William Shatner still conquering new frontiers

The Shatner negotiator
Joining us for lunch is Brett Keller, chief marketing officer at Priceline.com, where Shatner has been frontman for a decade, urging people to name their own price. Both sides have benefited: Priceline got an iconic figure to shape its brand, and Shatner got stock options and a forum upon which to surf back into the collective consciousness.

In the latest Priceline ads, Shatner bursts forth as the Priceline Negotiator, a mashup of James Bond and Ron Popeil who will do anything to help people broker better deals. Like most of us, Keller is both amused by and in awe of this star who came to a commercial shoot and started developing the character.

"You're a celebrity (and) you're asked to do a 30-second television spot. It's not the most glamorous thing in the world. But he dives in,'' Keller says. Market research, Priceline says, has shown an affinity for Shatner across age groups and demographics.

"Everyone knows William Shatner,'' Keller says. "You either love him or you hate him, and I think most people love him.''

For the hecklers, Shatner has a message. Decades after his much-maligned album, "The Transformed Man,'' boldly took "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds'' into strange new worlds, Shatner performed songs from "Has Been'' before 4,000 cheering fans. He closed with "Lucy'' and thrust a meaty digit skyward during the duration of the song.

It wasn't his forefinger. It wasn't his ring finger. It wasn't his pinky, either.

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"Now is everything.'' — Denny Crane

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He has always favored unusual paths. You don't make an entire horror movie in Esperanto ("Incubus,'' 1964) otherwise. You don't open an equestrian camp to help disabled Israeli and Arab children get along. And you certainly don't serenade George Lucas by dancing with stormtroopers while singing a personalized version of "My Way.''

Let's even put this on the table: William Shatner is vulnerable.

Stop smirking. Do you have the guts to get out there and whisper gently to the public about the night you found your wife dead in your swimming pool? Do you possess the chops to portray a lawyer who's slowly losing his mind? Would you record a dramatic reading of Exodus backed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra while knowing full well you'll be heckled by guys who, 40 years later, are still maligning your version of "Mr. Tambourine Man''?

With these choices, Shatner has carved himself a unique place in the culture through a complicated blend of sincerity, bombast, wink-nudge irony and self-parody. Hate him or love him, rarely has an entertainer straddled giggles and glory so adeptly. And rarely does a performer have three distinct and separate careers, each building on the last:

• Shatner No. 1: I'm a Very Serious Actor. This one played tortured men in two "Twilight Zone'' installments, a slick racist in 1962's "The Intruder'' and created the role of the iconic Captain Kirk in the original "Star Trek.'' This Shatner was drama on steroids, and he endured through the 1980s with the tough-as-nails "Hooker'' and a Captain-Kirk reprise in seven "Star Trek'' movies.
• Shatner No. 2: I Laugh At Myself And You Can Too. Emerged around 1997. There were hints of this Shatner earlier — well-played comedy in a couple "Trek'' episodes and a deadpan cameo in "Airplane II.'' But Shatner really jumped into self-parody in a 1997 film called "Free Enterprise,'' in which he played a heightened version of himself. Then came his appearance as the alien leader on "Third Rock From The Sun'' and his first Priceline ads, which cast him as a zeitgeisty, lounge-lizard joker.

"Something's happened out there,'' he told me a decade ago in the middle of this period. "People are perceiving me as funny, and they want funny things from me.'' He laughed all the way to the bank, and we marveled at his ability to reinvent himself.

• Shatner No. 3: We Laughed Until We Cried. The most sophisticated Shatner of all.

For years, it was assumed that Shatner equaled Kirk. Then came Denny Crane, a Boston law firm's rainmaker enduring the beginning of "the mad cow.'' Denny is loudmouthed, sexist, self-obsessed and terrified at what age is stealing. Only his much younger colleague, Alan Shore, understands the panic behind the bluster.

The lure of spoken-word singing
This Shatner combined the serious and the comic in the most unusual way. "I've obviously had those instruments at my call,'' he says, "but the opportunity to use them wasn't there.''

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Denny Crane offered that, but so did something else. As he was winning Emmys, Shatner ventured back into the admittedly narrow niche of spoken-word singing — a pantheon in which he had been roundly denounced — and paired up with Folds for the audaciously named "Has Been.''

In what's best described as aging white-guy rap, Shatner joined musical stalwarts like Henry Rollins and Joe Jackson to sing — and sometimes write — a concept album about age and regret. People, skeptical people, called it honest and moving.

In one song, "Real,'' Shatner joined Brad Paisley for this lyric: "I'd love to help the world in all its problems. But I'm an entertainer — and that's all.''

No, he's not the captain of the Enterprise. But he shortchanges himself with that statement. Something's going on with Shatner, some odd alchemy.

He's mined a vein of cultural coal that transcends ubiquity. He's been pitchman, legend, action figure, in-joke, cover boy, game-show host, cultural signpost, embodiment of a bright future. The cultural transaction has become so intricate that even a 2006 Comedy Central roast in which everyone from Betty White to Ron Howard's baby brother raised a leg in his direction seemed somehow forced, as if pimply teenage delinquents were shooting BBs at the cast-iron statue of a Civil War general.

"Shatner is THE epitome of the post-ironic, 21st-century American cultural attitude,'' says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University television and pop-culture historian.

"He's completely taken the entire history of American mass entertainment from radio days to the present and melded it into a character that's completely contemporary,'' Thompson says, his cadence growing Shatnerlike. "I'm going to be teaching that guy 50 years from now in my history of television classes if I'm still alive.''

Or put it another way. One of Shatner's daughters and her husband like to play a game: Get through an entire day without seeing an image of Dad somewhere in public and you win.

Usually, no one does.

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