Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.