Actor William Shatner offered amusing, and often off-color, words of advice to Cisco Live attendees
The final keynote at Cisco Live held in Las Vegas this week was an interview of William Shatner conducted by Cisco senior VP and (and conference MC) Carlos Dominguez. Shatner was hilarious. He was also surprisingly sage.
The following is a list of advice gleaned from his appearance. Be forewarned. Shatner was unafraid of salty language. As this is a family friendly publication, I’ve toned it down a little but not completely. If off-color language offends you, I’ll tell you when to close your eyes.
If you talk to others who attended Shatner’s appearance, they may remember the moment when he flipped the bird at the audience, or told the story of how the death of Timothy O’Leary inspired him. (The story goes, O’Leary’s final words were, “Of course!”) Those moments were funny, but I found the following list of stories to be especially profound.
Shatner was asked about his education. Dominguez was under the mistaken idea that the actor officially studied Shakespeare in college. Not true. He was a business major at McGill University in Montreal. The mistake was an honest one. Bill was far more interested in chasing girls and hanging out with a Shakespearean theater group than studying, he admits. (Many years alter, McGill would later award Shatner an honorary doctorate.)
“I never went to class,” Shatner said. “I graduated with the least amount of education you can get. I basically cheated my way through school.” Nevertheless, fresh out of college he was hired by a theater group as business manager, because he had a business degree. Since he never actually went to business class, he was quickly fired and was hired on as an actor for the season instead. The next year, he got a call from another theater troupe, who saw his degree and previous business manager stint and wanted him to be their business manager.
Lesson learned: “Like in every business, including Cisco as I understand it, you can fail upward.”
Salty language warning. Close your eyes now …
Shatner was asked about retaining creativity, given the vast array of projects he has undertaken, including writing SciFi and graphic novels, cutting two albums (the second soon to be released), directing documentaries (including an upcoming one featuring all the former “captains” of Star Trek), Emmy-award winning roles and so on. He is also known for his love of fast cars, reigning horses and other adrenaline junky activities.
He replied, “I’m full of fear.”
But he still told a great story about how desensitizing yourself to peer pressure will protect your creativity. When someone expresses an idea, if people laugh or criticize it, most of us will let our idea be squashed then and there. The story is, when Bill was 19, he and a group of buddies canoed from Canada to New York. There was a point when the group found themselves in a misty lake where they couldn’t see how far from land they were. Bill had to pee. It was impossible to row the boat ashore. They couldn’t see where shore was.
So he told his buddies that he was going to pee, stands up to do his business, and noticed they were all staring at him. “I didn’t have to pee anymore. I sat back down,” he says.
Lesson learned: “Don’t do that!” he exclaimed. When the time comes, “piss!”
Ok, you can open your eyes now.
Shatner has had a storied career and a sometimes rocky personal life. Gonzalas asked him how he was able to cope with so much change. Bill replied that there are two kinds of change. One is disruptive change, such as a divorce, death of a loved one, getting fired from a job. In those cases, change is rough. You grieve for what you lost and get through it as best you can.
But there is also “evolutionary change.” or entropy. Nothing ever really stays the same, from the cells in the body to societies around the globe. This kind of change, even if it appears at first to be rough, is always for the better “because you are still living. If it was for the worse, you would die,” he said. “You have to embrace it and know it will be good.”
Such change isn’t limited to individuals “The same goes for business. The world around is always changing. Sometimes management wants to cling to the old ways. They fear losing money or customers. But they have to change. Cisco has to change, gradually, but change has to happen.”
Lesson learned: “Say yes to life. If you say no, you may stay safe but you go nowhere,” Bill says.
Shatner was asked how he achieved so much success in his life. He disputed that. “I’ve never used that word about myself. Success hasn’t happened yet. It’s always just over there .. the joy and happiness of success.” He says he never had a mentor and nobody ever “gave me anything. I had to work to support my three daughters … and several other people.” He also notes that he’s had tremendous failures in his life — divorce and business failures.
He says it’s less about being successful and more about feeling enmeshed in the moment. Doing something so well that it becomes a part of you. This triggers creativity and he finds the older he gets, the more creative he feels. Much of that arose from getting out of his box. Public speaking is a good example. He was asked to speak at the first Star Trek convention and he said, “No. I’m an actor! Not a puppet.” Truth was, acting was scary enough for him, when the lines were known and practiced. Extemporaneous speaking in front of a large audience of thousands of people was “daunting.”
But when he heard the first convention had a turnout of 15,000 fans, he changed his mind and agreed to speak. He discovered that not only was he able to be amusing, but that by appealing to the crowd, they became his friends, and didn’t mind if he stammered, or “uhmed” or couldn’t think of the name of a word. Indeed, on many occasions he asked the crowd at Cisco Live to help him out with a word or phrase such as (“what’s the name for the scientific principal that means things are always changing? And the crowd told him “entropy.”)
This lead to a lot more public speaking and eventually helped him cope with doing a sitcom in front of a live audience, Sh*t My Dad Says, his first sitcom.
Lesson learned: “I have had opportunities to do things because of a certain popularity that I have achieved, but it’s still a struggle to do them. The struggle is the journey.”
Want more Shatner? Upcoming projects by William Shatner:
“The Captains” documentary, July 22, 8 p.m. on EPIX and EpixHD.com
Searching for Major Tom, a musical album, due out late 2011.
Raw Nerve, a weekly television show hosted by Shatner in which he interviews celebrities, on The Bio Channel.
Aftermath with William Shatner, a weekly television interview show in which Shatner interviews subjects from big news stories.
Shatner Rules an upcoming book of advice from Bill, in the same amusing style as his public appearances.
