SDAFF DAY 4: OH MY!

Star Date, October 14th, 2007.

Our fearless leader and matriarch of the SDAFF, Lee Ann Kim, in front of millions of Takei fans worldwide…ah ha…that was the buzz from Sunday, all those plugged in electrified fans whirring all over the world watching Kim getting Takei to provide the power via his newly named cosmic namesake, making Takei blurt, “Oh my, I am now a heavenly body.”

I am of course referring to the asteroid formerly known as “1994 GT9” that has been renamed “7307 Takei” in honor of the actor.

All of us that were squeezed into Theater 6, sat around like little children with wide-eyed wonder hanging on every word that Takei was willing to share…and share he did.

He spoke at great lengths of his experience from beginning to end of the whole STAR TREK phenomena, something that he spoke about with such great appreciation and fondness, not trying to shirk that for a lifetime and more, he will be remembered to most of the baby boomers as Hikaru Sulu.

There was even a clip of Takei at a William Shatner roast emphasizing to Bill that his name was pronounced “Tak-kay” and not “Tak-eye” like Shatner had been saying it for 40 years. Pointing at Shatner’s hair Takei grins, “Remember, ‘Tak-kay, like in “toupee’.”

Shatner’s mouth was so wide open; he put every Venus flytrap to shame.

Takei enthusiastically explained how he got the job on his latest acting gig HEROES. One slight of hand comment about the show that truly reflects his animal grace was that although he is very well known and everyone in Hollywood knows his acting range, the producers of the show felt it was necessary to have Takei audition for the part.

Even by Hollywood standards, this was a very insulting thing to do to an actor of such star power and caliber. Yet Takei has moved beyond the ego of “Don’t you know who I am?” The producers even had the audacity to test Takei’s Japanese language abilities.

After asking him if he spoke Japanese, and Takei said that he did, they sent him a script in English asking him to translate his parts into Japanese. At the audition, there was a white woman that spoke some Japanese. It was all a test to see if Takei could speak the language. The irony is that the white woman’s Japanese really sucked.

I know Takei is cool with it, but for these producers to ask him to audition and then deviously test his language ability was really low and disrespectful. It just goes to part of the whole problem of how Asian American actors are treated in Hollywood.

Takei next told us of his contempt for the Japanese internment camps and the pain he suffered as a child being dragged away at bayonet-point at age six to a childhood life of hell.

He also pointed out that for many years, people in the industry knew that he was gay and his manager Brad was his partner, yet it wasn’t until Arnold Schwarzenegger reneged on his support of gay marriages, first saying he supported gay marriages, then vetoed the bill against them, that Takei felt it was necessary to tell the press of his lifestyle choice putting him in a stronger position to discuss the issues publicly.

But Takei was not finished with politics yet, he lambasted Bush as being a, “Bad President.”…period.

The intimate discussion ended with Takei laughingly berating his experience on the Howard Stern show, something he hated at the beginning, but somehow got sucked into becoming a regular via jokes, tricks, persistence and his manager’s constant egging.

When someone from the audience asked Takei that being so outspoken about Government issues and politics why he never ran for office, he lamented on his experience when he ran for Los Angeles City Council and how in an indirect way Sulu beat him.

As it turns out, a local TV station ran a 17-minute special show of STAR TREK episodes that only featured scenes of Sulu. Suddenly, the other 14 candidates running for office took this as an opportunity to demand equal political time on television.

The poor TV station was required to give these candidates all free air-time and was then forced to stop running STAR TREK reruns.

Talk about piddley-diddley pettiness. It is everywhere yeah?

When Kim asked if there were any more questions, I raised my hand faster than a Bruce Lee back fist, waving it in the air like a school kid trying to get teacher’s attention.

Bingo. How could Kim ignore my pathetic face, wafting hand and my body posture writhing with, “Please, me, me, please, oh please.”

What did I ask? Duuuh. “Hey George, did you ever meet Bruce Lee.” Hey, I really was interested.

George looked at me with a smile and reminisced about a time in the late ‘60s when he was filming an episode of STAR TREK. He was taking a break between shots and out the corner of his eye he saw a man in a t-shirt dressed in riding pants, kicking and punching a mile-a-minute. The man stopped then went back into the studio.

It is the only time that America’s most famous Japanese-American actor saw America’s most famous Chinese-American actor. It is a pity that history could not have made them American friends.