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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
has a contract with the young superstar— hut his character didn’t work out. Instead, IV" ended up a time-travel movie with whales. "It didn’t seem too exciting to go hack in time to pick up a plant, or an insect or some serum against smallpox," Nimoy recalls. "So, I was having a conversation wit h a friend and up popped whales, singing humpback whales, and that’s how 'Star Trek IV’ got started.’’ Bunting all the way to ttia bank: No one doubts that this sequel will do as well at the box office as everything else in the series. In fact, "Star Trek” programs of one sort or another seem to be a limitless source of revenue. The prime-time series rerunsstill grab big ratings on 145 stations. And next fall there will be a new syndicated TV se ries—"Star Trek: The Next Generation’’— stocked with fresh young faces to carry on the tradition and perhaps prepareTrekkies for the day that the original cast can no longer be beamed aboard. What explains the ageless, unsinkable appeal of this show? Who better to ask than Nimoy, who hears the question in every interview, every speaking engagement, ev ery cocktail party. "You can be glib and say the idea still works, the characters are still there, it still offers a hopeful future, which is what we all want. Those are the obvious answers, but it really doesn’t answer the question, does it?” Nimoy says. "I think there’s something to seeing these very pro fessional people hel ping each other to sol ve a problem and in the idea that munkind is humane and will do the right thing eventu ally to each other and toothers And we all like the idea that there are great mysteries stilltobeexplored." For Nimoy, personally, "there’s some thing somewhat noble about what 'Star Trek’ says and does." "IV," he hastens to add, "says something about the assumption that only human life is important and only human needs are important, and all else* andothersare heretoservethat It’san idea that just isn’t very fairor true.” With "IV" behind him, except for the profit taking, Nimoy has begun to contem plate what comes next. He still hopes to direct and act in other movies: "I'm looking for something I can care about. I've had a lot of scripts offered to me, but I haven’t found one I can say I want to spend a year doing. It's a lot of work, and I don’t want to wake up one day in the midst of the pain of it saying. Why am I here?’ I want to know every day why I chose the job." Of course that has never been a problem with "Star Trek." Even if he isn’t boldly going w here no man hasgone before. Leonard N imoy can always take comfort from the fact that, aboard the Enterprise, he always knows just why he's there:tobeSpock. I, i ■ G <> L n M r. R <; in Lie A nut In Talking and Talking and raking About Sex People may compare "The Decline of the American Empire” to "The Big Chill” and to 'Hannah and Her Sis ters”; like them, it’s a comic talkfest that takes place in an atmosphere of hypocrisy and comfort. But this French-Canadi an film has an unembar rassed, out-of-the-main stream feel of its own, and no fake momentous ness. The story concerns a group of academics gathering for dinner and talking about sex. These conversations—sophisti cated locker-room talk— are often raucously fun ny. We recognize that the t heories that get spun are expressions in abstract terms of the characters’ personal concerns; we may come to suspect that the "decline” of the film’s title refers to the older characters’ experience of middle age. Denys Arcand, who wrote and directed, has conceived his film in thoroughly sexual terms; the camera takes us through the web of words and into the characters. When he flashes back, he shows more than his characters divulge—he takes us into their priva cy—and all along, he cuts away to images of natu ral beauty. The relaxed performances and the cinematography, with its attentiveness to changes of light, give us a feel for the characters’ relation ship to their flesh, and a sense of how sex to them isn’t merely an athletic pursuit, it's an imagina tive one. cand’s approach has the result of giving sex—the unforeseen effects it can have and the variety of things it can mean to peo ple—a many-hued splen dor. In a sequence that begins on a pier at dusk and moves into the eve ning, we watch the clouds and the water, we hear one of the men wonder whether, if the Soviets bomb the States, he’ll be able to see the explosions, and we see the couples move (in various states of arousal and misery) into bed. This sequence has the emotionality of a rhapsody; Arcand gives us the illusion that sex is spiraling around us. 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