Rest In Peace, Leonard Nimoy, ambassador of pop culture and sci-fi. You did turn Star Trek into an ageless icon.
Rest in Peace, Mr Harve Bennett, ambassador of heroic fiction on tv and the movies.
In the classic Star Trek movie Wrath of Khan, Spock dies to save many. Many fans remember that moment with a tear in their eye. This time Leonard Nimoy has really died.
This was posted in SciFi Fandom on Facebook:
Gideon J PulsarfiestMarch 4 at 4:18pm
I posted another form of this on my page last night, then I cleaned it up for this group this morning.
It’s taken me a while to talk about Leonard Nimoy’s death. It brought up a lot of emotions.
I set out to write everything down in a story.
“June 4th, 1982. That was the day that Star Trek 2 the Wrath of Khan premiered. That was the first time I lost my lifelong friend/hero/legend Spock.”
And that was as far as I got. I know he was more than Spock, but when one of your first memories is watching an original Star Trek episode (not a rerun) with your mom & dad, those character take on a larger than life role in your head.
My buddies & me went to see this one on opening night, we did not want this one spoiled for us. We managed to get tickets for the 10 o’clock show. We went in and saw a really cool movie, we were loving it…
Until…
…When Spock died there was no sound. We all remember it that way. we were so shocked that we couldn’t even hear what was being said. You could’ve dropped exploding bowling balls onto screaming cats, we wouldn’t have heard it. When we could hear again, we just looked at the screen in disbelief.
This is Star Trek, only Red Shirts die. We wanted to ask each other what the #$%& was happening, but we were scared of looking over and risk seeing one our buddies crying, so we had to look on, we had no choice. We held back those tears until we found a manly place to cry.
After the movie, we still couldn’t bring ourselves to look each other in the face. one of us said we had to use the bathroom and all of us stampede to that theater restroom.
Thus began the strangest restroom session of my life. The bathroom was full. but no one was using the facilities. This was about a dozen or so dudes (Trek fans the lot of us) openly crying. it was so weird. Strangers would try to say something comforting to the group to no avail. There was even this one guy who had been there since the previous show let out. it was surreal
Then this big biker looking mofo walked out of the stalls, he went to the sink and washed his face in his hands. He spoke in a loud commanding voice.
“What we saw tonight was just the dress rehearsal.” He let his words hang in the air like he was daring us to pry their meaning out of him.
“One day, Leonard Nimoy will die and we are all going to fall apart. No matter when it happens, we will not be prepared and we will go through this pain all over again.”
Then that big biker looking mofo walked out of the restroom, and like magic, everyone felt better, the tears had stopped.
A lot has happened since 1982, but last Friday, all that was in my head was the night of Friday, June Fourth Nineteen Eighty Two and the words of this one big biker looking mofo & how right he was. I wondered how the rest of the people from that night took it. I wonder how that big biker looking mofo took the news.
(I seriously think he was Nostradamus.)
Anyway, that’s my story, sorry it took me so long to get it out, but I do feel better now, I hope it does somebody some good or at least gives you something to laugh at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhcR-w-56tA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQUePN5y40
Bennet was executive producer on the popular Six Million Dollar Man as well as Bionic Woman tv shows and ended up meeting Leonard Nimoy at Columbia Pictures Television, on the set of the Ingrid Bergman movie called A Woman Called Golda.
Deadline writes that, Bennett teamed with “director Nicholas Meyer on […] Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan — which featured the death of Nimoy’s character Spock — after cramming for the writing gig by watching every episode of the TV series.” Bennett later wrote and produced Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, worked with Nimoy on the story for 1986′s The Voyage Home, and developed the story for The Final Frontier with William Shatner and David Loughery.
Bennet watched all the TOS episodes of Star Trek and came up with the idea of Khan.
The New York Times reported that the cause of death of Leonard Nimoy – the legendary Spock of Star Trek – was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease due to years of smoking, a habit he gave up decades earlier. They wrote “His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).”
Nimoy appeared in the new Star Trek revival movies as the older Spock where the young Spock was played by Zachary Quinto. He used to sing and write poetry, and he published books of his photography of semi-nude and nude women including a book “Shekhina”, about the feminine aspect of God, and a book called “The Full Body Project”.
He hosted the series “In search of..” from 1977 to 1982. Besides voicing animated characters he also had a recurring role in Fringe up to his character’s death. He also was heard as the voice of Mr. Spock on the Big Bang Theory.
RIP Both of you. May you Boldly Go to Heaven. You will be missed.