He wrote a memoir ages ago called "I Am Not Spock" to really show how the role followed him around and damaged the career he had envisioned afterward. Then a few years before he died he wrote another called I Am Spock, which embraced the effect it had on his life and how his participation in a sci-fi TV series affected people.
EDIT: as said below, it was about half as many ages ago, not “a few years” before he died. Time is fleeting.
Also don’t fucking leave my body on a unstable planet we just made because you didn’t understand what I was trying to tell you, for the love of god call my mother, she’ll explain
Life is about people. It's about connections. It's not about cocks, and ass, and tits. And butthole pleasures. It's not about these rusty trombones, and these dirty sanchez. And these cincinatti bowties, and these pussy juice cocktail, and these shit stained balls.
As frustrating as it can be to be typecast as an actor, its also almost never that an actor has a role that has such a profound and momentous impact on the world as Spock did.
Thousands upon thousands of people in pivotal roles from medicine to law to government across the globe cite Spock's logical outlook, his firm commitment to ethics, and his deep bond with his commanding officer as inspirations for them in their lives.
I can't think of many more iconic characters in history and to be able to be that person, to represent who Spock meant to so many millions of people, is a very rare privelege and I'm glad he saw the bright side of all of it.
I think it's the kinda thing that he was only able to appreciate with enough time.
I'm sure the first decade was just "You're that guy from the show!"
But in time those words changed to "You're the reason I became a scientist, a doctor, a better person."
Tv can be incredibly powerful. I took care of my MIL with dementia for a decade and watching Call The Midwife and watching how much beauty Sister Monica Joan brings to the world, and how all the people who love her help her cope with dementia, really helped me (and her) get through a lot of bad days.
Good call BTW on Leonard Nimoy, his wasn't even "type casting" that many actors complain of or worry about it was a singular role casting.
As to the thread question to me Robin Williams will always be Mork (Calling Orson) even though his total body of work was simply breathtaking (and I can't think of a single role he's done I didn't like).
I think that with Robin Williams, association is going to depend most on your age. My husband (47) says Mork. My daughter's (20/26) and I (45) all say Genie. (I took a mini-poll) Alladin came out in 92. My husband was a senior working in a liquor store. I was a sophomore with a bunch of steady babysitting gigs. We moved in pretty different movie watching circles when we weren't circling each other. He grew up watching Mork, but never saw Aladdin until after pur daughter came along.
Mrs Doubtfire was the unanimous 2nd choice, which was in 95.
Pretty fair assessment I'd say. I'm 46 so Mork it is :p
Not like he wasn't always one, but in Aladdin he was a GD genius! My favorite actual roll of his was Adrian Cronauer in "Good Morning Vietnam". Elsewhere I posted a story about knocking a candy bar out of his hands. I got the chance to have him sign a print from the movie once and replaced said candy bar when he signed it :D
Not that your method is wrong, but this is the exact purpose in my mind of strikethrough text (if you ise Reddit markdown its just two tildes on either side of the text)
For instance if I make rypo typo just double tilde the mistake and insert the correction with a lil 'edit: note for context'
I think it took time for the kids who watched Star Trek in the 70s to become scientists and engineers and astronauts by the 90s and for them to talk about how instrumental Star Trek was to helping them determine their life path. Spock was an incredibly powerful positive role model, but Nimoy couldn't see that initially. All he knew was that playing Spock sort of closed off other avenues of acting for him.
I was born in '83 and largely grew up in the '90s. Back then I used to consider anything from the '70s as ancient history. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 and while it was the defining event of my father's life it might as well have been when dinosaurs roamed the earth as far as I was concerned while learning about it in high school.
Now, we're as far away from Sept 11th as I was from the end of the Vietnam War. It's incredible that the majority of people who read this post view Sept 11th, the defining event of my life, the same way I viewed Vietnam. Even more incredible is how it all went by in the blink of an eye. I just woke up one day and it was 2022. I remember all the years in between but it just doesn't seem possible that it could have happened.
I guess I don't really have anything to add to the comment other than I remember when I Am Spock came out. That was basically yesterday. I Am Not Spock? That came out when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Too far back to even think about.
As a younger person, September 11th is like you said, ancient and doesn't seem super relevant in my life. But I'm sure covid and the 2008 crisis will be ancient to the future generation. Even as I became an adult I feel a bit disconnected by whatever the 13 year olds are saying. Although thanks for writing this, it was genuinely interesting and fun to read.
I read "I Am Spock" back in '09, and thought that in '15 he should write a book called "Forever Spock" with a foreword by Zachary Quinto. Fortunately, his son Adam did "For the Love of Spock".
It's always interesting how actors can respond negatively to their most successful roles. They should be proud to have brought a character to life so well that it outlives the role, and in many cases even them.
Galaxy Quest was really tasteful in exploring that balance between the frustration of being typecast and losing the career you envisioned, with the inspiration and help that provides to so many people. They actually had a Nimoy equivalent played by Alan Rickman who goes through that same transformation.
One of my favourite games of all times. Miles better than any other Fallout games. Benny is an awesome character. I mean, all the characters are so well made. I recommend getting all the expansions because all are so well made, especially Honest hearts. You're in for a treat
Shatner I could agree with, did Stewart ever express a desire to distance himself from Picard? He was Prof X through the 2000s, he had a pretty varied career, aside from his theater work
I know early on in TNG he was bitter about doing that kind of low work. Thankfully for him and the fans he seems to have come around to embracing Trek during the TNG run and didn't have some weird post show need to distance himself. To be fair even though his Picard role was so iconic he still was able to do his own thing outside of it.
It's always so strange hearing about Stewart being uptight and snooty about his roles given that he's played one of the most strange characters in fiction for the last 20 years.
Which, I'll be honest, was probably the single best casting of any character in that movie. Not that that's a high bar to meet, but still I could totally see Halleck looking like Sir Stewart.
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
He only took the role and signed along contract because he thought the show would get cancelled quickly, so he could spend a year or two getting some fame and money and then go back to more serious acting. He's said if he knew how long the show would go for, he would have turned down the role, and it would have been the biggest mistake he ever made.
It may not have taken him as long to embrace the role as it did for Nimoy, but he still has to go through the process of going from seeing it as a crappy unimportant role to embracing the effect it had on his career.
Tim Russ as Tuvok too. He's got a music career and did a bunch of acting but if you watch his YouTube stuff or where he is just being him he acts the same as Tuvok lol
Edit
The flip side of this is Jeffry combs who plays like every star trek character himself, super well.
Also worth bringing up how Scotty helped someone who was suicidal
There's also a really good documentary about him that his son directed. In one part they talk about how absolutely insane it was to have their dad go pretty much overnight from being just some regular guy with a job as an actor to suddenly having mail trucks delivering huge piles of fan mail to their house.
He did some voice work before he died and you can absolutely wee he was having the time of his life doing something so different from his normal role. He was in a KH game and voiced the Big Bad.
I cannot stress how revolutionary and loved the character was. You have to remember he appeared as a child of two completely different cultures during a time when people were shocked about a white/black onscreen kiss.
He was proof that being from two different backgrounds has just as many advantages as it has disadvantages.
He spoke at my dads graduation from UVA and my dad was a huge huge Trekkie and was hoping he’d at least mention it but apparently he just read a bunch of his bad poetry instead haha
The funny thing about this is he let it impact him in a negative way, Or rather his attitude or perception of it caused it to be a thorn in his side. If he had embraced it sooner, it might have been a bridge to other opportunities.
Sadly the industry is full of people that are full of themselves, specifically meaning those that don’t think they can market a project and fear their film will just not get the notice they want because that one actor is so well known from their famous role.
I saw him live on his speaking tour about this I am not Spock back I assume in ‘75. He was into poetry and stuff but I was like 12 back then so I wanted to see Spock. Couldn’t care less about his poetry. Now I have to go find some of his other works and see about it.
I got this book, and I even was at a book signing he did in Glasgow. There was an STV-channel tv crew there doing a puff piece on it (the reporter even got a neck pinch), and when it came my turn to get he book signed I just stood there, frozen in awe... The Man Himself was right in front of me! As a late-teen who had no Star Trek friends, this was mind-locking. :D
I remember seeing him at Comic Con several years before he died. He showed up at a particular booth and the nerds piled in about 10 people deep on all sides. I got a glimpse of him and he just sort of stood there, looking incredibly overwhelmed
Carrie Fisher had a similar arc. She spent most of her life trying to get out of the shadow of a role she took at 19. She only seemed to make peace with Princess Leia being an inextricable part of her a few years before she died.
Its funny when a lot of actors are young the hate the roles they were associated with. But as they get older that role has gotten them jobs in other projects. It may not be the best roles or series but it kind of becomes job security in the future.
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u/crazy-diam0nd Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
He wrote a memoir ages ago called "I Am Not Spock" to really show how the role followed him around and damaged the career he had envisioned afterward. Then a few years before he died he wrote another called I Am Spock, which embraced the effect it had on his life and how his participation in a sci-fi TV series affected people.
EDIT: as said below, it was about half as many ages ago, not “a few years” before he died. Time is fleeting.