Over the phone from a Los Angeles production office last week, William Shatner is on message.
The veteran star – whom I first interviewed 15 years ago, on the press junket for Star Trek: Generations – has barely said hello before he launches into the canned pitch for William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet, the documentary he’s bringing to the Stratford Documentary Film Festival next Thursday (Oct. 22).
“Gonzo Ballet,” he says, “is the name of a documentary I made, which involves the Milwaukee Ballet Company dancing to six songs that I co-wrote with Ben Folds.”
Yes, I say I’ve seen it.
“What did you think?” he asks.
It’s an interesting movie, I tell him, though its multi-camera presentation of Margo Sappington‘s choreography – inspired, as Shatner says, by songs from his album Has Been – made me wish I’d seen the show live.
Saying that last bit out loud was probably a mistake.
“Well, you gotta approach it without expectations,” Shatner says, “and think, ‘what the hell is that?’ And then you either go with it, or don’t. It’s been very successful in front of audiences, and we won first prize at the Marbella film festival last week as the best documentary. So that was a lovely boost. And as you know, I’m on my way to Stratford in a couple of weeks to see it screened there.”
Right, Stratford. The Canadian premiere of William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet at Stratford’s documentary festival is kind of a big deal. Shatner last stood on the Stratford stage in 1956, when he famously replaced an ailing Christopher Plummer in Henry V. More than half a century later, having carved out a very specific niche for himself as a cultural icon, Shatner is coming home.
“My grand return to Stratford,” he laughs. “Well, I suppose something less than trumpets will be expected. I’m just excited about the prospect of showing it to the people who’ll be there it was an odd idea when I was approached by Milwaukee to make the ballet, and then it seemed to me a good idea to record it on film, and then when I saw the raw material, I thought we could edit this in, and the talking heads, and one thing begat the other – and lo and behold, there was this oddity that I titled Gonzo Ballet. And I’m out there pushing it on the film circuit, which I’ve never done before. It’s all a curious experience.”
Given that there’s a moment in the documentary when Shatner allows that he’s still “sore” over the dismissal of his first album, The Transformed Man – which contains that infamous freakout reading of “Mr. Tambourine Man” – I feel obliged to ask whether he might not be inviting similar mockery with the choice of this movie’s title. Isn’t the use of the term “gonzo” – commonly associated with Hunter S. Thompson’s feverish, heedless prose – is just asking for trouble?
“You know, ‘gonzo’ is a vague term,” Shatner says, “subject to interpretation. ‘Gonzo’ can mean ‘edgy’, or ‘different’, and that’s why I thought trying to make an oxymoron of ‘gonzo’ and ‘ballet’ might make the curious interested, and the interested curious.”
Right, I venture, but … isn’t he worried about not being taken seriously?
“You’re Canadian?” he asks, apparently for clarification. I assure him I am. So is he, of course, but that doesn’t seem worth pointing out.
“No, I’ve been taken somewhat seriously for a while, won some awards for serious acting. I don’t know what the Canadians are doing, but the Americans seem to find me artistic.”
William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet screens Oct. 22 at 8 pm at DocStratford. What the Canadians do with it is entirely up to them.
For more information on the movie, and on DocFest Stratford, click here.
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