Those were William Shatner\u2019s words to me as the two of us returned to LA aboard a Cessna twin which had been hired by our boss, the producer of the show I was working on and on which Mr. Shatner was the talent.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d just finished watching him return to earth after a voyage aboard the \u201cBlue Origin\u201d space capsule of Jeff Bezos. I don\u2019t know about the ninety-year old Shatner\u2019s words. Have I gone far? I don\u2019t really think so. There are a few aviators who seem to have a large impression of my importance, but I don\u2019t think that Shatner\u2019s words were full of import. After all, this was the guy who once had asked the producer of that show, \u201cwho is this guy?\u201d referring to me. His question was an important one. After all, I\u2019d been hired as a producer on the show on the strength of \u201cDawn Flight\u201d, the short subject that my brother, Lawrence, and I had made shortly before I met the creator who hired me on the spot at W.A. Palmer Films, the lab that had provided post production services for Larry and me. Shatner\u2019s attitude toward me was certainly justified. After all, He\u2019d been hired to play the lead in a popular television series that utilized the services of screenwriters and those who had a vested interest in the preparation that is the hallmark of such a series. I had no experience with such a production and had actually expected the star to \u201cad lib\u201d his lines as we shot the section of the series that had to do with females in the rodeo business. I have no such illusions now and in fact carefully script the shows that I shoot, although cinematographer Bert Garrison and I still take a degree of pride in the \u201crun and gun\u201d technique that limits us to just the two of us producing most of the shows most of the time. I had followed Shatner\u2019s career in fits and starts although he and if never communicated after our flight home from that location. I doubt if Shatner gave a thought to the future of the young producer who he didn\u2019t have a very good impression of during that time, and, in fact I have to admit that I had not made much of a positive impression on the newly hired captain of the Starship enterprise.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of Shatner\u2019s halting way of reciting his lines. Bill Maher, the host whose show I\u2019m a big fan of once said of one actor that they had to slow the teleprompter down to
\n\u201cShatner\u2019 to make it go slowly enough.<\/p>\n
Shatner was clearly moved by his experience aboard the Blue Origin and he waxed rather eloquently regarding the experience. \u201cEverybody in the world needs to experience this\u2026.\u201d he was heard to say. To Jeff Bezos. I think it\u2019s safe to say that tears welled into his eyes at one point as he discussed the flight with Bezos. It was clear that he recognized the difference between the cinematic voyage of the \u201cVoyager\u201d with the actual ride he had just taken. That difference was certainly not lost on me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those were William Shatner\u2019s words to me as the two of us returned to LA aboard a Cessna twin which had been hired by our boss, the producer of the show I was working on and on which Mr. Shatner was the talent. I\u2019d just finished watching him return to earth after a voyage aboard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6436,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6435\/revisions\/6436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}