He has lived long and prospered. Now 93 years old (though looking like a slip of a lad of 70), William Shatner shares his wit and wisdom in a new documentary that is basically an audience with the great man. Sitting alone in a huge darkened warehouse space, he rambles on uninterrupted. It’s perhaps less fun than you might have hoped for, though Shatner is undoubtedly charismatic, and a pretty decent raconteur. He’s often entertaining, if not always necessarily in the way he intended. Here he is on acting, explaining that if he could win any award it would be for “keeping my inner child alive”. He’s deadly serious, I think.
He speaks like this, with a spoofy quality that is very easy to poke fun at. But Shatner is not completely un-self-aware. He’s made a late career out of playing the part of William Shatner, the man with a famously inflated ego. There’s a terrific clip from 2005 of him presenting a lifetime achievement award to Star Wars creator George Lucas. The joke is that Shatner’s got the wrong end of the stick – thinks he’s at a Star Trek convention. Two stormtroopers march him off stage. So he is in on the joke – at least sometimes.
“Call me Bill” is the title, but I’m not sure you come away feeling like you know the man. Shatner was born and raised in a Jewish family in Montreal, and got the acting bug early at an acting class, aged six or seven. It wasn’t a particularly happy childhood he says, and he’s felt lonely all his life. He talks honestly about dying too. Still, for casual Shatner observers, it may be frustratingly light on biographical detail. At one point he remembers being unemployed, broke and divorced, living out of a van after Star Trek. You may need to Google to fill in the blanks: Star Trek was cancelled after just three series and only later became a cult favourite in the 70s.
Fans coming for gossip about his rift with Star Trek pal Leonard Nimoy will be disappointed too. Though maybe his meandering anecdotes – such as the time he sat naked in a river watching a lizard – will do the trick. But at points this really does feel like a massage of that legendary ego.
• William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill is on UK digital platforms from 27 May.
