The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(43)
On the day of the shoot, they situated me in a corner of the soundstage where Balok’s lair had been built. I waited as they concluded shooting a scene where the bridge of the USS Enterprise stood. In the studio, they ring a buzzer and flash a red light to indicate when a scene is starting, so everyone on set knows to shut up, keep still, and not mess up the shot. They do the same when they’re finished. So, when the previous scene was done and the buzzer buzzed, the shadows of several adults—the crew, Bill Shatner, DeForest Kelley—advanced toward me. I perked up—the grown-ups were coming to my space. Showtime!
What didn’t feel good was my costume. My robelike garment was made of stiff, glittery material, and they didn’t even bother to put a lining in it. They never measured my feet for the shoes, which were some kind of uncomfortable hybrid of boots and slippers, with appliquéd sequins. And the crownlike headpiece was really tight and pinched my bald head.
Which, by the way, was not really bald. A few days before we shot the episode, Dad and I went into the studio for a full day of makeup prep, supplemented by a few hours of studio school with a tutor. Star Trek’s producers asked Dad if I would mind if they shaved my head for the role. My answer was basically, Yes, I would very much mind! Are you insane?
Besides my desire not to be made a fool of in school, I loved working, and being a bald seven-year-old would have taken me out of the running for a lot of jobs. For similar reasons, I never bothered to get braces. My teeth came in funky when I was little. When I was nine or ten, the age when kids start to get braces, I resisted the idea. I didn’t want to park my career and have a lot of metal in my mouth for a year or two, and maybe not work. Vanity didn’t mean anything to me, and my dentist said that my teeth were perfectly healthy—just crooked.
Besides, I didn’t consider my teeth to be a burden. To the contrary, they were a blessing—I really stood out. Joe Sargent, the Star Trek director, told me to have fun with Balok’s laugh, to play it big, and the combination of my hearty “Ha-ha-ha-ha ha!” and my crooked teeth was really effective in creating a surreal, WTF vibe.
But back to Balok’s bald head. Dad, with my vigorous support, asked the Star Trek producers if they could give a skullcap a try. And so they did. A makeup man fitted a latex cap matching my skin tone over my hair and applied a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows, too. I was transformed before my very eyes—and pretty stoked. I looked funny as a bald kid and I liked the acetone scent of spirit gum, the adhesive they use to fasten wigs and prosthetics to actors. I still do. Above all else, I was relieved that I wasn’t going to meet Mr. Razor.
When we shot the episode, I spoke all my lines aloud in my own voice. But for whatever reason, the voice-synthesizer idea was nixed, and they ended up having a talented adult voice actor, Walker Edmiston, loop my lines. Edmiston, who later became the voice of Ernie, the lead Keebler Elf, did a really good, painstaking job, too. If you watch the scene, you can see how he carefully patterned his locutions after mine, such as when Balok invites his guests to sit and “be COMF-table.” He nailed my laugh, too.
It was a fun, pretty easy job. The only part that I was not thrilled about was drinking that tranya. When the prop guy popped open a can of room-temperature pink grapefruit juice, I turned to my dad and said, “Can’t I have apple juice instead?” I thought grapefruit juice was disgusting. Dad simply walked over to the prop man, asked him to pour a big glass, and drank it down in front of me, pretty much in one gulp. Message received.
In the end, it served Star Trek well that tranya wasn’t a drink I liked, such as apple juice or orange juice. Had it been, I might have guzzled it down with abandon. But if you watch me in “The Corbomite Maneuver,” I take only a gentleman’s sip, as a true connoisseur of a fine brandy or liqueur would. It looks like Balok really does relish his tranya. And, in the episode’s happy ending, his visitors do indeed relish it as much as he.
THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE was over in a single day. Little did I know that Commander Balok was destined to follow me around—or, perhaps, precede me—for the rest of my life. As Star Trek mushroomed into a cult and finally an epic TV and movie franchise, my “Corbomite Maneuver” notoriety turned me into a canonical figure in the Trek universe. I have since appeared in almost every TV-series iteration of Star Trek—Deep Space Nine, Discovery, Enterprise.
But as a seven-year-old, playing Balok was just another job. These gigs fell off me instantly back then—on to the next thing, always.
10
Mom, in Her Element
CLINT
How do you get a bear to kiss you? Simple. Put an orange-flavored Life Savers candy in your mouth and pucker up. No American black bear will be able to resist planting his snout smack upon your lips.
Caution: Do not try this at home.
My ursine expertise is hard-earned, having spent three years in the company of Bruno, my furry costar in the feature film Gentle Giant and the TV series that followed it, Gentle Ben. Bruno, true to his species, had a sweet tooth. His handlers gave me a handful of cookies, grapes, and Tootsie Rolls to keep in my pockets so that he would follow me around and do my bidding. The orange Life Savers were more of a Clint thing than a Bruno thing—I just happened to love them—so I used them for the scenes where the bear and I needed to be affectionate.
The movie Gentle Giant, which kicked off this phase of my life, came on the heels of my Star Trek job. I auditioned for the part, which led to me taking a screen test at Africa U.S.A., a safari park north of Los Angeles that was run by an animal trainer named Ralph Helfer. That’s where I first met Bruno. I was one of six kids invited there to do a screen test in which our acting partner was the bear—not an easy assignment.