on his own suit and chased Spock through space. To Wise’s credit, he was open to suggestions. Once, though, we came up with a wonderful idea for a big action event to set up the climax. It was brilliant—I’m absolutely certain of that—even if I don’t remember the details. Like the idea. We went together to Wise and told it to him. He liked it, but it would be expensive, and he didn’t have the authority to make those changes.
Roddenberry did. Roddenberry was the producer and credited as one of the writers. He had approved everything we disliked so much. He had a limited amount of money to spend. Convincing him to make this change was a significant challenge, and we both knew it. But we were up to the task. We believed it was absolutely necessary. So we spent all afternoon together rehearsing our pitch. We acted it out several times. When we went into Gene’s office early in the evening, we were primed.
Roddenberry sat there listening. There was something terribly intimidating about telling him what had to be done to save his script. As we went through our concept, it seemed to have lost all its energy. It didn’t sound as good in Roddenberry’s office as it had in Wise’s office. It fell totally flat. When we were done, we sort of skulked out of his office.
Leonard and I laughed about that for the rest of our lives together. I think we both understood and accepted, maybe for the first time, that we truly were bound together by this amazing adventure we were cast into. No one would ever understand it, both the joys and the problems, better than the two of us. We established a new comfort level with each other.
The final picture was considerably less than the combined level of experience and creativity that went into making it. I don’t think anybody had realized how hard it was going to be updating the show while retaining its feel. Very little had been thought out. The new uniforms we wore, for example, looked good but were very poorly designed. Essentially, they were made from skintight spandex, and they were very uncomfortable. Most distressing, they didn’t have a fly in front, as if by the twenty-third century mankind had discovered a way to avoid going to the bathroom. The outfit was zipped on and off—and the zipper was in the back, so when we took a restroom break, we had to be accompanied by someone fro
m the costume department. When the production crew tested the transporter for the first time, the lights on the lighted platform generated so much heat that the rubber soles of their shoes melted.
The original budget was $15 million, which actually was a substantial budget in 1977. But with all the problems that had to be solved and the semi-special effects that had to be added weeks before the scheduled release date, the picture cost $46 million to produce, at that time making it the second-most expensive Hollywood film ever made. A lot of studio executives resumed breathing when the film opened in December 1979; it set a record for the highest weekend gross, proving that fans would turn out to see it. While the reviews were reasonable, the picture earned almost $140 million.
Leonard’s relationship with Spock was always ambivalent. He appreciated what Spock had done for his career, but he also was determined to prove that he was a lot more than a Vulcan. There was no doubt it caused an identity crisis. He really had to choose whether to embrace Spock completely or fight this wave of love for the character. What he eventually came to realize was that he had no choice; he had brought to life a unique character that millions of people had embraced deeply and were not about to easily let go. At times, it got really silly. When news leaked that Spock was going to die in Star Trek II, director Nick Meyer got a letter threatening, “If Spock dies, you die.” For whatever reasons, maybe because Jim Kirk looked a lot like me, that problem did not affect me nearly as deeply.
We talked about the relationship between an actor and the character, and there never was a doubt in my mind that Leonard was proud of his creation and had real affection for Spock, but he didn’t want to be weighed down by it. Leonard spent his life always moving forward, doing the next thing. Even as his body began failing later in his life, his mind continued to race forward, planning the next project. Harve Bennett, who produced the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, once said, “I never understood why Leonard became an actor, he is pure intellect … Very bright, very gifted, and there is something about his non-acting that makes him an authority figure. You put ears on him and it all came together.”
The putting-the-ears-on-him part was the problem when Paramount decided to move forward with the second movie. Leonard just didn’t want to do it. It was Bennett’s task to convince him to join the cast one more time. A rumor started somewhere that as a condition of appearing in the movie, Leonard demanded a clause in his contract that Spock would die in the movie. The people that heard that assumed that was his way of burying Spock forever. The problem was that it wasn’t true. In fact, not only wasn’t it true, it made Leonard furious. He actually wrote a letter to the Star Trek fan magazine, stating flatly, “You report that the death of Spock was ‘brought about by Leonard Nimoy’s request.’ In your January issue you reiterated the same report and then you quoted Star Trek II executive producer Harve Bennett as saying, ‘Nimoy did not insist on killing the character as a prerequisite to his appearing in the second film.’ I was not contacted for a statement but here it is: Harve Bennett was right, you were wrong … twice! Yours for more accurate journalism.”
It was Bennett who talked him into it, telling him, “I’m gonna give you the greatest death scene in motion pictures.” Why not? Leonard agreed, “If this was going to be the end of Star Trek, let’s go out in a blaze of glory, saving the Enterprise. Dying a hero.” And it is possible he believed that after this movie, he finally was going to free of Spock.
I actually helped write Spock’s death scene. We were in Harve Bennett’s office, and he was outlining his vision of the scene. I suggested that it would be cinematic to have us separated by the plate-glass door, while our hands were seemingly touching each other.
Nick Meyer waited until almost the very end before shooting Spock’s death scene. It turned out to be an emotional day, one even I was not truly prepared for. As far as all of us who had been on this journey almost from the beginning were concerned, there was a real sense of finality. This was the end of Spock. But perhaps the most surprised at those feelings was Leonard. I have read stories from other people that he was unusually tense that day, but I don’t remember that. I think we all were wound up in our own feelings. During the filming of that scene, there were a lot of real tears shed for our fictional friend. But what Leonard said later was that even he was not as prepared for Spock’s death as he thought he would be. He remembers thinking as he walked onto the set, “I think I have made a terrible mistake.”
What saved him, he said, was that as we got ready to film the scene, Bennett asked him if there was something he could add that would give the studio a thread that might be used to keep Spock alive.
Alive? Nick Meyer acknowledged that we all knew our characters better than he did, so there was quite a bit of ad-libbing. And Leonard gave them the thread they needed: “Remember.”
If Leonard and Harve Bennett had agreed on a plan that could be used to bring Spock back to life in a later movie, I knew nothing about it. As far as I believed, this was the end of Spock, and in this scene, I was saying good-bye to an extraordinary being.
Shooting that scene was very meaningful to both Leonard and me. We both treasured it. The scene played on a lot of levels, the obvious one being a climactic scene in a good movie. More than that, though, both of us were beginning to become aware of our own mortality. We were at that point in the aging process where suddenly you become aware of the fragility of life. While neither one of us was ill, our children were grown, and we were moving into the next stage of life. So there was a great deal of feeling as we looked at each other through that glass, a great deal. We both recognized the elements of real life on that soundstage that day.
The Wrath of Khan set new box office records for an opening weekend and received wonderful reviews. But rather than being the end of Spock, the success of the movie saved the franchise.
NINE
With all the acclaim that Leonard received for his work on the original series, with all the emotional conflicts that he endured about the creation of this big-eared alter ego that occupied such a large space in his world, he once summed up very simply and directly what Spock meant to him: “He gave me a life.”
The third season was difficult for all of us because the quality of the show had deteriorated, and we knew it. So we all were glad when it ended. Of all of us, though, it was Leonard whose life had changed the most drastically because of Star Trek. When it ended, he had several options, and one of them he picked was so perfectly Leonard: he became co-owner of Leonard Nimoy’s Pet Pad. It was a pet store in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley that carried a great variety of exotic pets, including monkeys, snakes, crocodiles, and exotic dogs and cats. “I like the kind of people that shop in pet stores,” he told a reporter, adding that he had worked in a pet store between roles earlier in his career. And then he admitted that he had invested in the shop as “a sort of therapy, something to keep me busy.”
That was so typical of Leonard. Like Spock, I suppose, his mind was constantly searching for the next challenge. Most people, when you ask them what’s new, respond in a somewhat predictable fashion. It may be bigger and better, but it’s most often an extension of what they have been doing for some time. Not Leonard. When I asked him that question, I never knew where he may have been exploring. In addition to the pet store, for example, he and Sandi had moved into a new home, and he’d bought her an electric kiln for her ceramic work. But he’d also gotten interested in it and began creating glazes for her finished pieces.
There were several traits that Leonard and I had in common, and certainly one of them was our curiosity. Neither one of us ever stopped asking why, or how, or learning new things. When we were intrigued about something, we would dive into something, and neither one of us would stop until we had conquered it. For example, I had my private pilot license and sang the praises of flying. Not too long after that, he too became a pilot, but a much better one than I. He became quite good at it and even had his own airplane, a single-engine
Piper Arrow. He’d often fly his son, Adam, back and forth to college in Santa Barbara, and he would bring the same intensity to flying as he did to everything else in his life. “He was a highly competent pilot,” Adam said. “Like everything else, he was kind of obsessive about it. He earned his instrument rating. When he was flying, he was totally focused. There was nothing casual about it; while he always was very confident and comfortable, you couldn’t talk to him too much. He brought all his attention to what he was doing.”
That obsessive aspect of his personality became pretty clear when he was talking about soloing for the first time. He was in London making a television movie, and he remembered, “I was so busy thinking about what I was doing that it took me a while to realize that there was nobody else in the plane. It wasn’t until I was almost finished with the downwind leg and about to turn on base when I took a look around and said, ‘My God, I’m alone.’” Typical, so typical.
I flew with him on occasion. For a time, he had a house on Lake Tahoe, and we would take his plane to get there. It’s not an easy place to land. The lake is surrounded by high mountains, so instead of making a normal approach, you have to circle down into the valley and land. It requires a certain level of expertise. On one of those trips, we flew through a storm, and the plane was hit by lightning. There was a bright flash and a loud thump. In fact, we were not in danger, because planes are designed to take this kind of blow. But it definitely was unnerving. Neither one of us said a word; we looked at each other and acknowledged the possibility of what could have happened: Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, having flown through the universe on a great spaceship, having survived numerous encounters with the worst beings in existence, went down together in a small single-engine airplane.
Leonard also became more visible for those causes he supported. This was the 1960s, a tumultuous period in American history. As a Canadian citizen living and working in the United States, I really didn’t believe I had the right to participate in American political issues. But Sandi was an activist, and Leonard just jumped right in with her to support their beliefs. They were shaken by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in May 1968, and Leonard spearheaded a food drive for Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, then joined people like Jack Lemmon and Barbra Streisand at a benefit at the Hollywood Bowl that drew eighteen thousand people and raised $142,000. He also volunteered a lot of his time emceeing local telethons for a variety of good charities, including United Cerebral Palsy, the March of Dimes, and Variety Clubs. They both got involved in the antiwar campaigns of both Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern four years later. Leonard visited thirty-five states during the McGovern campaign. When he was up in Alaska, a TV reporter asked him if he thought it was appropriate for a television star to use his celebrity to influence voters. Once again, I can hear him responding as if the answer was obvious: “Well, I think it’s about as fair as Ronald Reagan running for governor of California based on the fact that he’s done some movies.”
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