About a week later I met Bo Gritz. The greatest American hero of the Vietnam War. He told me, “The only way I survived was to choose the path of death. Everybody else wanted to live. The people who wanted to live did things that got them killed. I said it doesn’t matter if I live or die, if this is where I die, this is where I die. I choose. I’m a warrior.”
Wow. He told me an elaborate story about putting together a Delta Force raiding party, swimming across the Mekong River, and crawling undetected into Vietnam.
Wow. Surveillance photographs had shown long shadows and short shadows in what was believed to be a prisoner-of-war camp. The short shadows would have been Asian—and the long shadows could have been American prisoners. He moved swiftly and with great daring through the jungles to get to the site. But when he finally reached it, there was nobody there. So he retraced his path and swam all the way back. “We know the MIAs are there, Bill,” he told me, adding that he’d written it all down.
Wow. This is an unbelievable story, I thought. And as it turned out, I was right. I just didn’t know it at the time. Instead I told him, “Bo, I want to tell this story. It’s an important story.”
He agreed with me, and told me he would be pleased if I told the story—as long as I paid him for it. I had a discretionary fund at Paramount that enabled me to buy the rights to stories I believed would make good movies. This was one of them. It had adventure and action and the most noble purpose imaginable—saving the lives of American POWs. We finally agreed on a $10,000 option. I gave him the check and asked for a copy of the manuscript. “I’ll get the manuscript to you next week,” he promised.
Oh. The check was cashed and Gritz disappeared. I never saw or heard from him again. However, several months later the media descended on me. It turned out that Gritz apparently had used the money I’d paid him, as well as $30,000 Clint Eastwood had paid him for the same rights, to pay for a secret mission to Laos to try to rescue American prisoners. It had been a total disaster: He’d been arrested almost immediately after sneaking into Laos, when the guerilla leader he was supposed to meet showed up drunk and unarmed. Somehow reporters became convinced Clint Eastwood and I were funding secret missions—although Clint was paying a lot more than I was.
I never heard from Bo Gritz again. I was mortified by the entire situation. It certainly hadn’t been my intention to get involved in anything this controversial. I just wanted to tell a heroic story— which turned out to be untrue. It was an awful situation, so many families whose husbands and sons had disappeared in Vietnam were given hope by Bo Gritz. I had no idea what was true or fantasy and I didn’t want to raise the hopes of those families that the soldiers they loved were still alive somewhere. Eventually reporters pursued Clint Eastwood—did I mention he gave Gritz $30,000?— and left me alone. The last time I heard his name was in 1992, when he was running for president of the United States with the slogan “God, Guns, and Gritz.” And no, I did not contribute to his campaign.
Like Star Trek, T.J. Hooker was a survivor. After four successful seasons on ABC and seventy-one episodes the show was canceled. At that time we still were getting a twenty-seven share, a number most shows running today never reach. Toward the end the producers did make a few minor changes. For example, they moved Hooker from Los Angeles to Chicago. They moved the entire show! And worse, they sent Hooker to Chicago without a winter coat. And rather than Adrian Zmed, they gave me a new partner, a black detective who dressed as a Rasta to go undercover. The concept was to exploit the then-popular 48 HRS. pairing of Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in which I did a reverse Beverly Hills Cop. Rather than Murphy’s Detroit detective in L.A., I was the L.A. cop in Chicago.
In very cold Chicago. Beyond-cold Chicago. I am a Canadian, I have lived through Canadian winters. I’ve skiied in races at forty-below temperatures. Take your finger out of your glove, you lose your finger. But it was never as cold as it was while filming T.J. Hooker on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. You didn’t just see your breath; you could take it right out of the air and put it in your pocket until it thawed out. The whole time we were shooting there I lived in fear of the words, “Let’s try it one more time.”
I mean, it was a completely different show, with a new cast. It would have been like moving the survivors of Lost to a resort on Fantasy Island. “Da plane! Da plane! Uh-oh, dere goes da plane!”
Unfortunately, the seventy-one episodes we’d completed for NBC were not enough for the show to sell in syndication, so CBS bought the rights and scheduled it for late night. For that network I came back to Los Angeles and no one ever mentioned Chicago again. We did a stripped-down version of the show for CBS. Adrian had left the show, and we finished the series with a two-hour prime-time movie entitled Blood Sport or, as I refer to it, Hooker Goes Hawaiian.
Apparently we’d cleaned up the streets of Los Angeles, because in this movie Hooker was sent to Hawaii to protect the life of an old college friend who had become a United States senator. In Hawaii, according to The New York Times, Hooker “runs into hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, the hula-hula and a hint of hari-kari.” When I found myself lying on the edge of a cliff being hit over the head by a sword-wielding stuntman, blood pouring down my face, I knew that either Hooker or I was done. We did end up with ninety episodes, enabling the show to go into syndication, where it eventually disappeared.
Actually, I didn’t have to get hit over the head with that sword to know that I wanted to direct—that realization had come much earlier. I’d worked with literally hundreds of directors in my career, including some of the greatest directors in the history of early television, but for me the best directors were those people who left me alone. I would always approach a role with my own thoughts and my own plan about how I wanted to create a character. Obviously they would stage the scene and tell me where to move, and if it made sense I’d move there. But too often in television young directors want to be artistes, they get an opportunity to direct an episode of T.J. Hooker and want to use it to build a career. So they try to reinvent the show, talking about subtext and motivation, creative lighting. Here was the motivation on Hooker: we had seven days to shoot an hour show within our budget.
It’s the job of the actors who work there every week to protect the integrity of the program. Because I cared about the quality of the show I tested every new director. And if they didn’t know what they were doing I would complain about it. That was my job. We had a young director one week who had drawn elaborate sketches of how he wanted the action to flow. He literally had planned the entire show beat to beat. This was the show that was going to earn him an Emmy, which would lead to an opportunity to direct a major motion picture. So I looked at his sketch and asked, “Just tell me one thing, why do you want to begin this scene with me walking out of the storage closet?”
Obviously the desire of the director to create art and the intention of the actor to get it done can lead to conflict on the set. Some directors believe the worst question an actor can ask is “Why?” Why do I move there? Why I do react like that? “Because I’m the director and that’s what I want you to do” is not the correct answer.
There was little mystery to directing for me. I could say, “I want this camera right over there,” or “Let’s backlight this,” or “You come running across the parking lot and leap onto the hood of the car and grab hold of the wipers and hold on,” so obviously I had the necessary technical knowledge. And the producers of T.J. Hooker gave me that opportunity.
I had already completed one arduous directing assignment— I’d directed my wife, Marcy, in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. My friends, if you can successfully direct your wife in a highly dramatic role, you certainly can direct a TV show. Eventually I directed eight episodes of Hooker, as well as the opening-credit sequence that we used for most of the series, and Leonard Nimoy directed one. That was the price he demanded to appear in an episode. That, plus money.
Two years after the series ended I was directing my first major motion picture, the
$30 million Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Gene Roddenberry and Paramount executives had seen the episodes of Hooker that I’d directed and were so impressed by my ability to articulate an atmosphere within the confines of the capabilities of modern filmology that they realized I was the perfect choice—actually the only choice—to direct the fifth and most intellectually challenging film in the Star Trek saga.
And if you believe that you also believe I saw an alien in the desert. That is not exactly the way it happened. In the original TV series I was signed to be the star, and Leonard was a co-star. I was paid a higher salary. But eventually Leonard’s Spock became so popular that we were both given a Favored Nations clause, meaning whatever I got he got, and whatever he got, I got. If I got a raise, he got the same raise; if he got a cold, I got it. At the time I didn’t think it was totally fair, but I accepted the reality of the business. And then, as we were making the third film in this series of very successful movies, Leonard decided he would act in it only if he were allowed to direct it. The concept of a Star Trek film without Spock was as ridiculous as a Star Trek film without Captain Kirk. Who would want to see that?
I’m not certain that the studio realized when they agreed to let Leonard direct the third film, The Search for Spock, that they were also committing to allowing me to direct the next Star Trek movie.
During the years we were making Hooker, Star Trek had become one of the most successful movie franchises in history. The first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, had grossed more than $100 million and, when the merchandising revenue was added, it was one of the most lucrative films in history. Apparently Paramount learned a very important lesson from that first film: Star Trek fans were so loyal they didn’t have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. In fact, the less they spent the more they could make. So Paramount cut the budget for the second film drastically and hired the very talented Nicholas Meyer to write and direct it. What he tried to do was bring some additional humanity—and humor—to the crew. As he said, “I tried through irreverence to make them a little more human and a little less wooden. I didn’t insist that Captain Kirk go to the bathroom, but did Star Trek have to be so sanctified?”
Wooden? I thought that was another chapter of my life? Bathroom? Truthfully, I don’t remember seeing a restroom aboard the Enterprise. Consider it immaculate elimination.
Whatever Nick Meyer did, it worked: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opened with the largest weekend gross in movie history. By this time Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock had taken their place among America’s legendary fictional characters. And probably among Vulcans, too. They were certainly better known than any of the real astronauts. I think I probably resisted completely embracing Jim Kirk for a long time. Like Leonard, I hadn’t wanted to be identified as him for the rest of my life, but that had ended a long while earlier. I had come to realize all the wonderful things being Captain Kirk had done for my life—and, in fact, continued to do. I remember once we were shooting in the desert and had a very early call. I told the wardrobe girl, “Give me my uniform and I’ll put it on at the house so I don’t have to come any earlier for wardrobe. I’ll just wear it to the set.” So at 4 A.M. I was racing across the desert to our location. I was way over the speed limit, figuring there wasn’t another car on the road in the entire state. It turned out there was one other car—and he had lights and a siren. Yes, Officer, good morning.
Being Hooker, I knew that when you were stopped by a police officer the proper way to respond is to follow his orders, show the officer that you aren’t being belligerent, and acknowledge that the officer is the boss—make sure he knows you know it. And if that doesn’t work, then it’s okay to beg.
So I got out of my car dressed in my uniform, ready to be amenable. The officer was actually wearing dark glasses in the middle of the night, so I couldn’t see his eyes. But he looked me up and down and sort of frowned and asked, “So where are you going so fast at four o’clock in the morning?”
I told him the truth. “To my spaceship.”
He sighed and said, “Okay, go ahead and live long and prosper.” Then he turned around and sent me on my way.
When Paramount began discussing the third film, Leonard negotiated a deal similar to the one he’d made to appear on Hooker: he agreed to appear in the movie only if he directed it. The studio readily agreed, but truthfully I didn’t know how to respond. It was sort of like your brother becoming your father. Or your wife becoming your...the captain of your spaceship. It just upset the delicate balance that two actors in leading roles—who had forged a close friendship—had successfully managed to work out over many years. In other words, it wasn’t fair!
When I read the first draft of the script I didn’t like it. Spock appeared only briefly, and my role was relatively small. I just didn’t believe Trekkies would accept a story in which neither Kirk nor Spock dominated the action. I invited Leonard and our producer, Harve Bennett, up to my house to discuss the script. Remember that meeting, Leonard? “It was tense, very tense.”
Thank you, Leonard. It was tense, very tense. As we went through the script I asked for certain changes. I was very protective of Kirk. Mostly, though, I wanted to get some sense of how Leonard and I were going to work together. Leonard told me, “What’s good for you, Bill, is good for Star Trek. My intention is to make a damn good Star Trek movie, and to do that I need you to come off well.”
Oh, I get it. Clearly we were on the same 120 script pages. But it turned out that everybody was somewhat concerned about how Leonard and I would get along. Early in production I had a scene in which I received the devastating news that my son had been killed by a Klingon raiding party. It was a tremendously emotional scene, and initially I didn’t quite know what I was going to do. To help me focus Leonard asked everyone not essential to the filming to leave the set. And as soon as they were gone I shouted at him, “I’m not going to do it your way.”
“The hell you’re not,” he shouted right back at me. “You’re god-damn well going to do it the way I tell you. So go stand over there and shut up. Come on, you’re just the actor and I am the director of this motion picture.”
I suspect the phrase “just the actor” gave it away. Everybody started laughing at that remark—no actor is “just the actor”—and any lingering tension that existed on the production disappeared. Once again the picture did very well, extremely very well, so Paramount immediately began planning the fourth movie. Originally, this was the film that I was supposed to...
Hold it, do you hear that? Shhhh, just listen. Hear it? No, you probably don’t, not unless you have tinnitus, which I do. And which Leonard also has. This was something else that both of us got from Star Trek. During one of the episodes Leonard and I were standing too close to a large explosion. It is the kind of thing that happens often on sets, most of the time with no problem. But afterward my ears started ringing, as did Leonard’s, and both of us years later developed a medical condition called tinnitus, a constant sound that you hear that never goes away. For some people it can be a ringing tone. For others, like me, it’s more like the hiss of a TV set that’s not tuned to any channel. Millions of people suffer from it; it can be caused by anything from an explosion, continued exposure to a loud sound—many World War II airmen and rock musicians have it, for example—it can be a reaction to a medicine or caused by one of many illnesses or it simply can be a function of age. Millions of people live with it without much problem, but for more than seven million people it’s debilitating. It makes it impossible to lead a normal life. There is no simple cure. And in extreme cases it can even lead to suicide. I developed one of those extreme cases.
There are parts of the world in which tinnitus is said to be the voice of God. In remote parts of China it is considered a sign of great wisdom. In rural Turkey it is considered good luck. But not in the San Fernando Valley. There it’s considered a real problem. And it was driving me crazy.
I had a loud sound in my ear and it would never go away
. I consulted several doctors, I had all kinds of tests. I kept thinking, this has got to stop, but it didn’t. I’ve gone through several different programs; the one that worked for me is called habitation. This is a machine that produces what is called white noise, a sound you can’t hear normally. For some reason if they can reproduce the sound you’re hearing in your head on this device the sound waves are canceled out. I remember the moment they reached my level: imagine being trapped in a mine and rescuers break through and you can see the sunlight! That’s what it felt like to me. I was given my life back. I wore a device similar to a hearing aid which continually piped white noise into both ears. After several months my brain got accustomed to the sound and I was able to wean myself off it.
There are doctors who tell patients they can cure them with an operation. I suppose on occasion an operation can work, but generally it doesn’t. The majority of people eventually simply get accustomed to the sound and are no longer consciously aware of it—unless they think about it or some guy writes about it in his autobiography.
I know how devastating it can be waiting to get used to it. It can take months. I’ve done volunteer work with the American Tinnitus Association, which does research and is a very good resource. At one point they gave me a list of potential contributors and asked me to call them. Many of the people I called responded in the same way: Who is this, really? No, you can’t be you. Really?
How do you prove you’re yourself on the phone? I certainly wasn’t going to offer to sing a chorus of “Rocket Man.” I remember having a long conversation with one man who was having difficulty adjusting to tinnitus. It was destroying his life, he said. It was inescapable. Eventually he volunteered to contribute $45,000. He asked me to call him again a week later.
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