problem?
Fine, we'll find
some other way to do it."
Right, "If that's your research,
we'll listen to your reasoning,
because you guys must know."
Now, here was Gene Coon
in the thenches,
pounding away,
and one day a script came down
with a scene in it
that had me doing something
to which I took
strong objection.
And I went to his office.
I think you and I
would both agree
that on a television series,
once they deliver that script
and they're starting
to work on next week's script,
which is in terrible shape
and needs a lot of work,
the last thing they want
is an actor coming in
and saying,
"This doesn't work for me."
They'd say, "Get out of here!
Just go do it!
I'm working on a worse script
than that for next week!"
So I walk into his office
and, in effect, say,
"I've got a problem
with this scene."
"What's the matter?"
"Well, you've got me
doing such and such,
"and I can't
because it doesn't follow
what I did before."
"Just do it!"
"No, I can't."
"All right!
This conversation's over!"
I left his office.
I come back to the stage,
there's a phone call for me,
and it's my agent on the phone.
He said,
"Did something happen?"
I said, "Yeah, I just had
a confrontation with Gene Coon.
Why?" He said,
"You're being suspended."
I said, "Really?"
Well, I knew He couldn't
possibly say to me,
"Don't come to work anymore,"
because this is a machine,
and if you
pull a cog out of it,
the machine's gonna stop!
So in my arrogance,
I said to my agent,
"Ask them,
do I have to finish the day,
or can I leave now?"
What happened?
Well, the next call was from
Gene Roddenberry, who said...
(makes growling noises)
"Nobody's suspended.
Let's talk about this."
We went to his office,
he and I and Gene Coon,
and we hammered out
a solution.
I really felt badly about it,
because I didn't want
to offend Gene Coon,
I had a great respect for him,
great respect for the position
that I was putting him in,
I was saying,
"I need you to fix this,
"I need you to get your mind
off of the problem
"you're dealing with
for next week
and fix this,
bacause I'm having trouble".
And those kind of things
all the time.
Yeah, but those
kind of things are common.
And people in every series
on television
have those disagreements
and discussions.
Did we have disagreements,
you and I?
If I didn't have
some prior knowledge
to this question,
based on some years ago,
I would have forgotten
that we had any animosity,
any differences at all.
And I would have said, "No,
I can't recall any of them,"
because I can't.
I do remember one.
There was a reporter
coming in to interview you,
and it was 8:00
in the morning...
or 6:00 in the morning...
it was makeup time,
and he was coming
into the makeup room,
and we all got made up
together,
it took you 3 hours,
took me 1 minutes.
That literally is the truth,
I'd go in and put on pancake,
and you had the ears
and the stuff,
and you were there for hours.
So that became
a place in your life
that you needed to spend
part of your life in there,
because you were
spending three hours
and one hour of removal
at the end of the day,
that's four hours
in a makeup room,
it was another home for you.
Whereweas for me, it was in,
toss off a few jokes,
get a couple of laughs,
warm up for the day's work,
and then...
So I said I didn't want
the reporter there
while I got made up.
And that somehow offended you,
and we got into a disagreement.
I don't remember what it was,
it's obviously nonsense now,
but I would say that
that was one place
where we were at odds.
Well, we were reported
in the press as having troubles,
as being in conflict.
Do you remember any of that?
What do you remember?
I think there was
a lot made of very little,
is my memory of it.
Because the press
loves conflict...
"Oh, there's trouble
on the Star Trek set!"
But we did have
disagreements with management
on other