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Ask Wil Wheaton Anything (Part Deux)
A little over three years ago Slashdot interviewed Wil Wheaton, at the time best known for his role as Wesley Crusher on ST:TNG. Since then his blog WWDN has allowed him a creative outlet that has made the world sit up and take notice. Wil is now a regular participant in ACME Comedy Theatre, has published two books ( Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek ), has done voicework for video games such as GTA: San Andreas, cartoons such as Teen Titans, and speaks regularly at conventions such as Gnomedex and Linucon. Wil enjoyed the first Slash interview so much it appeared in Just a Geek, and we're glad to have him back for a second go-round. Feel free to fire away, one question per comment please. We'll post his responses once we get them back.
Actors get a certain amount of money from DVD sales, rebroadcast rights, etc, dictated on a sliding scale by the Screen Actors Guild. Eventually if an actor gets enough work, the residuals alone can (almost) pay the bills - assuming of course that you get enough roles to start getting a decent amount of income.
I can't speak for Wil, but I'd imagine having a reoccurring role on one of the most popular TV series ever probably generates a decent amount of income from residuals. Certainly for someone like Bruce Campbell, who's done tons of work over the years, he's probably decently well off.
There's not a lot of questions that someone could ask that a stroll through your blog archives wouldn't answer. You're a family man, you've gone through some really harsh, but introspective good times and you've created a career where you get to be creative, filling your geek quota and doing what you started out doing - entertaining.
There are probably just as many people in acting, as well as in any job, that struggle with identity, like you did. They struggle with expectations, they struggle with defining who they are or struggle with exceeding/overcoming definitions that have been put on them. You've answered this in several ways in your book, but if you could summarize - just what the hell did you learn - and if you could be a mentor like Stewart/Frakes were to you - what would you share/teach the budding actors/actresses/geeks/geekettes?
What do you want your legacy to be? And how will you share it?
Neurowiz
Strange or Charmed?
I've recently watched some of the reruns of The Next Generation that play on Spike TV during the week (around lunchtime). They started to replay from the beginning again, and I found it remarkably painful at times to watch how awkward and "silly" the first season seems now (the acting and dialog, in particular, come off as being comedic when they're obviously trying to be serious). BUT, later in the series they improved a lot... and I think many people have a generally favorable opinion of how that series turned out.
After watching the early shows of Enterprise and how it's progressed, I honestly can't find as much fault in the story lines or acting as I can in the same early period of The Next Generation -- in fact, compared to the early seasons of The Next Generation (and for that matter Deep Space 9, and Voyager, if you wanna go there) I think that Enterprise is off to a very solid start and it only shows signs of improving.
I guess when people bring up "the new Enterprise series sucks" I just can't agree. If you were to judge The Next Generation's first couple seasons like some people are judging the first couple seasons of Enterprise then by all rights that series should have died an early death, but it went on to have a pretty damn good run.
I'm hesitant to suggest that somebody got a clue somewhere, but yes, I've actually really enjoyed the last two seasons of Enterprise (except for the stupid alien Nazis, but what the heck, I'll throw in one for free). That's something I really can't say about any of the intermediate Treks. TNG was between good and awesome throughout its run (and I too never hated Wesley, come on, geeky kid who gets to hang out with the engineers of the Enterprise? It's an irresistable dream for those of us Trek fans nearly the same age as Wil.), but I never really got that into DS9 and Voyager.
First season Enterprise almost made me shut it off forever, too. Come on, how many "poke the alien, wonder why it killed you" episodes can we do? You know, the ones that follow these steps: find mysterious lifeform or situation and bother it until it gets incredibly pissed and tries to hurt us? You know, kind of like that Aussie guy with a similar show...
I'm glad to see that they've gone to longer, mini-arcs for episodes recently. The stories are well told and well thought-out, and there's enough time to do it without feeling hurried. Well done, well done.
You are all amatures, its Mac or PC! Duh!
Jonathanjk.com
You might not have been old enough to appreciate DS9. I certainly wasn't. However, at 21, I thoroughly enjoy watching the seasons on DVD. (Though I have noticed an annoying motion blur in the MPEG encoding. It's distracting.
:)
Voyager on DVD is OK, but nothing to write home about. I'm looking forward to the Enterprise release on DVD.
(In case everyone's wondering why I watch everything on DVD, it's because I don't have cable, or even an antenna. But twelve-hour-marathons of my favorite TV shows is more than enough.
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After years spent with the Traveller on an adventure of mental space exploration, having seen places and things beyond all possibility of human comprehension, TV's Wil Wheaton this season reprises his role as Wesley Crusher after having become a space-ninja-pirate. After taming an intergalactic astral dinosaur to be his pet, Ninja Crusher and pet dino Stampy mentally warp themselves from adventure to adventure in Star Trek: Exploited Franchise, coming this fall on UPN.
.. and my question, is would you do it, Mister Wheaton? .. just so I'm not totally off topic here...
It's real easy...make any comment about how someone's user-ID is way too high for them to be saying what they're saying, and all the folks with crazy low UID's will come out of the woodwork. It's like slashdot catnip...they can't resist.