Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we’re afraid to do it.
Taking a chance, and stepping beyond the safety of the world we’ve always known is the only way to grow, though, and without risk there is no reward.
Thoughts like this have weighed heavily on me for the last year or so, as I look around and reassess my life.
This past year has involved more self-discovery and more change than any so far in my life. It’s been tumultuous, scary, exhilarating, depressing, thrilling, joyful.
I’ve realized recently that I have changed dramatically since I started this website. When it began just over a year ago, I was very adrift, terrified that the Internet would tear me apart.
Well, it did, and it turns out that was a great thing. The Internet kicked my ass, and it forced me to find strength within myself, and to not derive my sense of self-worth from the opinions of others.
This website has introduced me to amazing people, weird people, scary people. This website, and many people who read it, has also helped me figure out what is important to me in my life, what makes me happy.
I guess the feeling has been building for a long time, and I knew it was there, but I wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. It was –is– scary. It’s a major change in my life, but I can’t ignore it, and to ignore it is to ignore myself, and cheat myself out of what I think my real potential is.
Back in the middle of May, I was asked to do this commercial. Well, not just a commercial, more of an infomercial, really. My first reaction was, “No way. Infomercials are death to an actor’s career.”
But then I thought about the last few years of my life as an actor. The daily frustrations. Losing jobs for stupid, capricious, unfair reasons.
I looked back and saw that it really started when my friend Roger promised me a role in Rules of Attraction, then yanked it away from me without so much as a phonecall or email or anything. Then there was the roller coaster of Win Ben Stein’s Money, and missing family vacations so I could stay home and go on auditions that all ended up being a huge waste of my time.
Throughout this time, this painful, frustrating Trial, I began to write more and more. It’s all here on WWDN. I can see my writing style change, as I find my voice, and figure out what I want to say, and how I want to say it.
The emails changed, too. People stopped asking me to do interviews for them about Star Trek, and started asking me if I’d conrtibute to their magazines, or weblogs, or books.
When this phonecall came for the infomercial, I took a long walk, and assessed my life.
The bottom line was: They were offering to pay me enough to support my family for the rest of this year. I wouldn’t have to worry about bills anymore. I wouldn’t have to view each audition as This One Big Chance That I Can’t Screw Up.
Accepting it would mean some security for me and my family. It was also a really cool computer-oriented product (which I’ll get to later, don’t worry). It’s not like I would be hawking “The Ab-Master 5000” or “Miracle Stain Transmogrifier X!”
It would also mean, to me at least, the end of any chance I had of ever being a really major actor again. That elusive chance to do a film as good as, or better than Stand By Me or a TV series as widely-watched as TNG would finally fall away.
I thought of all these things, walking Ferris through my neighborhood.
It was a long walk.
I thought of Donald Crowhurst.
I thought about why actors –and by actors I mean working, struggling actors like myself, not Big Time Celebrities like I was 15 years ago– suffer the indignities of auditions and the whims of Hollywood.
I remembered something I said to a group of Drama students just before their graduation: “If you want to be a professional actor, you have to love the acting, the performing, the thrill of creating a character and giving it life. You have to love all of that more than you hate how unfair the industry is, more than the constant rejection –and it is constant– hurts. You must have a passion within you that makes it worthwhile to struggle for years while pretty boys and pretty girls take your parts away from you again and again and again.”
I listened to my words, echoing off the linoleum floor of that High School auditorium, and realized that those words, spoken long ago were as much for me as they were for them.
I listened to my words and I realized: I don’t have that passion any more. I simply isn’t there.
I am no longer willing to miss a family vacation, or a birthday, or a recital, for an audition.
I am no longer willing to humiliate myself for some casting director who refuses to accept the fact that I’m pretty good with comedy.
I am no longer willing to ignore what I’m best at, and what I love the most, because I’ve spent the bulk of my life trying to succeed at something else.
So I walked back to my house, picked up the phone, and accepted the offer.
It was tumultuous, scary, exhilarating, depressing, thrilling, joyful.
I would spend the next three weeks wondering if I’d made the right decision. I would question and doubt it over and over again.
Was it the right decision? I don’t know.
Things have certainly changed for me, though. I have had 3 auditions since May. A year ago that would have killed me, but I’m really not bothered by it now.
I’ve made my family my top priority, and decided to focus on what I love: downloading porn.
Just kidding.
I’ve decided to focus on what I really love, what is fulfilling, maybe even what I am meant to do, in the great cosmic sense: I am writing.
I write every day, and I see the faint outlines of something really cool. I occasionally catch glimpses of an ability, unrefined, long-ignored, coming to life.
Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we’re afraid to do it.
Taking a chance, and stepping beyond the safety of the world we’ve always known is the only way to grow, though, and without risk there is no reward.
Risk was always one of my favorite games.
Tomorrow: Why Creation Cut Me From The 15th Anniversary of TNG Convention, and Why It’s a Good Thing.
WFS on KNRK
Arena is kicking my ass right now, because we are doing a special episode featuring the HALO National Championship on Friday…so I haven’t had time to recap my amazing time in San Francisco with the EFF…but it’s coming as soon as I get some spare time.
However, I just got an email from my friend Gabe, letting me know that tomorrow morning at 7AM PDT, he will be interviewing WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER on radio station KNRK.
KIRK on KNRK? Is that a goocher or what? Does it get any better than this? How many more rhetorical questions can I ask? Will I stop? Who knows?!
Well, this news is too great to pass up, and I think the world should know.
So if you happen to run into the world, would you please pass this along?
Thanks so much.
Love you.
Mean it.
Buh-bye.
H.
This afternoon, you can watch me on TechTV’s The Screen Savers. Then tonight, I head into the DNA Lounge in San Francisco to defend your right to free speech and parody on the Internet as I go toe to toe with Barney in a celebrity boxing match brought to you by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Chilling Effects project.
If you’re in or near San Francisco, and your value your rapidly diminishing rights of free speech and free expression, I encourage you to come and check it out.
However, if you can’t be there, for whatever reason, here is a copy of the speech I’m giving tonight.
—
“Copyright law is a good idea. It allows actors, writers, and musicians to create and own intellectual property, and hopefully derive a living from their creations.
As an actor and writer, I have a personal stake in making sure that Copyright law is enforced. If I can’t own the works I create, then I can’t feed my family.
The music labels, publishing houses and studios who release our creative works would have you believe that unless we strengthen copyright laws, their clever euphemism for eroding your rights to parody and free expression, all artists will suffer.
Don’t you believe them. As a negotiator for the Screen Actors Guild, I have firsthand experience with these men who claim to care so greatly for artists, and I call shenanigans. The greatest danger to musicians is not Gnutella. It is the label. The greatest danger to actors and film makers is not DeCSS. It is the studio. These corporate masters care little for the artists who are filling their 4 car garages with new Porsches and filling their private jets with fuel and “hostesses.”
What they do care about is controlling how you listen to music, or watch movies, and, increasingly, how you discuss and react to our creations.
Copyright law was best described as “a balance between expression that the owners can control and expression that is left open to the commons.”
Right now we are facing the complete destruction of that delicate balance. Corporations, and their congressional lap dogs, are doing everything in their power to ensure that the “expression left open to the commons” is forever removed, leaving only “expression the owners can control.”
That is a truly terrifying statement, which bears repeating: “expression only the owners can control.”
Do you want your freedom of expression controlled by a studio, record label, or multi-national corporation? Do you want Sony’s goons kicking in your door because you dare call Shakira SUCKira? Do you want Paramount to have the right to tell you that you can’t write that Star Trek fan fiction you’ve been working on while your wife is asleep? You know, the one where you’re the captain and Counselor Troi is giving you a “special session?” Do you want Best Buy telling you that you’re a criminal for expressing, on your website, your opinion that, “Best Buy sucks?”
Of course we don’t. We all value our freedoms of expression and our rights to satire and parody. Can you imagine a world without “The Onion,” or “Satirewire?” Area Men everywhere would be slienced. I don’t want to live in that world.
Corporations know that they’re wrong. They rightfully fear the Internet, and those of us who know how to use it. They don’t like it when we step outside of the narrowly defined, consumer culture they’ve created for us.
They have seen “expression left open to the commons” running counter to “expression that the owners can control,” and rather than respect our rights, they are working feverishly to destroy that all-too-delicate balance.
Corporations regularly abuse copyright law to silence dissent. Best Buy, Wal*Mart and Starbucks have all sent Cease and Desist letters to angry consumers who feel that they’ve been ripped off, and, like me, taken their case to the public via the Internet.
So they are shoving money at congress, and sending lawyers after us.
Our fundamental rights are under attack by a terrified cabal of corporate monsters, who have bought and paid for the DMCA and CARP, and I say that the erosion of our rights stops right here, right now.
I will continue to parody public figures and cherished icons.
I will state, on my website, in 100 point flashing red type on a blue background: “Barney sucks! Best Buy sucks! Sony Sucks! Microsoft sucks, Bill Gates is the anti-Christ and John Ashcroft can kiss my ass!”
I will promote artist’s rights. I will educate, enlighten, and empower. I will write, call, FAX and email congress.
Copyright Law is not a tool of repression granted to an unaccountable corporation by a corrupt congress at the expense of an ignorant public.
It exists to protect and promote artists. Don’t ever forget that.
Tonight, we are ignorant no longer, and as ignorance goes, so goes complacency. The EFF has created an online library where you can research your rights, at chillingeffects.org. Get online, get educated and get involved.
Individually, we can get angry. Together, we can, and will, make a difference.”
46&2
I’m working my ass off today for Arena…we’re working on a really cool special, and I’m under the gun to finish a script, so I don’t have time for a real entry…
But Loren sent me this article, in the SF Gate, and I wanted to share it.
The interesting thing about this story, and the proliferation of stories like it, and celebrity weblogs, is that most people aren’t able to see people like me, who are on their tvs, as real people, with real problems and real dreams.
People look for and expect to find a validation of their perception of the celebrity in question, and when they don’t find that, they either react with surprise and delight, or they find ways to force what they found to fit their perception.
If someone came here looking for a failed actor, they could find that. If someone came here looking for a very happy husband and father, they could find that too.
It depends on what they’re looking for, I think, and what they’re willing to see.
Europa
I’ve been asked my more than one person to respond to the Open Letter to America, which is currently burning up the internet so fast, you’d think it was written by rtm.
I am reminded of a time in my own life when I got a letter from someone I really cared about, telling me what I refused to tell myself: I was an asshole.
Set the wayback machine circa 1988 or 1989. I am on top of the world. I travel in limos and fly first class to events where hundreds and sometimes thousands of people scream for me. Everywhere I look, I see my face staring back at me from Teen Cheese and Non-Threatening Boys magazines. I am getting more fan mail than anyone else at Paramount.
I am also desperately unhappy.
===
In the summer of 1988 or 89, I had this huge crush on a girl from school. She was really beautiful, sexy, and fun to be with.
We dated a few times, hung out a lot, and I was really falling for her. Then one day she stopped returning my calls, and coming over.
I was crushed. I didn’t understand what had happened.
Then one morning I got a letter from her. In it, she told me, as delicately as possible, that she just couldn’t be around me any more. I was arrogant, rude, ungrateful for what I had, and I treated her like property. I was demanding, overbearing, unwilling to listen to or respect other people’s opinions. I was a dick, an ass, a jerk. She described to me a person I wouldn’t ever want to sit next to on a bench, much less be.
I was stunned. I took the letter to my best friend Darin, and showed it to him, looking for comfort. He’d help me feel better about this frigid bitch, I thought.
When he was done reading it, he asked me what I thought. I declared, with righteous indignation, that she “didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about”, and that she could “fuck off, because it was bullshit.”
Darin looked at me, and he said, gently, “Wil, you should read it again, because she’s right.”
I looked at him, he looked back at me. This was not the reaction I was expecting.
“What?” I asked, wondering if maybe I’d brought the wrong letter.
“[Her name] wrote you this letter because she cares about you, and she doesn’t like what you’ve become. Frankly, none of your friends do. So you can read it again, and take it to heart, or you can blow it off, and continue to alienate yourself from everyone who cares about you, including me.”
I really respected Darin. He was (is) the most tolerant, patient, loyal, honest person I knew (know). His words, added to those I held in my now-quaking hands were a Rosetta stone. Everything I didn’t like about myself but was unwilling to address was all on those 3 sheets of hand-written 8×10 spiral-bound notebook paper, translated by my best friend into language I could understand.
A door was opened in that moment, and I had a choice to make: walk through and face myself, or ignore it and walk past.
I walked through, and on that day I began the process of re-evaluating my life, my priorities, and most importantly my attitude. It was scary, it was uncertain, it was vital. It was a long process, taking nearly 6 years, but it started that day.
People ask me all the time why I haven’t ended up dead or drug-addicted, or in trouble in the law. The answer is still written on those sheets of paper, long-lost but not forgotten.
To this day I carry more than a little bit of guilt for the way I treated her. I’ve been able to apologize to everyone else who I’ve wronged in my life, but never to her. Maybe she’ll read this and hear me say “Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
So, back to the Open Letter. Do I agree with all of it? No. I think some of it is wildly off-base, and I think the message would be listened to by more people who need to hear it if it wasn’t so inflammatory.
On the other hand, I think that America has an opportunity to walk through an open door, and take a long hard look at ourselves. The simple fact is, America, most of the world really doesn’t like us. We’re arrogant, irresponsible, and unaccountable. We loudly an constantly remind the world that we are a Superpower…well, with great power comes great responsibility, right?
The great thing about America is that We The People have a voice, and the louder that voice, the more insistent that voice, the harder it is to silence.
Let’s raise our voice, and walk through this open door. It’s scary. It is uncertain, but it is vital that we do. It will be a long process, but we can do it.
I’ll take the first step, with this Thought for Today:
“If you succeed through violence at the expense of other’s rights and welfare, you have not solved the problem, but only created the seeds for another.”