|
|
|
Brandon Routh no longer under contarct to play SUPERMAN
Megan Fox v. Michael Bay on the quality of Transformers
Universal scores movie rights to Asteroids, development
Commentary on TRANSFORMERS 2...MINOR SPOILERS
Asylun's 10 hottest sci-fi babes
Jul 03 | Leading sci-fi website, Totalscifionline.com has teamed up with Star Trek Magazine to find out who is the best villain in Star Trek. Together, they want to know the diabolical masterminds who have sent a shiver down your spine and set your heart pounding and the evil geniuses who make it seem good to e bad. The top Star Trek villain will appear on a special commemorative Star Trek
Magazine cover, to be revealed later this year. Your vote could also win you year's subscription to Star Trek Magazine.For information on how to cast your vote, go here
Jul 02 | Doug Drexler's Drex Files blog psoted a couple of making-of for two images in Pocket Books 2010 Ships of the Line calendar. You can see Greg Stewart's "Operation Return", and "We Come In Peace For All Mankind" by Robert Wilde.
Jul 02 | Company of Angels (CoA), which was co-founded in 1959 by actor Leonard Nimoy, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary as Los Angeles' oldest non profit professional theater now headquartered at the historic Alexandria Hotel in downtown LA. CoA is readying to celebrate this milestone in the history of Los Angeles Theater - with a prestigious Charity Awards Gala slated for October 17, 2009 which will honor actor Leonard Nimoy for his role as a founding member as well as veteran actor Robert Ellenstein. "I'm looking forward to celebrating Company of Angels' 50th Anniversary Award Ceremony and Gala." Nimoy says of this special event in which he is proud to be a part of Check out the official website to learn more about The Company of Angels
Jul 01 | There may be no new Boston Legal episodes, but William Shatner is keeping very busy these days. In addition to his new talk show, Raw Nerve, he took time out to film a new TV spot for Priceline, titled Lighten Up. The clip is viewable on the Priceline Travel Blog
Jun 28 | Eight weeks in, Star Trek still drew audiences in eighth ($3.6 million this weekend, $246.2 million overall).
:
By GustavoLeao / 13:28, 28 October 2005 / People
Frontiers Online posted an exclusive interview with STAR TREK actor George Takei (Captain Sulu), in which he talks about his new play EQUUS, and decided to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality. Here are a few excerpts.
FRONTIERS: Let's talk about the character Dysart and the play, Equus. It's an amazingly meaty, compelling role, but was there anything personally that drew you to it?
GEORGE TAKEI: I first saw it in London at the National Theatre and I was blown away. I'm an anglophile. I visit England regularly, sometimes three or four times a year, at least once a year. I was roaming around England and I was in Leicester, subsequently, and I saw a small production there, with a different set of actors playing it; it still blew me away. And then I saw Anthony Hopkins in it.
Q: Wow.
Yes, I was so impressed by the play, and then I saw Tony Perkins [in the lead role]. I never did see Richard Burton play it on stage. And then finally, it was my Star Trek colleague Leonard Nimoy,who played Dysart on Broadway. And then I saw Burton's movie, and I was just so disappointed by that. And Burton's one of my heroes. My very first film that I got, while I was still a student at UCLA, I was seen in a theatre-arts department production by a casting director from Warner Brothers, plucked out of this student production, and put in my first feature film, starring Robert Ryan and Richard Burton [the film was Ice Palace]. It was two weeks on location in a small fishing village in Alaska and then two months back at the studio. Burton and I were a perfect fit, because here's this star-struck, stage-struck young actor, full of questions, and here's this legendary figure who loved to talk about himself. I would pose a question, and he would carry on, you know, holding court, and the assistant would come and say, 'Mr. Burton, we're ready for you on the set now,' and then he'd say, 'Hang on, George, hang on,' then go on the set and tear your heart out with a wonderfully performed scene, and when the director said, "Cut," he would come back...Now George, as I was telling you - I mean, it was amazing. And here I am now, playing the role that he played on Broadway and in the movie version. There's kind of a circularity about Dysart for me.
Q: What makes you want to come out, publicly?
You know, it's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen. And then some doors are open and light comes in, and there are skylights and it widens. Brad's my partner, we've been together for 18 years. So, I've been "open," but I have not talked to the press. In that sense, maybe that's another opening of the corridor there.
Since this interview was coming up, I've been thinking on that. I've been thinking of my childhood. You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time I was very young. My memories of camp -- I was four years old to eight years old -- they're fond memories. We were first sent to a camp in Arkansas. I remember catching pollywogs and seeing them sprout legs, and then it snowed one winter in Arkansas, and for a Southern California kid, to discover snow was magical. Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp. We had to line up three times a day, and take our meal in a noisy mess hall -- normal for me to go to school in a black tarpaper barracks, and I used to begin school every morning pledging allegiance to the flag, and I could see the barbed-wire fence out there, and the guard towers, saying, "With liberty and justice for all," without being aware of the irony of those words. But when we came out of camp, that's when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful. That camp was sort of like jail, and bad people go to jail. So, when you're eight, nine... I didn't want to talk about being in an internment camp. They would ask me, where was I? I would say I was far away... Arkansas. But I never went into details. And there's a sense of some shame being Japanese-American.
Q: I would imagine so, if you have to basically disavow or pretend away four years of your life just because of that fact.
And I can never forget that teacher, Mrs. Rugen -- I hated that woman. She would refer to me as "that little Jap boy," and that stung. But I didn't even tell my parents about it, at home, because I thought, you know, it would hurt them to know that there was a teacher that was calling me "little jap boy." So I just swallowed the pain. I mean, everytime she said that -- she wouldn't say it to me, but I would hear her talking to other people about "that little Jap boy." It stung. But I just swallowed it. And you grow up like that, feeling ashamed of who you are, and having to swallow pain like that. And then when you get this realization that you have a different focus in life, you know, that other boys are interesting to you -- I remember certain boys, you know, who when they would hunker down their pants would go up and I would see their ankles, and that was exciting. At that time, that was exciting, but then you start realizing, that's not 'normal.' And so you start kind of hiding that as well. So [there's] that duality -- of feeling ashamed because you're Japanese-American, and feeling like you're different because of your [homosexuality]. And then [as you grow older], with reading, and talking to other people, your understanding of the situation starts to grow. And you think, 'It's wrong, this [shame] is not right.' And you start sharing it with more people, and you find other friends and organizations. As a matter of fact, I met Brad through Front Runners [an L.A.-based gay running club]. I was a runner from my junior-high-school days. And at a bar, you see a paper, and you see a gay running club. 'Oh, I'll show up,' you think. People would see me and they were kind of astounded, but I ran with them, they saw that I'm George, not Sulu. So your frame of reference, your community broadens. And as I said, that corridor that was narrow becomes wider and brighter. And you start realizing that this is 'normal.' For me. There's a lot of talk of normality. Equus talks about this, too. The large popular normality is that rigid, constrained normality. But there's another natural normality. And you come to realize, 'This is who I am. And by gum, I'm not going to let it be a constraint!' In the same way that I'm not going to let the fact that I am a Japanese-American, who was unjustly incarcerated and grew up with that, be a constraint.
Tell me more about how you met Brad.
We were runners. He was an outstanding runner; he's stopped running now. He's done more than me; I've done six marathons. We'd train together. And we were with the Front Runners, and there would be a lot of Front Runners that were planning on doing a particular marathon, training together. And then, you know, we discovered that we had common interests in the theatre -- he was a journalist -- we'd go to plays together and, you know, things happen. [Laughs]
Are you out to your family and friends?
You know, I've not had a good experience with one sibling. And I won't be specific because it's still a problem. My mother, initially, had some adjustments to make, but she got to like Brad very much. She got Alzheimer's, and it got very difficult for her, so we moved her in with us. Brad was wonderful. He was a saint. It's very difficult when you're dealing with someone with Alzheimer's. And some of the stages were... horrific. And Brad helped throughout that. She was with us for the last four years of her life. And I owe so much to him.
The full interview can be found here
George Takei has an official website, and his autobiography TO THE STARS is available via Amazon in the U.S.A., Canada, the United Kingdom, and Deutschland.
 Reply |
 Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
(1)
|
Reply |
Quote |
Quote from George Takei:
I've been "open," but I have not talked to the press.
Well, George, this is one helluva way to upstage Shatner's kidney stone in the headlines. ;-)
Live long and prosper.
--------------
Classic TOS 2-in-1 Phaser Replica -- The Affordable One!
|
Reply |
Quote |
(1)
|
Reply |
Quote |
(1)
|
Reply |
Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
|
Reply |
Quote |
| 
