Zachary Quinto provided an affectionate video introduction of Leonard Nimoy for Entertainment Weekly’s CapeTown Film Festival earlier this month.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
Both appear in the new Star Trek movie, Nimoy uncredited.
*** ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT (DIDN’T YOU PAY ATTENTION THE FIRST TIME?) ***
Peter Weller, who had the title role Buckaroo Banzai (discussed here recently), plays a strident Starfleet admiral in the new movie.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
The photography of Leonard Nimoy headlines the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s big “Halla Gala” fundraising event this Halloween night. The LA Times‘ Hero Complex blog reports there will be an exhibit of selected pieces from his conceptual project “Who Do You Think You Are?” –
Last year, Nimoy spent two 16-hour days shooting portraits of total strangers in Northampton, Mass., who had answered a public invitation to share a glimpse of their hidden selves. He photographed 95 people and chose 25 of them for the exhibit that will go on display next summer at MASS MoCA.
“The idea was to invite people to reveal their secret selves, the self they wish to be or the self they hide from the world,” said Nimoy, 78, who has been an avid photographer since his youth. ”There was a measure of bravery in this by everyone involved. I had no idea what to expect. Some of the people walked in with these amazing stories, stories you couldn’t anticipate or make up.”
The folks who paid $5,000 or more for their tickets will have a photographic portrait taken by Nimoy tonight.
If William Thompson defeats Michael Bloomberg in the race to serve as New York’s next mayor, that won’t be V-for-Victory he’s signing, it will be the Vulcan salute:
In an e-mail message, Mr. Nimoy said that he contributed to Mr. Thompson’s campaign because Mr. Thompson was “a credible candidate.”
Then, drawing on reasoning – and language – commonly applied by Spock, he said: “Since he is in danger of being outspent, I find it logical that my contribution should elevate his financial resources to equal those of this opponent.”
That would be the city’s billionaire mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, 67, who is said to be prepared to spend $100 million of his personal fortune in his campaign and with whom Mr. Nimoy has more in common than he might imagine.
[Thanks to Gary Farber and Steven Silver for the story.]
David Klaus reports that last weekend “A Leonard Nimoy-autographed napkin as seen on the sitcom Big Bang Theory was auctioned for the charity Beit T’Shuvah, which is a 12-Step Jewish residential recovery program in L. A.”
The Trekmovie site has the story:
…the Trek-crazy CBS sitcom Big Bang Theory incorporated the gift of a Leonard Nimoy autographed napkin into their Christmas episode. As it turns out, there really is a genuine Big Bang napkin signed by Nimoy, and it is being auctioned off for charity…
David adds: “At this link are further linked a clip from the show with the napkin, and a TV Guide clip with actor Jim Parsons talking about it. The show scene is very funny — I had avoided it, as I had heard it nastily stereotyped sf fans, but I may start watching it now.”
Here are six developments of interest to fans:
(1) The New York Times ran an obituary for pioneer Trek fan Joan Winston quoting other equally historic fan personalities:
“Most of us belonged to the Lunarians, a science fiction club, and we attended Lunacon, their convention, but there was a sense that ‘Star Trek’ fans were not real sci-fi fans,” said Devra Langsam, a fellow organizer of the first “Star Trek” convention and the editor of Spockanalia, the first “Star Trek” fanzine.
Elyse Pines, a friend of Ms. Langsam’s, proposed a gathering specifically for “Star Trek” fans. A mutual friend brought in Ms. Winston, who used her show business contacts to secure tapes of 15 “Star Trek” episodes, a blooper reel and the presence of Roddenberry. She also requested a few moon rocks from NASA.
“I just assumed that a day or two before the event the mailman would bring us a little postal package full of moon rocks,” she later told Mr. Shatner. Instead, NASA dispatched a trailer truck with two tons of memorabilia that included a genuine spacesuit stuffed with a mannequin astronaut.
(2) Ursula LeGuin and Shaun Tan will be among the authors present for the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, October 21-26.
(3) Haven’t got your fill of articles about the doomed book publishing business? Look no farther than the recent issue of New York Magazine and a piece titled “The End“:
The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world…
“What I’ve heard from editors is, ‘My judgment doesn’t count any longer’ … There used to be a reason to get into publishing… Whether they know it or not, they all want to be Maxwell Perkins. It’s a kind of secondary immortality. They didn’t flock to publishing because they want to publish Danielle Steel.”
- Kent Carroll, formerly of Carroll & Graf, now running Europa Editions.“[Book trailers are] all the rage right now, but I would love to see an example of one video that really did generate a lot of sales. There’s a sense of desperation.”
- Bloomsbury’s Peter Miller
(4) Here’s a link to a touching article in the LA Times about Greg Lintner, the IRS employee killed in the Metrolink crash on September 12.
(5) Mary Reed and Eric Mayer’s interesting posts about their mystery writing appear at Business-Online-Info. There I also found this link to an excellent new interview with them that poses some very creative questions.
(6) Leonard Nimoy appeared on the September 20 edition of NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me“, playing their game called “You’re not that Spock, either” which required him to answer three questions about the expertise of Dr. Spock, child-rearing. (The link is to a menu of the show’s various segments.)
[Includes links courtesy of John Mansfield and Andrew Porter.]