You Can Call Me Bill is a new documentary from director Alexandre O. Philippe about the life of actor William Shatner. Shatner spoke with Variety about the film ahead of its SxSw premiere earlier this month. Towards the end of that conversation, the interviewer turned to the topic of Shatner's recent real-life space flight aboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space shuttle. And suffice to say, the experience left the OG Star Trek Captain profoundly changed:
When I came out of the space ship I was crying, just sobbing, and I thought why am I crying? What's going on? I'm in grief. What am I grieving about? Oh shit, I'm grieving about the world, because I now know so much about what's happening. I saw the Earth and its beauty and its destruction. It's going extinct. Billions of years of evolution may vanish. It's sacred, it's holy, it's life and it's gone. It's beyond tragic. We stupid fucking animals are destroying this gorgeous thing called the Earth. Doesn't that make you angry? Don't you want to do something about it?
Cap'n Kirk says climate change is a serious existential threat, y'all.
William Shatner on 'Star Trek,' Space Travel and Mortality: 'I Don't Have Long to Live' [Brent Lang / Variety]
