didn't have the...
No. I did not
have them like that.
One battle
that I do remember
was Gene Roddenberry
bringing a little pin,
which he called the IDIC,
and saying,
"I want you to wear this pin."
And I said,
"What is an IDIC?"
And he said,
"It's the International
Defense Fund" or something.
And I said, "But this is
a marchendising thing,
isn't it?"
He said, "Well, we'll make
a few dollars on it,"
and I realized...
He wanted you to function
as a billboard.
So I didn't want to do that,
so I said, "No, I am not
going to wear this pin."
And they said, "You've got to,"
and I said, "No, I'm not."
So I think they went to you
and said, "Leonard..."
And nobody
was gonna wear the pin.
But I led that fight
for the moment.
And so I had some battles
on those fronts.
Gene wanted to do...
So you were
looking for dignity, too.
You were looking
to preserve dignity, too.
Well, I was in
a different position.
I was playing a leading man,
I was playing a Greek hero,
I was playing a guy who got
the girl and won the fight
and had to make a decision...
"Ooh, that's intellectual."
"Ooh, that's emotional."
I was on the horns
of the dilemma
that the protagonist-antagonist
classical
story-telling form takes.
I was, I was...
I was functioning well.
I was in my milieu.
I could doff the wardrobe
and the character...
But you didn't
want it cheapened.
That's exactly right.
I still thought of myself
as a theater actor,
and that this was...
You played a character
of stature.
If this was important,
then it was important enough
for me to have the dignity.
And fighting for the lines
and the script and the story...
I didn't think of it
as animosity,
I thought of it as
"This can be better,"
and "I don't know know
how to make this better,
do you know how
to make this better?"
Or "I know how to make
this better, here's my idea."
"What do you mean,
you're not listening to me?"
"We don't have time."
"You got to have time!"
Which I always
admired greatly.
You had a tremendous
amount of energy...
every day, all day long...
to make it better.
I have that same feeling
in everything I do, that...
You and I are
talking to each other,
are we examining
the deepest points of our lives
in this small amount of time?
I'm constantly examining myself
to see if I can
make what I'm doing...
Get the best out of it.
And that's the way
I felt about that.
But there were battles
that you and I got into
with management that...
Some of them haven't been told.
Gene Coon...
do you remember him?
Very well.
Gene Coon, my sense of him,
my image of him,
was the guy in
the old newspaper movies,
the old black-and-white movies
where there was a newspaper guy
who was an editor or a writer,
he wore a slouch hat,
and he worked under
a lamp with a green shade,
and he had a cigarette
dangling from his mouth,
and he was pounding away
on the typewriter,
"I'll be ready in ten minutes!
Hold the presses!"
And if you
walked into his office,
you'd find him doing that.
He pounded out
some of our best material.
A lot of people
don't realize that.
And he gave us the Klingons.
He created that whole
world of ideas
that had to do with conflict.
Well, Gene Roddenberry didn't
write that many of the scripts.
No, he only wrote
about 3 of the 79,
is my memory, maybe 4.
Gene Coon wrote a lot of them,
and a lot of other writers
wrote a lot of them.
So Gene Roddenberry's artistry
was putting the package
together.
And holding to a concept.
And insisting...
That wonderful story
of NBC wanting to clip the ears
off the picture of you,
and him holding to that,
and them saying,
"But it's a devilish character,"
and Gene, to his credit...
God bless him.
Saved my character.
As you and I know,
it is so easy to say
to the network,
to the blue suits,
as we called them,
"Oh, if that's what you want,
we'll do that,"
in order to ease the way.
"Your research says
this is a