BUT DID HE DO A ONE-MAN JULIUS CAESAR? A report on the William Shatner roast.

[...] The show opened with the video segment of Nimoy, whom Shatner begged to attend the roast, only to be told that the Spock actor did not wish to insult his friend. Nimoy told him to live long and prosper, then overheard Shatner's insulting him for refusing to attend and broke into an argument with him.

Shatner then rode in through the audience on a horse - much of his humanitarian work has centered on charity events involving his horses - and sat in his original Enterprise captain's chair for his roast, borrowed for the event from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

[...]

"That’s right folks, Captain Kirk is a Jew! You can tell Mel Gibson to shove that photon torpedo right up his ass!" Alexander joked.

[...]

He also claimed that Shatner had never taken a job solely for the money, not even Incubus, "a movie filmed entirely in the language of Esperanto." Shatner has also written "dozens of books, none of them any good", according to Alexander, and is "an accomplished director...his masterpiece, of course, Star Trek V: The Death of a Franchise." As for Shatner's humanitarian work, "He is a giver, and never stops giving unless it involves him actually giving his own money." Numerous jokes were also made about Shatner's expanding waistline.

Alexander introduced Nichols by saying that she broke racial barriers in the 1960's on a show that gave her not only her own dressing room, but a separate drinking fountain, entrance, and toilet as well. "In the 1960's, African-American actors were often treated poorly and paid less. But [Shatner] made sure everyone who worked with [him] was treated poorly and paid less!" joked the actress, who as Lieutenant Uhura shared television's first interracial kiss with Captain Kirk - an event that Alexander claimed made her throw up. "I'm very happy about it, because until that day, I'd never pressed my lips to an asshole before," Nichols insisted. "And I'll never forget what Bill said to me after that kiss," imitating Shatner's acting style, "He said, 'Sulu...uses...more...tongue!"

A bit more, with some pictures, here, and here.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 insofar as you give a quatloo. This thing will reportedly air on Sunday, not that it will do me any good, without cable tv, sniffle.

Incidentally, I finally saw Free Enterprise a couple of weeks ago, and although I'd heard good things about it for years, I was quite surprised at how hilarious and good I thought it was, from the POV of someone who loved Star Trek as a kid, and otherwise is up on both the few good sf films ever done, and a fair number of the crap "sci-fi" films; although a bit exaggerated, and having nothing to do with organized fandom, either written sf fandom, or media fandom, it really worked well as a celebration of skiffy geekdom (I say even though I've never bought an action figure in my life).

Surprisingly well made, the small budget didn't show, and it was great fun to spot the endless injoke references and quotes from endless movies and tv shows (like "can't do it, Sally" coming from The Godfather, or the fact that the liquor the characters are drinking is always, unremarked upon, green), and, of course, you haven't lived until you've seen William Shatner rapping the famous speech from Julius Caesar with a rap group and all the moves (the new Special Edition DVD includes the full video on the 2nd disk, along with about half an hour of good deleted scenes, and a quite good "making of" feature).

Excellent, near-mandatory, geek film, I thought, unless you have a furious dislike of pre-Will & Grace Eric McCormack, who is one of the two leads; the movie also, of course, paved the way for Shatner in Boston Legal, by showing so well how he can do comedy, and isn't at all afraid to make fun of himself (which really puts those old renditions of Rocket Man, and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds in a new light).

(Buy a copy here for $17.99 and I'll get a tiny cut.)