Pulling off this massive joke required tremendous technical planning and on-the-scene improvisation. We had to somehow get a film crew into the town to shoot us shooting a movie, and make their presence believable. The story we finally came up with was that in addition to the film, we were shooting behind-the-scenes footage to be used on the DVD as bonus material, and our film crew was shooting that material. Our visible cast and crew, which consisted of about four actors, four or five technicians, and the promise that eventually Sean Connery was going to show up, plus our real technical crew, stayed in a motel about twenty minutes out of town. There was no script, just general situations and a lot of improvisation. We made it up as we went along, depending on the reactions of the real stars of our show—the citizens of Riverside. Our entire crew met early every morning to plan our day and then again at the end of the day to review our progress and discuss ideas for the following day.
This was going to be amazing! Hollywood meets Iowa! The city slickers meet the country bumpkins. We were going to have such fun with these people. They were going to believe that we were making this nutty movie entitled Invasion Iowa and we’d tape them doing unbelievably crazy things. We fooled a lot of people outside the town too; we hired publicity people to create a buzz about this film. The Associated Press ran a nice feature story, quoting me as describing it as “my baby,” a baby “I’ve been dreaming of making for more than thirty years.” Unfortunately, almost immediately we confronted a problem we hadn’t anticipated. The citizens of Riverside were just too damn nice. The day we got there a large crowd turned out to welcome us to Riverside, and as a spokesman said warmly, “First of all, welcome home.”
These people were so innocent. But perhaps the first wisp of a doubt that perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to surprise these people occurred when the mayor told me earnestly, “I felt fine after the initial heart attack. Honestly, I felt fine.”
How do you set up people who welcome you to their town with homemade apple pie? How do you have laughs at the expense of people who invite you into their homes and offer you their trust? How do you lie to people who leave with the good wishes, “See you in church on Sunday.”
This simple concept very quickly became complex. I began to wonder, what have I done? Within a few days members of the crew were developing friendships with these people. It was impossible not to. I mean, how could I lie to a wonderfully sweet elderly man named Don Rath, who graciously shared with me one of his most prized possessions, his good-luck raccoon penis?
We had to modify our original idea. We realized that we had to make ourselves the fools and focus on their good-natured reaction to our stupidity. Invasion Iowa became a spoof of Hollywood pomposity— a send-up of all the over-the-top foibles and eccentricities people read about in their newspapers. And guess who was the most eccentric? Here’s a hint: it wasn’t my “spiritual advisor” who accompanied me on the set. We hired half a dozen townspeople to work with us on the film and they became our subjects. We were watching them as they watched us make ever bigger fools of ourselves. These were the people the audience really got to know. One of them was our cue-card woman. In one scene, for example, I discovered the aliens had followed me to Earth and I had to scream a great echoing, “Nooooooooooooo!” That was the entire scene, one word. So naturally we wrote it on three cue cards. And we carefully instructed our cue-card woman that the first cue card had to have exactly five O’s. Then she had to hold up the second cue card, which contained precisely four O’s. And the final card had three O’s.
And this wonderful woman really counted my O’s to make certain she got it right. Of course I couldn’t get it right, I kept getting the length of my “no” confused. You actually could read her expression: These people are crazy, but they’re probably harmless so I’ll go along with them.
The film we supposedly were making, also called Invasion Iowa, was the quite confusing story of an alien who comes to Earth to find... well, it doesn’t matter. There was no plot. But it did have some very funny lines. For example, I arrived on Earth buck naked. After first pretending to be from Nebraska, I told the young woman from Riverside we’d cast as our ingénue, “I know this sounds crazy, but I come from the future.”
To which she responded, “I thought you came from Nebraska.” We also gave her the classic science-fiction line, “I would much rather carry your seed than seed that would destroy the Earth.”
Most of the real action for the TV show took place off the movie set as we put our cast and the townspeople in bizarre situations. For example, when our leading lady, Desi Lydic, went shopping at the local Kwik ‘n E-Z, for example, we whispered to the store owner that “Gryffyn,” the character she was playing on the show but not in the movie, was a kleptomaniac. We’ll pay for everything she takes, we said, but please don’t say anything about it. So this woman watched with growing incredulity as Desi went through the shop putting items like Remington gun oil and Travis Tritt’s Bar-be-cue in a Jar in her purse.
Then we decided Desi was going to solicit advice from a group of women about a children’s book she was writing. A small group of them gathered to hear her read from this manuscript. It was the story of a female penguin who was very unhappy because she had small “wings.” Her wings were so small, in fact, that her sweater just drooped in front. Naturally, as she read this story we had a cast member dressed as a penguin making absurd remarks. Fortunately, in Desi’s story, the penguin was able to get wing-enhancement surgery so her sweaters would be really tight and people would love her and she lived happily ever after. Ta-ta!
These women finally gathered the courage to suggest that her moral—plastic, surgically enhanced “wings” are the key to happiness— was probably not the best message to send to children. So Desi went right back to work and a few days later read from her newly rewritten children’s book in which her penguin doesn’t care that her wings are small and meets another female penguin with small wings who becomes her friend and they move in together and live happily ever after.
Naturally I was at the center of most of the absurdity. Right from the beginning I practically insisted that rather than wearing hats, the townspeople should wear Shats, sort of like berets. One night, we had decided that I should entertain these people with my stand-up comedy act, which consisted of jokes like, “One of my favorite places in town is the Kwik ‘n E-Z. They named it after my first girlfriend. It’s a good thing they didn’t name it after my first wife, because then it would be the Fat ‘n Ugly!”
I think the proper way to describe their response is dumbfounded, completely and absolutely dumbfounded. Those were the jokes, folks. They didn’t get any better than that.
Part of our continuing story was my growingly acrimonious relationship with my large and often loud nephew, Tiny. Eventually, though, I revealed to one of the townspeople that Tiny wasn’t really my nephew—he was my son! And when I revealed it to... dumb-founded townspeople, Tiny looked at me lovingly and said, “Dad, I want to have a catch!” And we proceeded to take out the baseball gloves and have a catch.
The citizens of Riverside were so unbelievably accommodating. When my aides suggested they change the name of the town to... Did you really think I was going to let loose of this idea?... Bill-ville, they actually printed petitions and handed them out, then helped us make and hang a large sign reading, WELCOME TO BILL-VILLE. They also went along with our producer, who whispered to them just before the townspeople vs. cast and crew softball game, “Bill doesn’t like to make an out. So whatever you do, it’s very important that you let him get on base. Otherwise he’s going to be in a real bad mood for the rest of the day.” So they did—and amazingly I then successfully stole second base and third base and then I stole home! Yeah, Shatner!
And no matter what we did, our new Priceline.com spokesperson was always somewhere in the background, wearing his Priceline.com shirt and hat, and occasionally I would point to him and he would immediately do a promo for Priceline, “Go to Priceline to save a l
ot of money.” And when we thought Priceline had enough mentions, we made him the spokesperson for Brylcreem.
When one of my assistants explained I’d always wanted to ride on a fire truck and fight a fire, a member of the Riverside Fire Department actually set fire to an old car. We raced to the fire and they let me man the hose! However, they were a little reluctant to go along with my suggestion that we tell everybody that I’d saved the lives of two people by pulling them out of the front seat.
Just about the only thing we suggested that they absolutely refused to do was smash the hundred-year-old extremely valuable stained-glass windows in the church. In fact, when we made that suggestion they were... dumbfounded. And even after we told them it was absolutely necessary to break just one window, a small one, when the aliens showed up, they refused.
There were times when we were afraid people were beginning to figure out that this whole thing was a hoax, particularly when one resident pointed out, “With William Shatner you never know what’s going on. You don’t know if he’s just whacko!” But somehow we managed to keep the secret. Certainly the most difficult thing for us to do during the shoot was continue the deception. Each day it got more difficult to continue lying to these people. Sometimes at our meetings at night people would begin crying about the lies they had to tell. Personally, I began to dread the moment when we would have to reveal the truth. For some reason I had visions of the towns-people carrying torches as they came up the mountain toward Dr. Frankenstein’s castle.
This was the first time since making The Outrage in a small Southern town more than three decades earlier that I started planning an escape route.
We couldn’t quit, though. This was a comedy reality show and we had to continue the deception. And then, just when I thought the situation couldn’t possibly become any more difficult, Don Rath, who had already bestowed upon me the honor of wiping my face with his good-luck raccoon penis, gave me his handmade mustache cup and asked me for a favor in return. “Come with me,” he said.
Don Rath took me up to the town cemetery to visit the grave of his wife, who had died in 2001. There was Don with his walker and I standing in this sort of barren cemetery before his wife’s tomb-stone. “Look, Mom, look who I brought up to see you.”
If the citizens of Riverside, Iowa, had known what we were doing and wanted to turn the joke back around on us, this is precisely the way they would have done it. The man was taking me to visit his wife’s grave. And as he spoke he began crying. Oh my goodness, I knew exactly how he felt. Exactly. As it would be forever, Nerine’s death was never further than a thought out of my mind and my soul was deeply wounded. The real emotion of that moment was so strong that Don and I hugged and I started crying. No reality show in the history of television has ever been more real.
That was not the funny part. Trust me.
Eventually the time came to reveal the truth. Coincidently it was April first. We invited the key townspeople to a dinner-picnic. It was left to me to tell them the truth. Oy, this was tough. We had absolutely no idea how any of them were going to react. There was every chance it was going to get ugly. There is no movie, I said, my heart thumping wildly. This whole thing is a reality TV show. That was met with the longest silence I’d ever experienced in my life. Finally, someone said, “You dirty dogs.” And other people started laughing.
This group of people loved it—with one exception. This man was a farmer, a big, powerful guy with tremendous dignity. I wanted him not to be angry—and he was fucking angry. “You mean you played us the fool all along . . .” His body language was far worse than his words—he was turned halfway away from me and his arms were locked in front of him. We had learned what each of our principals wanted—one man had dreamed his whole life of going to Hawaii, we sent him and his family to Hawaii. A woman needed money for her efforts to adopt her grandson, we helped finance her successful effort. Our ingénue desperately wanted to bring her horse to Riverside but couldn’t afford it, we paid to board the horse for a year. Another cast member wanted to see Paris, we gave him a trip there. Each person received either gifts or cash worth several thousand dollars. But when we reached our farmer, he had left. He didn’t want anything to do with us.
I felt awful. Just dreadful. That night we were meeting with the entire town to reveal our secret to them. The local members of our cast had kept our secret. And as they arrived they were greeted by their neighbors with a red carpet and cheers. And at the end of the line was the farmer—with a big smile on his face. As we found out, he’d gone home and discussed it with his family, who convinced him our prank was harmless and fun. The citizens of Riverside took the joke good-naturedly—particularly when we told them we would be contributing one hundred thousand dollars to the town treasury. In addition, our crew and actors raised an additional thirteen thousand dollars which was used to buy books for the elementary school.
Spike TV eventually ran the show as a miniseries and it received very good reviews. Several reviewers specifically pointed out my success at self-parody, writing that finally I’d “got it.” Of course, that just proves once again that my acting skills had not dulled—I was not doing self-parody. That was...William Shatner!
The movie death of Jim Kirk turned out to be a new beginning to my career, but I believed completely that Nerine’s death was the end of my married life. And perhaps it also meant that I would never again have an intense loving relationship with a woman. If there was one thing I had proved, it’s that marriage just didn’t work for me. And as difficult as it was for me to deal with that particular reality, it was pretty obvious that I was doing something wrong.
And honestly, for a long time after Nerine’s death I had little interest in women. The concept of dating at that point in my life did not seem very appealing to me. To fill some of the enormous loneliness I was feeling in those months I found considerable solace just being with my horses. In the early 1980s we were filming an episode of T.J. Hooker where we needed a police car with its siren whining to race through a horse barn. We ended up in a barn where saddlebreds were stabled. I had been involved in a minor way in a quarter horse breeding operation, but as I stood in the barn that day looking at these magnificent animals I was...I was stunned. It was an enchanted moment. Looking across a crowded barn I fell in love with saddlebreds. One look and I was smitten. Saddlebreds are works of art. These horses are bred to be beautiful and to move beautifully. These horses are an esthetic delight and the pleasure they give your eyes is magnified by the grace of their movement.
Well, that day I had discovered a new passion. These were obviously the most magnificently proud beasts on earth. I thought it was impossible to look at them and not want to fill fields with them. There was one in particular that just mesmerized me. I asked the owner its price and when he named it, I said flatly, “I’ll buy him.”
The next day I flew home to Los Angeles. I called a trainer I knew and asked him to handle all the details for me. He called me a short time later. “You know that horse you bought two days ago for X dollars?” Yeah? I said all excitedly. “Well, now the price is two-X dollars.”
Welcome to the horse breeding business, Bill.
Actually, raising the price was illegal. In that business the price you name is the price. Period. But I was so naïve I decided I probably hadn’t heard them correctly. I was so in lust with this horse that I was willing to pay almost anything. And so I did.
I was taken for a ride—literally and figuratively. But that was the beginning of what has grown to be a substantial horse breeding business. A very expensive horse breeding business. Eventually I bought a ranch in Lexington, Kentucky, Belle Reve Farm, an eighty-seven-acre spread. At various times I’ve owned as many as sixty horses. But of all the horses I’ve owned, the most magnificent of them all was Sultan’s Great Day. A two-time World Champion in his category, Sultan’s Great Day was all black, and when he ran he looked like a silhouette in motion. Just looking at him made it clear his choice would have been to be r
unning free in the woods; he did not easily accept being domesticated. I rode him at his leisure. We put him out to stud and his offspring have won almost one hundred World Grand Championships and Reserves in all the major saddlebred divisions. I admired him, loved him, and respected him. He was a great thrill to own.
But by 2004 he was done. It was time to end his life. I wanted to be there when the vet put him down so I flew to the ranch. And then, on a warm spring afternoon, the two of us went for a final walk in the pasture. I led him into a shady dell and then stood there, content to watch him graze. Wanting to stop time, really. I was anticipating, and dreading, the moment when the vet would arrive to give him his final shots. All of a sudden, from across the field, three horses came running toward us. Great Day raised his head and then, in an instant, became the stallion of old, the great protector of the herd. His instincts took hold and on his feeble rear legs he reared high, proud, pawing the air with bandaged front feet, neighing his defiance. The other horses rightly turned tail, and ran.
He was a champion. A champion.
Great Day settled back down, defiant and proud. As someone remarked later, he went into the next world feeling like a stud horse.
Probably the least expensive aspect of owning horses is the initial cost of the horse. It’s everything that comes after; the housing and feeding and training of that animal. The cost of medical attention and the proper equipment. If it’s a competition horse there is the cost of getting to the competition; the trucks and the feed and the care. And then there are the people who actually run the operation, the good people as well as those who quit and those who cheat. And then, if you choose, there are even more esoteric ways of spending your money—for example, consulting an animal psychic.
While I was growing up in Montreal, I’m certain I never thought that someday I would be successful enough to consult an animal psychic. There is one woman I know who channels dogs.
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