Shatner Rules (14 page)

C
an a negotiation ever go too far? Sometimes. Sometimes, you can push too far and drive the deal off a cliff.

But, if you manage to stop just short of driving off a cliff, you'll have a pretty nice view. Or at least really good seats to a very important event.

Performing at the closing ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics certainly had its perks. Team Shatner runs thirteen deep—me, my wife Elizabeth, my three beloved daughters, my three beloved sons-in-law, and my assorted and beloved grandkids. The organizers of the ceremony were good enough to fly all of us up to enjoy the event. It was a real celebration of family togetherness, and one I will cherish forever.

The scenery in Vancouver is amazing, especially if you also have a great view of the people you love.

Seriously, you can't put a price on such things. So let's talk freebies!

We were offered hockey tickets—rinkside! To watch the United States take on Canada. It was
the
hottest ticket of the entire Olympics. No one is crazier about hockey than Canadians. It's the one place where we can be aggressive without shame or guilt or fear of being too showy.

This was a matchup against America! Our neighbors to the south, who don't know we exist. What better way to get the attention of Americans than to beat their team at hockey!

What a thrill. What an honor. What a conundrum for me.

They were offering four tickets. There are thirteen of us, more than a few of whom are rabid hockey fans.

As the patriarch of the clan, and the man whose face would be needed to gain entry to the event, I had to reserve one ticket for myself. Elizabeth, being my wife, is traditionally my plus one, so she would be going, too. Doling out the others would be a bit of a challenge.

We were all gathered at a dinner table in a restaurant. I explained that I had these free tickets, and I could see my sons-in-law Joel and Andrew sit bolt upright with anticipation. The two of them are huge hockey fans. I know they're hockey fans, they know I know they're hockey fans. Who else could I possibly take along for this historic sporting event?

“I thought I would take along Joel and Andrew, since they are such huge fans. They are the biggest hockey fans in the family, correct?”

Everyone nodded, and Joel and Andrew did everything in their power not to stand up, high-five one another, and shout “
In your face!
” at their respective wives and children. But they conducted themselves with quiet dignity and grace.

I had begun to dig in to dinner when my daughter Leslie piped up and said, “You know, Dad, Eric and Grant really like hockey.”

Eric and Grant are two of my teenaged grandkids, who were both eagerly wolfing down their dinners. Joel and Andrew swallowed hard and stared at their plates, drumming their fingers nervously.

“Oh, really?” I said. “I didn't know that. Well . . .”

It was time to negotiate. My first move?

I excused myself.

I went to the restroom, and paced back and forth. Joel and Andrew love hockey more than anything! Eric and Grant? Well, they liked hockey okay, but did they like it as much as Joel and Andrew? Probably not. For one thing, Joel and Andrew had about fifty years' worth of fandom between them over my grandkids. Eric and Grant needed a few more years to develop their own typically unhealthy adult relationship with the sport.

I splashed some water on my face and looked in the mirror. What was the negotiation endgame? Would I be a bad dad to my sons-in-law, or a bad grandpa to Eric and Grant? I needed a solution.

I returned to the table and tucked my napkin under my chin, armed with the weapon that solves everything.

Bribery.

“Eric, Grant, instead of going to the hockey game, what do you say I put a little money in your accounts? The value of the tickets, maybe?”

If my daughter's eyes had made a sound when they rolled, I would have been knocked over by the sonic shockwave. Leslie was used to this—all my daughters are used to this. Dinner with Dad rarely went without a debate or negotiation of some sort.

Negotiation aids the digestion! It warms you up for the eventual argument with the waiter over the check.

My grandsons pondered this monetary offer between them for a second.

“Nah,” said Eric. “We'll take the tickets.”

Grant agreed, in between mouthfuls. These grandkids of mine were tough negotiators. I was proud. They retained a unified front, wouldn't negotiate without the other, stayed strong, showed that it wasn't about money, it was about principle. And about watching grown men punch each other in the head on ice skates.

They got the tickets.

The grandkids won. It would be me, Elizabeth, and the two boys rinkside. It was then that I realized that good negotiating skills might not only be in the genetics of my blood relatives, because Joel played the ultimate trump card in any back and forth negotiation.

His eyes filled with tears.

Bravo, I thought to myself, while taking a big swig of sparkling water. Well played, young Joel! Crying always works!

FUN FACTNER:
William Shatner's son-in-law Joel Gretsch is a busy actor on both the small and big screens. And like all good actors, he can cry on cue.

I was very impressed, and waited to see which one of his nephews, seeing his uncle tear up, would be the first to fold and hand over a ticket. My other son-in-law, Andrew, is a special-effects artist. If he could have, he would have run away from the restaurant to fashion some sort of crying apparatus from latex and wire, but Joel beat him to the moist, sobby punch.

But neither boy noticed. Elizabeth did.

“Joel,” she said with great empathy, “you can have my ticket.”

Lovely Elizabeth. She stood by her man by agreeing not to sit with him.

There was much celebration as Joel danced on the table, and much relief for me. My wonderful Elizabeth had taken the heat off me. I was a great grandpa and a great father-in-law. And I was proud of my brood of negotiators.

(NOTE: Later I found out that the tickets were going for $40,000 a pop on the street. Those little grandkids of mine were kicking themselves. They lost eighty grand!
The Negotiator had triumphed!
)

Until the next day, when I got a call on the phone from one of the Olympic organizers.

“Sorry, Mr. Shatner,” he quavered, “I don't know how to tell you this, but your four tickets are gone.”

“What?!?”
I yelled. “You
have
to be joking.”

“I wish I were, sir,” he apologized. “We think someone stole them. Did you know they were going for forty grand a pop? That's $41,939 American.”

They had lost my tickets. My $160,000 ($167,756 American) worth of hockey enjoyment. And family togetherness, and family harmony.

There is one negotiation tool that should be used sparingly, only in case of an emergency. This was an emergency. I had to take a metaphorical hammer, smash some symbolic glass, and pull a real diva fit. Or, since I'm male, a divo fit.

FUN FACTNER:
In Canada, even diva fits are punctuated with “pleases,” “thank yous,” and “whatever is okays.”

“You promised me, I'm here, I'm your star, you're shafting me.
I won't go on!!!
”

I hung up the phone, the foul stench of my bluff hanging in the air. There was no way in heck I would bail on my native land over a few hockey tickets. But in a tough negotiation, you must be willing to at least
sound
tough.

The Olympic official called back a few hours later. “Mr. Shatner, I got three tickets.”

Was this good enough? Maybe. Joel and the grandsons could go. I'd be the best father-in-law, and best grandfather. I could win a gold medal in patriarchal love!

I was about to say yes when the Evil Negotiator appeared. I could feel my sinister Vandyke beard growing on my face. Three tickets were not enough. The original four were not enough. I had to bring the hammer down!

“I need six tickets!”
I yelled, “I'll take the three, but . . .
I need six tickets.
You
must
make this happen.”

I almost said “please,” but then remembered my evil facial hair. Two hundred forty thousand dollars' worth of tickets. To watch a hockey game.

Would the full-on eruption of Mount Shatner be enough to close this deal?

Joel and Andrew, Eric and Grant, and Elizabeth and I loved the hockey game. So did the man seated next to us, who was weeping and biting on his Canadian flag when our team won in overtime against the USA. I had perhaps forever made an enemy of a Canadian Olympic official—and if he is reading this, I apologize—but I had negotiated myself the title of World's Greatest Dad/Granddad/Husband/Hockey Fan.

Am I proud of what I did? I'm prouder of other things I've done. But I do wish I had held out for more money with the whole kidney stones thing.

By the way, at the eleventh hour, my grandkids tried to see if there was any possibility of revisiting my “money in their bank accounts” offer instead of the tickets.

Let me tell you—those two will not soon forget the day they first encountered the Evil Negotiator.

“T
he greatest love in my life was my first squirrel.”

Did I say this? No, although I have formed very strong bonds with several horses, many Dobermans, and the occasional orca.

Is this the title of some self-help book, à la
Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
? Nope. This above statement was made on the set of my television show
Aftermath
, by one Mr. Bernhard Goetz.

The greatest love of his life was a squirrel.

With this statement, I learned that New York City's “Subway Vigilante” had turned into New York's foremost squirrel enthusiast. He lives with several of the creatures in his small apartment, and he has the scratches up and down his arms to prove it.

I imagine squirrels are the only one of God's creatures who are perfectly comfortable asking Bernhard Goetz for five dollars.

Aftermath
is a show I host and executive produce for the Biography Channel, the same channel that airs my other talk show,
Raw Nerve
, which I also executive produce.

(This means there's another 22.5 hours of daily programming on Bio that I need to start filling. Thank goodness I'm a multi-tasker. For instance, I am typing this while on the set of
Aftermath
. Mary Kay Letourneau and her husband, Vili Fualaau, are staring at me. Might need to pick this chapter up later.)

Okay, it's later. Had a very nice conversation with the Fualaaus. Check your local listings.

Aftermath
is an hour-long program that takes an in-depth look at what happens to people who are yanked from their anonymous, everyday lives and then dropped down hard onto the front pages of newspapers and tabloids. I sit down with these people, some forgotten, some not, and discuss with them how their lives have changed since their fifteen minutes of fame, or infamy.

It is an amazing experience for me—professionally and personally. In my years on Earth, I have met presidents, the occasional religious leader, a spare royal or two. And in 2010, I found myself sitting within two feet of a man most famous for shooting four teenagers he thought were out to rob him.

Bill and Bernhard Goetz discuss squirrels and guns on
Aftermath
in 2010. (
Courtesy of Paul Camuso
)

Goetz's life has certainly changed since that day on a crowded subway train in 1984. He's no longer the cause célèbre of the citizens of a dangerous and crime-ridden New York. He's not front-page news anymore. He buys and sells electronics on the Internet, and flies below the radar financially, so to speak, because of the massive civil judgment brought upon him by his brain-damaged victim, Darrell Cabey. But he's still pretty quick with a gun.

How do I know this? He pulled one on me.

Halfway through our interview, Goetz was explaining how—after a brutal mugging in the early 1980s—he got hold of an illegal handgun and started practicing his quick draw. He would practice with the loaded weapon in his home, in his office, even in the elevators of his apartment building.

I imagine many of his neighbors—when the doors of the elevators would open revealing an armed Bernhard Goetz—would stay put and say, “I'll wait for the next one.”

It was during the course of this discussion that one of my producers got the idea to give Goetz a gun and let him show me his quick-draw technique. While the producer hid somewhere behind the cameras, I imagine.

We made certain the gun was empty, and after many, many hours of checking and rechecking the gun, Goetz made me stand up, not three feet away, and demonstrate what he did on the subway that day.

Quick draw. Bang. Quick draw. Bang. Bang and bang.

It's a strange thing to stare into the eyes of such a figure, one who really hasn't aged much since his time in the spotlight, and have him draw a gun on you and pull the trigger. And he's a man who has no remorse about what he did.

And he kept doing it, whipping it out of his waistband, pulling the trigger, aiming the gun at me, the cameramen, people standing around. It was almost childlike. I said to him, “People kid around with pistols like that, do that fast draw, like we did as kids. But you fast drew, and actually fired a bullet.”

“Yeah . . . so?”

And that “so” is the difference between people like Bernie Goetz and you and me. (I'll assume you're a pretty together person based on the wisdom of your
Shatner Rules
purchase.)

That's not much of a difference when you get right down to it. But Bernhard Goetz was, and is, living in his truth. And the truth is amorphous; it is what it is to the person who is living it. And with
Aftermath
, I want people to share their truth, unfiltered, without judgment. I am a man of some opinions, but I keep them to myself on
Aftermath.

That being said . . . after the taping, another producer came up to me and asked if I was scared of Goetz. I said, “No.” He said, “Well, you looked scared.” And I replied, “Well, I've never been that close to anyone that crazy before.”

Keep in mind, I've signed autographs at hundreds of science fiction conventions.

Aftermath
has allowed me to meet fascinating characters: the aforementioned Fualaaus came on to discuss their scandalous May-September (of the following year) romance; I spoke to survivors of the 1992 anti-government standoff at Ruby Ridge; I also chatted with New York's notorious society girl–turned–Mayflower Madam Sydney Biddle Barrows; Iraq War hostage Jessica Lynch; and Unabomber brother Dave Kaczynski.

I even did a prison interview with Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenager who—along with John Allen Muhammad—murdered at least ten people in 2002 in the DC Sniper spree.

At the end of our conversation, I asked him, “Will God forgive you?”

He said, “If I can forgive myself.”

Was I talking to a murderer? Yes, but mostly I was also talking to a young guy who was horribly manipulated by a man he trusted and is now serving a life sentence. He has written letters to many of the survivors, and to the families of the murdered, apologizing for his actions.

That interview with the sniper took weeks to happen. I would sit in my office between 4 and 6
P.M.
every day, with the entire crew, waiting for the phone to ring. It finally went down when Malvo got access to the prison pay phone.

While
Aftermath
has its share of the infamous, I've also had the opportunity to meet two men I deeply admire: tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, and Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst turned peace activist who released the Pentagon Papers to
The New York Times
in 1971.

Ellsberg copied three thousand top secret pages of analysis and four thousand pages of government documents in forty-seven volumes, all of which showed that the Johnson administration had lied to the public and Congress about the war in Vietnam. It's hard to realize the significance of this action, and the effort that it took, in this era of technological ease, when I can tell half a million people what I had for breakfast in the blink of an eye via Twitter.

FUN FACTNER:
William Shatner usually goes with fruit and a protein or grain, along with some vitamin supplements, for breakfast.

Why am I doing
Aftermath
? Well, perhaps it's time for me to sit in the hot seat and discuss my own truth.

My wife Nerine died in 1999, after battling a severe addiction to alcohol, one that both she and I were powerless to control over the course of our marriage. The coroner ruled that she had died of an accidental drowning. She had alcohol and Valium in her system at the time of death, and I discovered her at the bottom of our pool when I returned from a family dinner in Orange County, California.

Some months later, I went to New York, along with one of my daughters, to be interviewed on a tabloid news show about a television project I was involved in. I sat down across from the woman who was to interview me, and what was the first question out of her mouth?

“What's it feel like to murder your wife?”

Needless to say, she didn't get a follow-up question. I ended the interview and demanded the tape. My daughter started crying, the
reporter
started crying, and I stormed out.

Apparently, when there is an unnatural death of someone at an early age, there's a good chance a family member was involved, and—for the briefest period of time—I was a suspect in Nerine's death. It's standard operating procedure. The husband is
always
the first suspect. But I was cleared within minutes of the police arriving at my home.

I was cleared in the eyes of the law, anyway. In the jaded and jaundiced eyes of the tabloid press? Well, that's a different, under-researched story.

And within days of her death, as I was experiencing a whirlpool of emotions, grief coming from many different directions all at once, dragging me down, I got a phone call from
The National Enquirer
. They were going to run a story saying that I was the prime suspect in the murder of my wife.

They offered me money to participate in the story, to tell my side. If I didn't play ball, they were going to run with the angle that I was a murderer.

What would you do? Probably the same thing I did.

I gave them my story, took their money, and used every cent of it to fund the Nerine Shatner Friendly House, a center for women recovering from alcohol and substance abuse. It's a home where up to twenty women at a time can get the help they need to fight their addictions.

Did you know that? Maybe you didn't. But you probably heard some of the allegations about my supposed role in her death. That's because in America, you are guilty on page 1, and exonerated on page 30. (Also, many tabloid reporters can't spell “exoneration,” so they decide to skip the whole thing entirely.)

And I wanted
Aftermath
to be a show where the exonerated—and the punished—could speak, long after the press had packed up their microphones and moved onto the next scandal. I want to give people a pulpit to tell their side of the story—their truth—after they've been declared guilty by the press and the public.

I know what condemnation in the media feels like, and it is a terrible thing. It follows you like a comet's tail. So I want to use the media as a tool to give some strength back to these people, no matter what their story.

And that's why I'm doing
Aftermath
.

My interview with Mr. Goetz ended, and I began to pack up my things and get ready to go home. He came up to me and asked for a favor. After I was convinced that the gun had been taken away, I agreed.

“Can I get a picture?” he asked, holding his camera phone.

Bernhard Goetz and I took a picture together, and I gave him an autograph. I made it out to him alone. If the squirrel wants one, he can come to the next convention.