At 93, William Shatner would entertain boldly going the place no man has gone earlier than — once more.
The Montreal-born actor, famed for his portrayal of Captain Kirk in “Star Trek,” says he’s open to reprising the enduring function within the sci-fi franchise so long as the storytelling is stellar.
“It’s an intriguing idea,” Shatner says on a video name whereas selling his new documentary “You Can Call Me Bill,” which drops digitally and on video-on-demand Tuesday.
“It’s almost impossible but it was a great role and so well-written and if there were a reason to be there not just to make a cameo appearance, but if there were a genuine reason for the character appearing, I might consider it.”
Shatner’s final look within the franchise was within the 1994 movie “Star Trek Generations,” the place Captain Kirk is killed off. He suggests he might play a youthful model of the Starship Enterprise captain as he’s lately signed on to be the spokesperson for Otoy, an organization specializing in know-how that “takes years off of your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are.”
He muses on a state of affairs the place Kirk is resurrected.
“A company that wants to freeze my body and my brain for the future might be a way of going about it,” he says in a current name from Los Angeles.
“‘We’ve got Captain Kirk’s brain frozen here.’ There’s a scenario. ‘Let’s see if we can bring back a little bit of this, a little salt, a little pepper. Oh, look at that. Here comes Captain Kirk!’”
“You Can Call Me Bill,” directed by Alexandre O. Phillippe, gives a glance again at Shatner’s physique of labor — from his “Star Trek” TV present and movies to TV sequence together with “Boston Legal” and “T.J. Hooker” — and follows his journey to outer house aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle in 2021. It additionally options the actor’s musings on life, loss of life and nature.
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“Over the years, people have come to me and said, ‘Let’s make a biographical film,” Shatner says.
“I’d say, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do that.’ A biographical film sort of signifies the end. Cut! And then you die.”
But Shatner says he was bought on the concept when the doc’s producers Legion M approached him with the concept of crowdfunding the movie.
The self-described “fan-owned” firm permits followers to personal a monetary share within the movie and any earnings it generates. “You Can Call Me Bill” raised US$750,000 in 4 days.
The actor additionally needed to “leave some part of a truth” about him for his youngsters and grandchildren after he dies.
Shatner says he realized an awesome deal about himself whereas making the movie however however, “I don’t know what ‘know thyself’ means.”
Even at 93, he says he doesn’t imagine he has a lot knowledge to supply.
“That’s a mystique that has no basis in truth: as you get older, you get wiser. If you’re dumb as a young man, you’re dumb as an old man. You’re a dumb old man is what you are. It doesn’t necessarily mean time foists wisdom on you. What it does put upon you is how quickly life is over. That’s for certain.”
Well conscious of his fleeting mortality, Shatner is profiting from the time he has left. He’s releasing a youngsters’s album, “Where Will The Animals Sleep? Songs For Kids & Other Living Things” later this month and can be part of a cruise to Antarctica with astronaut Scott Kelly and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in December.
He’s additionally joined a number of “companies of the future,” as a spokesperson for some and within the background for others, together with one which develops “technology like the medical device on ‘Star Trek,’ so it’s the size of a pack of cards and can tell you whether you have a disease or not,” and one “that will take your DNA, make an artificial gem out of it and give you two: one that you keep and one that goes into a box that will be released on the moon.”
“Life is so short, you’ve got to do something now. Go to that place, know that person, read that book now!” he says.
“That’s what I think old age (teaches you). But then, by the time you learn that, you’re dying. You don’t have any time. That’s right. You’re dead.”
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