Leonard is introduced and many fields of his artwork are mentioned.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Correction. Kid Monkl Baroni was not my first job. I am proud of it, I play a boxer, a young Italian kid. It was a charming movie which we shot in 9 days. But actually my first job which I thought would literally rocket me to stardom and I don't understand why it didn't, was called Zombies of the Stratosphere. You won't find that in your calendar either. (laughing). That was an amazing piece of work. I think perhaps the last of republic studio's series. It was shot at what is now CBS centres I guess. And I played an alien. I played one of three or four alien that came to Earth in a cigar-shaped spaceship that hobbled across the screen leaving behind a trail of smoke. And the three of us, four of us disembarked and stole a pick-up truck and a couple of colt 45 revolvers and were going to take over earth. (laughter in the audience). And I can't imagine why it didn't work. Let me find out who we are. How many of you are familiar with the Star Trek movies? … How many of you have seen all of the Star Trek movies?
… uh! Well. (laughter in the audience)  I found a home, did I?

Okay. I want to talk particularly about Star Trek IV because I think it is an interesting story about the process of how it became what it was.

I back up just a little bit. The first Star Trek movie was not around before 1979, it was made, really, essentially, because Star Wars opened in 1977 and it was such an enormous hit that somebody woke up and said: We have something like that here that we should turn into a movie. And they made the first Star Trek film. And I think it is fair and should be said that the first one was the most difficult to make because it had been 11 years since we have produced any Star Trek projects. And I think a lot of difficult questions had to be dealt with. Should we deal with the passage of time? Or shall we just ignore it and go right on as if there has been no passage of time? Should we change the costumes? Yes, definitely, because the other were kind of the sixties. All these questions had to be dealt with. Some of them were very difficult questions.

And Robert Wise, who I think is a wonderful producer and director, was brought in particularly because he had done a movie The Day the Earth Stood Still which was a science fiction landmark classic. He was brought in to direct it, but didn't have a clue and until this day still says: I don't know what made Star Trek really work. So he was heavily dependent on people who he was introduced to and meeting for the first time who had been there when Star Trek was first made. Unfortunately I think that was not a healthy situation. The script never was right, he did a ... job to direct it, but the script never worked and he never had anything to write on or with. So, we had a difficult time. And I frankly thought that Star Trek was finished then, after this first movie.

We made THE Star Trek movie, there was no intention to do any more at the time. Particularly not because it wasn't very well received ….  And then I began to hear utterances about another Star Trek movie. I wasn't particularly interested; the first one had been kind of depressing to me. I remember that much of the time we were standing at the bridge looking at the screen and wondering what was going to happen next. “What do you think it is, Captain? I don't know”. (laughter from the audience)
”Let's wait and find out.” (laughter from the audience).
Not that we were active, energetic, the scripts were … the creatures were in charge. But they started talking about making a second one. And there was a lot of talk about downsizing.
The first one was thought to be a $15 million movie and cost $ 45 million. There was a built up audience waiting for it because there had been a hunger for Star Trek projects for 11 years. I think it managed to recoup, but the thought was: Let's straighten up the ship here, literally and metaphorically, and make up some for a lot less money.
They aimed at budgets that might be $ 8 or 9 million dollars. I was worried. If that's the case it sounded like somebody was trying to arrange one lousy guess out of Star Trek I didn't want to be part of it.

And them Harve Bennett who had been a friend for several years and who was going to produce this thing came to me and said, knowing my reminiscence: Would you like to have a great death scene?
Maybe this is going to be the final Star Trek movie, that's an honest thing to do then, to say “good-bye” in grace and glory. And I laughed; I said I'll read the script. And when the script came to me it wasn't terribly promising, but I met the director who was going to direct the film, Nicolas Meyer, who was very engaging and very energetic and had good ideas about what should be done with the script. He did a VERY GOOD re-write which he was not credited for, ironically, and he directed the film and it went well. And during the course of the making of this movie I began to be sorry that I had agreed to that my character to be killed ….  By the time, when it came to the scene when Spock was to die, I was quite depressed about it and I thought I had made a mistake in judgement.
And I was relieved that day when Harp came on the set and said to me (when we were about to do the death scene): If there is something you can do or say here that will give us a thread that could be picked up later in some way of the story or any idea for the future. And he wasn't talking specifically about the future Spock but obviously there was this possibility and I said: I think I can do something. And I did. You remember if you have seen the film, there is a moment where after having done the Vulcan pinch on McCoy, McCoy unconscious on the floor, Spock goes to him and does a mind melt on him and said one word, which is a word that I came up with, which was ambiguous enough that it can mean mostly anything, I simply said: Remember! As I did the mind melt on him and then went off to save the ship and to die. I am still moved when I watched that movie.
It was a powerful scene.   … 

You remember it better than I, probably. “I have been and always hall be your friend.” And the hands to the glass. It was touching.  .. I left with that word “Remember” and wondered what might come of that.
There was no intention at that time to do another film.  …   (talking about the tube that was shot onto Genesis). Shortly before the film was released and it was found out that audiences were distressed by this final ending of Spock, it was decided to add a couple of shots which would introduce a thread of hope and they shot some footage of the Northern California … with some fern and some palm tree and there revealed, guess what, Spock's tube, intact, on the Genesis planet. It was no more said about it but clearly something might come out of that tube and be found in the next movie. And that was the plan.

So the film did well, and then I was invited to come to paramount to talk about the next Star Trek movie. I frankly had no idea what I should ask for or hope for … and on the morning I went for the meeting with my agent to paramount to discuss my participation in the next Star Trek, as we entered the office I came up with the idea to ask them to let me direct the film. I knew they wanted me to act in it and that they would pay me well, but I was looking for some way to expanding my activity, and that's precisely what I did. They were very kind and said they wanted me to be involved in the making of it, and I said: yes, I want to direct it. (laughing)

I heard myself say it and could hardly believe it. The reception was immediate very positive. A week later I had a meeting with Michael .. I said exactly the same thing and he was enthusiastic: Oh, great! Leonard Nimoy directs the resurrection of Spock. He immediately saw the marketing possibility. …
I gradually developed a script in which I had very little to do as an actor because I was concerned about trying both jobs and we developed a story which was essentially the resurrection of Spock, the search for Spock, and we had, if you remember, two or three other people playing Spock. At various ages as Spock aged throughout the film and I only had to appear in a few scenes near the end.

And I managed to get the film made and by the time the end of the story comes around Spock, I am back on my feet as Spock, not operating yet, and manages something to say like “Jim”   (laughter from the audience). “Your name is Jim”. (laughing) Not much more than that, but I knew Spock will be back. And then I was very flattered when I was called again before the picture opened and this time it was Richard Katzenberg who said: I know the picture will do well. I'd like you to do another one and we would like to hear your vision about what the next movie should be.
Now, we had played a lot of drama in the previous two films. Spock had died in Star Trek II, Kirk's son was killed in Star Trek III, there was a lot of passion and tears and things Harve and I, Harve was going to produce the film, we met and immediately decided that we should lighten up. And we were going to have more warmth, more feeling, more fun in the next Star Trek.
And we both immediately agreed to do a time travel story.

I went off to do some work to do in Europe and while I was there I made some notes about what the story will be about. And when Harve came for a visit, we agreed about the sense about what it should be about and we developed the story and we quickly agreed that we have the Klingon ship, we talked about that we have this time travel,… the big question with time travel was, there were two questions: Shall we go for- or backward in time? Or three questions: Should it be accidental or intentional? And: Where should we go? We decided it would be much more pro-acting for the Enterprise crew to decide to move in time rather than to move forward accidentally. Yet, the Klingon ship that we were on, it would have been easy to use the ship and say “oh, we have made a mistake, we tried and got the wrong button” or so (laughter from the audience) (Leonard is laughing) “Scotty, where are we?” “I don't know, Captain.” But we decided that we rather had the choice, so, we would be heroic about making this decision. And then we thought: Why not go back to San Francisco, which is the base of Star Fleet? And actually shoot in San Francisco and put a kind of nostalgic connection to the whole thing.

Now, the question was why we are travelling in time. And we are going back to the 20^th century which is almost an economic decision. If you go back to the 20^th century you don't have to worry about period costumes and period vehicles and period re-dressing and so forth. But: Why are we travelling back in time?

Well, this should not have a personified heavy. We had done a couple of films, we had done the picture with Ricardo Montalban, he was wonderful in it, … then we had done Star Trek III where we were against the Klingons, they killed Kirk's son, I wanted to do a picture where rather the circumstances we the problem rather than a physical heavy. Around that time I was reading a book called “Biophelia”.  …

…..

[for more facts see: Thanks to Leonard Nimoy – Host - Trek Fest 1997]

…..

First we thought about some kind of illness which could be cured by some plant. A kind of grass from the jungles or rainforest, …  Then I got this image of people lying sick and dying in the 23^rd century, I didn't want to do that. 

…..

And I talked with this friend of mine about endangered species and went down the list and up came humpback whales. .. There is a lot of mystery and a lot of romance. They are charismatic in a kind of way. They are gentle, they travel in herds, they navigate in a mysterious way we don't understand, and they sing.  [for more facts see: Thanks to Leonard Nimoy – Host - Trek Fest 1997] They sing in a series of clicks and moans and you probably have heard about them. And evidently they are creating a pattern of song which lasts any way from two minutes to half an hour. And then they repeat it precisely. The same song. And then, that song, supposedly told by scientists, is from pack to pack from ocean to ocean around the world. So, if you took the song being sung by a pack of whales in the Atlantic Ocean, by a pack of humpbacks, and take the song somewhere in the North Pacific, they would actually match.
And then they change the song [see: conventions – STICCON 2002 – guest panel Sunday] from pack to pack around the world. An actual friend does this collecting of whale songs. And we don't know why they do it. We don't know whether it is navigational, territorial, sexual, we don't know.

(Leonard talks about the possibility of using Ambergris for a reason to travel backwards in time.)

…..

But what about the whale song? I decide to do something with the whale song. Let's suppose the whale song is a kind of communication device. Let's suppose if the whale song stopped because the humpbacks are gone and we were endangered, and would be gone in the 21^st century, the whale song stopped and never heard again on this planet, what effect might that have on the society or on the planet? Is there somebody listening to that? Is there somebody who would say: Where are you? What happened? What negative effect might that have for the planet? And that let to the next phase in this story which was the idea that the whales singing the song on the planet and some other entity elsewhere in space, who was curious, were interacting. And when this song stops, this entity send a probe to find out what happened to their friends, in the same way if you were on the phone talking to somebody, to a close friend, and lost contact, and you kept dialling and dialling and get no answer, you would go to that friend's place to see if they were o. k.  …

 

I went to the studio the very next morning with trepidations, because I thought it is a lot easier to carry a plant through space than to carry humpback whales. 20 tonnes of whales plus the water. Scotty will tell you in the movie. And (laughing) I had no idea how we will accomplish that. And I went to Harve in the morning and said: Tell me if I am crazy, what if we do a picture along these lines. And he said: Well, let's find out.
And we began to explore existing footage of humpbacks. And there was not anything that was usable, really.  …
And I knew that I needed eyeball to eyeball contact. …

So, the story developed, the script evolved and it was a very good one with Harve Bennet writing the first act and the third act, the opening of the show and the closing of the show. And Nicolas Meyer, who did a great job on Star Trek II, came on to write the centre section which was where we went on earth travelling back in time on the Klingon Bird of Pray. He had a great time. 

And then we started to work with ILM, Industrial Light and Magic. For them – to develop some footage for us. As well as a group of special effects people to build sections of humpbacks that will be used as marker.
I brought some tape along to show you how this works.

.…

First tape …     [the “Admiral, I am receiving hailstorms” Blooper IV – tape]
I think we better run the other tape, I am sorry. (laughing)
….

A scene from ST IV with whale footage is shown.

An image of the building is shown. Leonard explains which is part of the building and what is special effects. Instead of a rock grotto water is put in.

Leonard points out the scene where they walk out of the building and stop at the railing. Leonard: This shot was not at the Monterey Aquarium, it was shot at paramount studious in front of the big blue screen if you drive on the Paramount parking lot.

Leonard is explaining about the tank underground the paramount parking lot  [see: Director – Star Trek IV - Director's Series] .. and about the special effect department's work on the whales. He shows the film where the hydraulics is shown.

A scene from ST IV is shown: The Bird of Prey is sinking.

Leonard goes on explaining the screen scene. The people look at a blank wall, and pretend to see Spock swimming with a whale.

Spock's scene with the whale:
This was shot three months after all the rest of the film was shot. It was shot in a NASA test tank in El Seguno, California, the only place that we could find that had a depth and a with that we needed. They use the tank to teach astronauts to work under weightless condition. They work under water to practice weightless operations. And they allowed us to use the tank. And what we did was to wring up a cable and to use the head of the mock up section of the humpback whale. The whale was put on a cable and I swam down with scooper gear to adapt to about 15 or 20 feet and sat with the humpback waiting for the camera to roll. And when the camera rolled, I grabbed hold of the humpback, dumped the scooper gear and rode with the whale to get this shot.

Leonard explains more facts while showing the scenes and then shows a film (A San Francisco TV station shot a feature about the creation of the making of the whales.) in which professional workers from ILM explain the process of building the artificial whales. (Leonard gets spontaneous applause.) Now he shows actual humpback footage of Hawaii.

Leonard: Those people who created that footage made it possible to do this movie. We couldn't do that movie without that kind of accomplishment. And especially these radio-controlled miniatures. It really worked wonderfully. So, this was the heart of the movie. We had some fun and we made a comment about the ecology and there was no heavy and we had a good time and we saved earth once again. (laughing)

 
And the film did very, very well, I think it did the highest grossing of the Star Trek films.  I had the great fortune that I have been involved with three or four pictures which were quite successful. I am really not quite sure how that works, but it is something that gets out about a movie that's going to work and audiences seem to get a sense of it. … but it is exciting to be part of it and it happened with this picture.

 

And there very next one was Three Men and A Baby which really went to the roof. Any questions about his film? Or Star Trek in general? Let's talk about it, we have a few minutes. The budget for this picture? $ 26 Million.

In future films? I doubt it, I really doubt it. I was the producer in Star Trek VI, which is the last Star Trek and I was involved with. I did the story and produced that film. Since then there has been a whole new category kind of thing over the making of the Star Trek movies, I haven't been asked to be involved, well, I was asked to be in the next one, but I chose not to and we haven't had any contact since. 

They have my phone number but I don't expect the phone to be ringing.

No, I had no difficulty in encouraging my son to get into the industry, he chose to do it.  ….  He was a lawyer, he decided to change careers.

The question has to do with working individually as a solitary artist, in a production versus in a community to create a product; it is very, very different, very, very different. There is a whole social and political aspect to this kind of work and there are hundreds, literally: hundreds, of people involved, temperaments, egos, salaries, jealousies, love affairs, all kinds of things going on. You have to be conscious of them and try to deal with it successfully, motivating people.
 

The first time I directed a Star Trek film was especially interesting for me because I was quite surprised to discover that the cast were not terribly excited about this idea.
I expected exactly the contrary. I was very naïve about it. I thought we all like each other, we all have been along and like “one of us is going to do this movie”. And it wasn't that at all. Some kind of “wow, what kind of ego trip is this?” I guessed they sensed that it had to do with the studio because the studio wanted me to act in the movie …
They probably figured that this was some kind of a pay off to get me to act in the movie and what good could come out of that? It took me a while to prove to the rest of the cast that I was serious about the work and that I knew how to do the work, that I came well prepared and that they should, too. I found the first week or ten days, I was being tested every day. They asked questions like “Why do I move from here to there?” you know?  …  But we got it on okay.

But there really is a mayor difference. I enjoy working alone because during the show because I do enjoy the fact that I don't have to be responsible of somebody else's vision, taste, needs, ego, salary concerns, temperament, any having said that I'd rather be acting than directing. The director arrives on the set and is immediately beset with problems, questions and demands. They need you over on the mountain and you have to climb up that rope about 35 feet to see if you like the shot. And if you climb down the other see you have a look from that side and in the meantime you can check the temperature of the water and go over to the make up over there and … it sounds exciting and it is. But it is very, very demanding and the actor on the set and has probably rested and enough sleep and a cup of coffee, you know? Your trailer has been appropriately warmed and  … ….


Q. No, I am really not actively involved with that I have people who are around me. I have a secretary who does that kind of thing. I have family at home who does it, no, I don't spend time on the net, no. I occasionally go to it for information or to a couple of websites, but I don't spend a lot of time with it. Are you talking about chats, kind of these things? You are shaking your head, you don't mean that. Oh, yuh.  …  As a very young boy I was reading a series of books which were called the Tom Swift Stories.  .. with his flying machine. I got the idea of a little boy experimenting with these wonderful objects and devices and so forth. I enjoyed those. And I enjoyed science in school. I enjoyed chemistry, physics I enjoyed in school. I always enjoyed building things and making things and wondering about futuristic ideas. And somehow I found out that I was useful very early on in science fiction. I said the very first job I did was Zombies of the Stratosphere which was a science fiction.
 

I never had trouble getting work in science fiction. Now, on the other hand, the question has to do with typecasting. And typecasting is a very interesting subject. I try to give you a sense how it operates with me or how I think it operates. Typecasting is a double edged sword. It is true that there is a negative aspect to it. Some people ask “are you typecast” as if it was some kind of a death-nail. I say: Probably “yes”, because I do certain types of characters, I am perceived to be an actor for certain kinds of roles. If you are not typecastable you can have difficulties. If it is not clear to the directors and studios and people who would be hiring you what kind of role you should be playing or what you are useful for, it can be difficult for you. If they don't “get you” as a certain kind of person. So, if you are a comedian, I know certain kind of people who are comedians, and they have got that talent, but they are not considered for that role because they don't immediately ring that bell. “He is not that kind of person”. He or she will become that kind of person, reach for that role and be creative for it, but it is not necessarily a safe way to be cast. And casting is usually a scary process and you probably look for some sense of security, knowing that the role will be played properly. So, the typecasting has been useful to me. There are times that I have been fortunate enough to been able to break out of it totally and play characters that were totally outside the role that I'd probably be cast at, but on the other hand it has provided me a steady stream of work over the years.

“What advice would I give to get into the industry?” Well, I make this very brief, scheduling what my process was. I started acting when I was eight years old. At the time I was 17 I was obsessed with it. I knew this is what I had to do for the rest of my life. It didn't matter what ..  I was and I would be an actor. If there was a question whether I get in or not, I act for a while and see what happens, I was just going o do this work. Somehow I would find a niche for myself. I came to California to go the theatrical school and then began to go through the process of looking for an agent and got my ten glossies made and I went through that process. It took me 15 years before I could make a living as an actor.
After ten years I was making a living when I was acting and teaching acting classes. That was the first time I did not have to work in other kinds of jobs like driving a taxi, like delivering newspapers, like working in pet shops and doing all the other things that an artist has to do somewhere along the way. I was not enormously gifted, lucky or wealthy. It took me a while. So, that's my story. So, keep your eye on the passion and not on the pay cheque.

What projects do I have? The company I am having now is called Alien Voices, I have started with John de Lancie who played Q in Next Generation. We are producing audio dramatizations for science fiction classics. We have so far done H.G. Well's Time Machine, we have done The Journey to the Centre of the Earth, we have done Arthur Canon Doyle's Lost World....

For Simon & Schuster audio books I'll be signing a lobby after … I'm kidding, I'm kidding. (laughter from the audience). A month ago we did a life television broadcast of our group of actors and actresses doing a radio production. We did a radio presentation on stage, life, downtown … doing a performance in front of an audience of 800 or 900 people. Actors reading into microphones and the folly people, specialists for sound effects, who were on stage with us and we broadcasted life on television. It was quite successful. We had fun doing that kind of thing. I am what I consider short term projects where I don't spend the next two or three years of my life with filmmaking. This is not something I need to do for any reason now in my lifetime.

(Remark from the organizer.)
(laughing) Thank you