The Story of My Life

Hello, again

Today I received this email:

Dear Mr. Shatner,

I want to say I am your biggest fan!  I’ve seen every movie and tv show you did!  I have read all of your books!  And I’ve even bought your records!  You are the best! I just know that one day they are going to make a movie all about your life and I wanted to know who you thought would be the best person to play you in it?  Would you like that guy who played you in the Star Trek movie to play you in your movie?

First off, thank you for such a lovely letter. You really are a huge fan, and I certainly do appreciate your support.

Now, even though I don’t know whether I deserve a full movie about myself, I have been working on a script for quite a while and do have a treatment for it.  The working title is Needs More Shatner: The Bill Shatner Story, and it would basically be a very intimate portrait of me.  It would have everything anyone would ever want to know about me.  Not one of those boring movies that goes back to my childhood and reveals things like what it was like to grow up in Canada, but a movie about me.  What I like to eat.  Whether I like boxers or briefs.  What channels I watch on television.  Which supermarket do I go to.  Things like that.  Things about me.

Needs More Shatner: The Bill Shatner Story

I actually have given considerable thought about who could portray me. I'm a complex man, and the actor who would take on this challenge would need to be someone with the range and the depth of emotion needed to bring out all of my subtleties and shades.  Friends have suggested George Clooney or Johnny Depp, but to be honest with you, I just think the role is beyond any current actor.  No, the only person I think has the chops for this is me.  And who better, anyway?  After all, I know the character pretty well, and even did play myself once before in a movie.  Besides being the only one able to pull it off, the marketing would be a snap.  I can picture the billboards now, with my face 100 feet tall: Bill Shatner starring as Bill Shatner in Needs More Shatner: the Bill Shatner story.

It has a nice ring to it, no?