All language subtitles for The.Captains.Close.Up.S01E02_English

"What a place"
is right.

[ Birds Chirping ]
The-- What's this
flying around?

You hear that?
Yeah.

There's a small airdrome,
or airfield, I think,
in your language,

[ Chuckling ]
not far from here,

and there's
a small flying club,

and they have little
single-engine planes--
Cessnas and so forth.

But they have
the microlights.
You know, the--

So, little, small people
in these small airplanes
in this small airdrome--

Mm-hmm.
These small people--

We're an odd nation.
We shrank
as the years went by.

We just got
smaller and smaller.
Little hobbits.

[ Chuckling ]
What a beautiful place,
Patrick.

Oh, thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.

I am very, very lucky.

Let's sit down
and talk.

You're
very, very lucky.

We're both
very, very lucky,

when you think about
where it all started.

Yes. I-I--

I live here
mostly alone,

and there are some evenings
I will go out here,
walk about the place,

and I will yell
to the sky--

"You lucky bastard,
Patrick!"
Really?

And then
a voice says--
Nobody hears me.

"Yes, you are."
[ Chuckles ]

"But not much longer."
[ Laughing ]

[ Shatner Narrating ]
He grew up in Mirfield,

a small town
in Yorkshire, England,

where other boys his age
spent time playing rugby
and getting into trouble.

Instead, Patrick
focused on the theater,

as his early love of Shakespeare
would foster a lifelong
passion for acting...

and pave the way
for him to be recognized...

as one of the most respected
and honored actors in Britain.

But it would be
an unlikely casting...

as Jean-Luc Picard
in Star Trek:
The Next Generation...

that would introduce Patrick
to a global audience...

and alter the course of
his professional life forever.

I'm William Shatner,

and this is
The Captains Close Up...

with Sir Patrick Stewart.

Patrick is one of those guys
that can read the phone book
and make it sound amazing.

His level of professionalism
set a bar for us.

Always on time
and always knew his lines...

and always was there
for everybody ,
and we all loved that.

You could give him something
and he would make it better
than it was on the page.

[ Explosion ]

[ Stewart ]
I've often suspected that
I must have been conceived...

the evening before
my father went to war...

because I was born
in July, 1940,

and war broke out
in September of '39.

Wow.
Do the sums and--

June, July-- Yeah.

And I'm called Patrick,

which was a very uncommon name
in the society I grew up in.

My mother's parents
were horrified.

Irish, you see.

In those days
people had not felt warmly
towards the Irish.

The reason being,
my father had
a notorious bad temper.

And in this country
someone with a temper
is said to have a paddy.

A paddy because Irishmen
were bad-tempered, allegedly.
Really? Yeah.

And so my father
instructed my mother...

that if it were a boy
I should be called Patrick,

because he was known
as "Pat" or "Paddy"
because of his temper,

and he said,
"If I don't come back
from the war,

there will still be
a Patrick Stewart
in the family."

Wow, Patrick.
But he did come back.

But you were aware
of war.

Yeah. My eldest brother
was 17 years oer than me, and
he was in the Royal Air Force.

And while he was home
on leave one night,

he woke the family up and said,
"Listen to that."

We listened for a few moments
and I heard my brother say,

"Everybody out.
That's a V-2."

Because what would happen is,
the engine would cut off...

and then they would tip over
and go straight down.

There'd be this moment
of silence.
Exactly.

This was one of the rockets
that the Germans were firing
from fixed positions.

When the first couple
of them landed,

Churchill gave instructions
that the nation
was to be told...

these had just been
gas explosions,

because the devastation
was so bad
he was afraid...

that it would
so totally intimidate
the civilian population...

if they knew these things
were falling out of the sky.

So this night we were
going up the steps
into my mother's sister's house,

because she had
a deep cellar.

So it acted
as an air raid shelter
for us.

My brother carrying me--
We were the last
to go into the house.

And before
we went through the door
he said, "Look, Patrick."

And he pointed up.

And I saw the flames
coming out of the rear
of the V-2 rocket overhead.

I can still see it
as clearly today.

Of course I was just excited.
I was a kid, and I was
being shown a rocket.

What it was, of course,
was death and destruction.

[ Shatner ]
You're 12 years old.
You've been playing soccer.

Are you doing well
in class?

I was okay.
But it was not
an academic school.

We had some tough kids
in my form.

I mean, a number
of my fellow school friends...

spent a lot of their time,
their adult life, in jail.

This s a tough school.

Expectations were modest
of the kids that went
to this school.

[ Shatner ]
What were the expectations?

Well, they would go
into unskilled work.

They would do laboring jobs
or go work in factories.

You were expected
to follow your dad, then,
into unskilled labor work?

Yes.

[ Shatner Narrating ]
Prior to World War II,

British society adhered to
a rigid class system.

A person's class would determine
not only the schools
they would attend,

but also the jobs
that would be open to them.

It was expected that people
would conform to the values
of their peer groups.

Any attempt to rise
above their class...

was frowned upon by society.

I do recall...

by the time
I was 13,

when I was planning
with my friends to go and see
a movie at the weekend,

they would say to me,

"And, Patrick, in this movie
the acting's really good."

Now, why would they tell me
the acting was good?
Aha.

Why would they use that
as a means of persuading me to
see a movie they wanted to see?

Why-- So what's
the answer to that?
I don't know.

I'm just offering this up
as one of those mysteries.

At 13 I went on a Monday night
to the Essoldo Cinema, Dewsbury.

I went to see a film
I'd never heard of
called On the Waterfront.

At that time
they were still making films
in black and white, not color,

and I knew, two hours later
when I came out of that cinema,

that I had seen something
entirely different.

Filmmaking,
but even more than that--
acting.

[ Shatner Narrating ]
Patrick's interest in acting
was forever ignited...

when his schoolteacher,
Cecil Dormand,

introduced Patrick
to the world of Shakespeare
at the age of 11.

By age 15
he'd dropped out of school...

and had left
his newspaper reporter job...

to pursue acting full-time.

At age 19 he landed
his first significant
stage role...

in Treasure Island in 1959.

He never looked back.

I find acting more complex,
more interesting,
more problem-solving,

more requiring of study
of the character
you're playing,

of your own feeling
towards the character,

of how you're
approaching that character,
which may not be you at all--

the solutions to all
those complex problems...

are even more so
the older you get.

It's a little different
for me.

When I work now,

it is very different from,

oh, maybe even 20 years ago,
25 years ago,

when I first went
to Hollywood.

I now know...

the work
is inside me.

It's a bit like Michelangelo
and those sculptures,
those half-finished--

Ch-Chipping away
the--
It's there.

The statue's in it.
You just chip away
the-- Yeah.

That's what
it feels like now to me.

The complexity
or the simplicity.

The older you get,
the more you see
within the--

The word "hello,"
it just doesn't become
"hello" anymore.

Yes, you have more--
That's the complexity
I'm talking about.

You have more choices,
it would seem, now.

But that's
the benefit of living
for a year or two.

And that's what--
That life
gives you choices.

But at the same time
I feel that those choices...

are also inside me,

just waiting to be made.

And now when I go on stage,
I don't know
what I'm going to do.

All I know is,
I have to take one step...

and I'm moving forward
into the light.

And I don't know
what comes next.

Oh! Hello. I've taken
another step. Well, I don't
know what happens then.

And then somebody
says something.

And so the thing has now,
for me, achieved...

a-a kind of--

Simplicity?
quiet simplicity.

Even in the midst
of doing something crazy
like Macbeth.

But it's beautiful
and-- and you admire it.

You feel comfortable in it.
It makes me happy.
That's the important thing.

[ Shatner Narrating ]
During the early 1960s,

Patrick honed his craft
in stage productions
throughout Britain,

as he performed with
several repertory companies...

including the Manchester
Library Theatre...

and the Old Vic
Theatre Company.

He joined the prestigious
Royal Shakespeare Company...

and appeared in productions of
Much Ado About Nothing,

As You Like It
and King Lear.

In 1971, Patrick's
dedication to his craft...

finally received recognition
outside of Britain...

as he made
his Broadway debut...

in Peter Brook's
legendary staging of
A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the early '80s...

Patrick joined
the Royal National Theatre...

and expanded into
television and film,

taking on small roles
in both Britain and the U.S.

A 1987 production
of Edward Albee's Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...

would earn Patrick
further critical acclaim.

But his career
was about to take...

a dramatic turn.

As Patrick gave a reading at
a Shakespeare lecture at UCLA,

a prominent television producr
heard that voice.

Bob Justman went by a hallway
where he was teaching at UCLA...

and heard this voice,

this tremendous,
low, English voice...

that was...

reverberating
down the hallway.

And he had to go
find out who this was.
It was Patrick Stewart.

He brought Gene
to see Patrick Stewart,

and Gene, uh, said,

"I'm not gonna have
a bald Englishman
playing the new Captain Kirk."

Julian Picard,
who was a little younger,
had a French accent,

and, most importantly,
hair.

He wanted a romantic,

big, you know,
operatic kind of person.

We started a search,

and we saw...

dozens and dozens of actors...

to play the role of--
of, uh, Picard.

They were all but despairing
of finding a captain.

What an extraordinary thing.
Isn't that my son
sitting right over there?

Dan, come on in.

He's gonna sit
right up here.

I'll sit
between you.
Yeah.

So, Daniel.
Yes.

You heard
the last few remarks
that your dad and I were--

- Yeah, I--
- What's your feeling
about that?

I actually side
with you, Bill.

For me, I agree with you.
It gets more complicated
as I get older.

At the beginning
of the work,

you have these choices
in your head and you think
about where you're going,

and then for four weeks
you struggle and
wallow around in the mud...

and try and work out--

And invariably
what you find at the end
of the process...

is what you had decided
at the beginning.

I was talking to my wife
about this the other day--
Who is an actress.

She's an actress also.
Mary.

And I was thinking back
to when I was 24 or 25.

I don't remember
learning lines.

I don't really remember
having to sit
and think about it.

It seemed organic.
It seemed that--

When you were
younger.
Yeah.

And now--
God! It's--
It's hard work.

It's hard work.
See, I think you're going
into that middle phase.

You didn't say there was
a middle phase.
Well--

[ Laughing ]
I'm talking about it now.

What has your dad told you
that gave you
the most pointed feeling?

When I was a young teenager
and I was preparing
for drama school auditions,

[ Chuckles ]
my dad was coaching me.

"Coaching" meant
being locked in a room
for four hours.

All right, now,
I gotta hear this.

I think it's an embarrassing
story for both of us.
Painful, actually, probably.

I had my pieces,
and we would practice them
every day for four hours.

You were auditioning
to get into--
To drama school.

- Which drama school?
- I did them all in London.

So you're locked in a room for
four hours, you're desperate to
get into one of these schools,

'cause it means
you'll get a job
once you get out.

Absolutely.
It's hugely important.
And I really did want his help.

There's not much better
help out there.
Exactly.

But the thing
that he did say
and kept shouting at me--

We'd get into
the first line of the piece
and I'd get two words in--

"Stop! Stop!

Think!
You're not thinking!
Think!"

It's one thing just to say
the lines. And you're just
saying them. Anyone can do that.

But to have a thought
behind it, to see it
behind your eyes--

What I think is
you could be thinking
about anything...

as long as there's some--
something going on inside.

Exactly. Some--
Some mass.

It's final casting,
and it's Gene and I.

Rick Berman was sitting there.

He went to read
along with one other actor.

Uh, 'cause you never went
with just one actor.

And Gene said,
"You know, that number two guy,
that Patrick Stewart guy,

let's bring him back,
let's read him again."

He-- He nailed it.

And Gene said,

"We got him."

He was brought in for a reading,
they all loved him.

The only thing I think is,
they should've changed the name.

'Cause he isn't
in any way French.

Did you ever feel that--
the thing of Captain Kirk
on Captain Picard?

Huge responsibility.
Tell me. Tell me!

- I have never, never
talked about it.
- Tell me about it.

I think I was cast
in March or-- or April,

and we started shooting
in May.

So I didn't have
much time to prepare.

I was working
just a few miles
away from here...

at the
Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon.

I'd been there
about three or four years,

and Daniel, I guess,
was two or three.

And I would rush home
after a matinee,

out into the country
where we lived,

so that I could have
some tea with him, maybe
even see him in the bath.

I used to come home,
and when I'd go in often
he would be having his tea,

and there would be
these guys on television
in these T-shirts,

these different-colored
T-shirts,

in these futuristic sets.

That's all I knew
about Star Trek.

I had to ask my kids,

and they said,
"Watch the movies,
most particularly."

Well, I think
I watched two of them
and then I stopped,

because I said,
if I watch all of the work
of these people,

I'm never-- I'm never
gonna get on that set.

I won't leave
my trailer.

Too intimidated.

You hovered over...

our early weeks and months
on the series...

like a Klingon warbird.

[ Both Chuckling ]

Oh, no. The Romulans
had warbirds, didn't they?
You see? You know--

It's been longer for me
than you.
I know.

But I bet you would not
have made that mistake.

I would not have used
that simile at all!

But I was trying to find,
you know, something that
rather ominously,

slightly threateningly,
you know, can hang
over your heads.

It was alleged that,
in some interviews,

Bill Shatner
made some negative remarks...

about the new series.

And, um--

Our attitude--
My attitude to that was,
"Well, that's a shame."

We were under
the-- the pressure
and expectation...

of really
making this good.

Let's really
make this good.

I'd expected to be fired
before the pilot was over.
I really was.

I lived out of a suitcase
in a friend's spare bedroom...

'cause didn't want to
have to go through
that whole packing thing...

when they said,
"Patrick, it's not working out."

We'd work very late
every Friday night--

1:00, 2:00 in the morning,
sometimes later.

Or if we finished early,
we'd go to Nickodell,
which was a famous bar--

[ Shatner ]
The great steakhouse, yes.

Which is gone because
Paramount pulled it down
to build a car park.

So Saturday morning
I would wake up quite early,
maybe sleep in for an hour.

I would do my laundry.
That was the very first
thing I'd do.

- I had my own washing machine.
I'd do my laundry.
- For goodness' sake.

Then I would go
to the market.

I'd do my week's shopping,
have a little lunch, come back,

and Saturday afternoon
I would pick up
next week's work...

and I would start
working on Monday.

Saturday night
I gave myself off.
Wow.

I love music.
I'd go to a concert at the
Music Center, or an opera.

But Sunday morning,

up early working.

I would learn
Monday's work,

more or less
learn Tuesday's work,

get really familiar
with Wednesday's work...

and be looking over
Thursday and Friday.

That was the first season.
I didn't go on like that
for seven years.

But it was because
I was terrified that
I wouldn't be prepared.

Patrick Stewart
I met the first day.

We were going to
makeup tests,

and we talked about
the merits of cricket
versus baseball.

And from that moment
to this moment...

we have been, uh,
very dear friends.

I had actually worked with
several of his friends from
the R.S.C.,

so that was kind of
really nice.

And I was thrilled
that he was
going to be captain.

And it turned out
that most of us had done
a fair amount of theater.

People always love
to ask the question,

"What is the difference
between stage acting
and film acting?"

I have a maybe
somewhat simplistic way
of analyzing it,

which is to say that
essentially stage work,

theater work
is about action.

Now, I don't mean by that
action sequences so much,

but it is about
movement.

When you go to a theater,
you're looking at
the entire body of an actor.

So everything
about that body...

is having
some kind of impact
on the audience.

Film, for me-- and this might
take us right back
to our conversation...

about
On the Waterfront.

Film, for me,
is about thinking.

You think,

and the camera
watches you think.

And the actors
I've most admired--

movie actors
from when I was
a teenager until now--

are those actors
when you look at them
on the screen,

you know
what they're thinking.

And I used to say,
if you want to learn
about an actor,

what you should do is,
you should watch...

the first 20 years
of the career of Jack Nicholson.

Just sit down and watch
all of his movies.

You'll know
about Jack Nicholson
by the end of those movies.

Because what you're seeing
is what's behind those eyes
of his, what's behind him.

[ Shatner Narrating ]
As the impressive
seven-year run...

of The Next Generation series
came to an end,

Patrick had already been at work
on other productions
and was diversifying.

On the theater stage
he adapted Dickens'
A Christmas Carol on Broadway...

with a critically acclaimed
one-man show.

He portrayed Captain Ahab
on the small screen
in Herman Melville's Moby-Dic,

bringing him the first
of four Emmy nominations
and a Golden Globe nomination.

On the big screen
Patrick reprised the role
of Captain Jean-Luc Picard...

in four Next Generation
films,

then landed
another iconic role,

that of
Professor Charles Xavier...

in the successful
X-Men film franchise.

But 2009 would be
a very special year,

as Queen Elizabeth II
bestowed upon Patrick...

Britain's highest honor
of knighthood...

for his lifelong service
to the dramatic arts.

Sir Patrick Stewart.

Not bad for a kid from
the most humble of beginnings.

And I know violence
was a part of your early life.

Mm-hmm.
And that, in fact,

one of the charities
you talk about and encourage
people to give money to...

is for abused women.

Refuge, yes.

It's a charity
that's been in existence
for a few decades.

And it is a charity that helps
victims of domestic violence--

98% women and children,

occasionally men
who are victims
of domestic violence.

Abused by their wives.
Yeah.

And because it happened
by my-- my father,
an unhappy and bitter man--

When he'd been drinking
he could lose control,

and when he lost control
it was nasty.

I couldn't stop him.

You saw him hitting.
Yeah. Yeah.

I can do something now.

So in my work
for Refuge--

I'm patron
with Cherie Blair.

We are two patrons
of Refuge.

I do it for my mother.

What's it like?
Six-year-old--

It's lonely.

Nobody comes.
Nobody comes to help.

My other brother, Trevor,
was five years
older than me.

He would be out,
or with friends
or something.

Occasionally
we would both
be there together.

But the sense
of helplessness,
of loneliness,

of not being able to--
to get control
of the situation.

And the other thing
that goes with
domestic violence...

is shame,

knowing that the neighbors
knew and heard.

Although I do remember once
we had a neighbor--

her name was Lizzie Dixon.

And Lizzie, like my mother,
was a weaver.

- She worked on huge
industrial looms. Big looms.
- Looms. Mm-hmm.

My little mother running two
of these monstrous machines.

Lizzie Dixon,
she was a-- a big woman.

And I do remember
one night...

her crashing into
the living room in
the middle of one of these,

and I remember her putting
her forearm up in front of
my father and saying,

"Come on, Alf! Come on!
Try it on me! Try it on me!"

And this army boxer--
Yeah.

[ Whooshing Sound ]
Wow.

It worked. I wish Lizzie
had come in more often.
God rest her soul.

And I never got beaten
or struck by my father.
It was only my mother.

And there would be blood
on the floor.
Holy cats.

Ambulances called
and police coming.
[ Gasps ] Oh, my Gosh.

And I heard, in my house,
a policeman say to my mother,

"Well, you must have done
something to provoke him."

Oh, my gosh.

They didn't understand.

They had no idea
in the world.

What do you think
that's done to you,
to Sir Patrick?

I have that inside me too.

I have my father
inside me.

Of course.

And I've always known this.

For years
and years and years
I couldn't act anger,

rage, fury, murderousness.

Couldn't. Faked it.
I faked it.

Well, I know
we fake it all.

- It starts from a place.
- Yes.

It starts
from a place of truth.

I faked it. Badly.

I don't fake it
anymore.
Wow.

I was afraid of going
to that set of feelings.

I'm not afraid anymore now.

I know that I can do it
and it's safe.
I can do it as an actor.

I spent a whole year
playing Macbeth.

You know?

Exactly 365 days
from first performance
to last performance.

And I know
what it feels like to say,

"I am in blood
stepped in so far,

that should I
wade no further,

returning were as tedious
as go o'er,"

and mean it.

When they were naming
the Roddenberry Building
on the Paramount lot,

Bill came to that.

And I was introduced to him.
It was the first time
I ever met him.

And I was very much
on my guard.

But he seemed...

very civil...

and... pleasant.

I certainly had no complaints
about him on that first meeting.

I have two major regrets
in my life,

and they're both to do
with the failure of--

my failure
in my marriages.

[ Exhales ]

How I behaved,

what I did,

um...

can't be corrected.

And guilt, I think,
has gone,

but regret remains.

And I have that
very strongly.

You know, regret is
the worst emotion of all.

And that's because...

you haven't
forgiven yourself.

I think that
I do see regret...

as having a different
quality and nature
from the way you see it.

It is not something
which handicaps me,

which holds me back,
which makes me--

which is the basis
of my fear...

about being
married again.

It's a quality
that lives inside me...

that has now become
part of Patrick Stewart.

I failed in these ways.

Now, I don't brood
on the failure,

but failure makes up
an aspect of my character,

that I have failed.

This week...

I was reading
an article...

about an Italian
mountaineer.

While I was reading it
I was asking myself,
Why am I reading this?

I'm not
especially interested
in mountaineering.

I've never heard
of this old guy--
he's in his 80s now.

Why am I reading this?
And then I came to
the end of the article.

He's now in his 80s,

and he pioneered...

some of the great
solo climbs...

in-- certainly
in Alpine mountaineering.

He said,
What is important...

about mountaineering
is not that you win,

is not that you get to the top
or that you're the first.

The important thing
about mountaineering...

is that you can get
within a hundred meters
of the top...

and turn back...

because you can't go on...

and feel good about it.

Mmm.

I can feel the regret
of those failures,

but it's okay.

That's what he said.
I think he said,

I can say to myself
it's okay to fail.

I think that's...

huge.

Everything really...

took off years later...

when we were at ShoWest--

you know, when studios
show their upcoming shows.

Our first movie was Generations
and Bill was costarring in that.

So we were there together
and we were doing a panel,

and for some reason
I had to be back in L.A.

And the studio had
put the Paramount jet
at my disposal...

to get me
back to L.A. quickly.

So before this panel was over
I just went along
saying to everybody,

"I'm sorry, I've go to go.
Good-bye. Good-bye."

And I said this to Bill
and Bill said, uh,
"How are you getting back?"

And I said,
"Well, the-- the Paramount jet.
They got a plane."

And he said, uh,

"Do you mind
taking a passenger?"

And I said, "You?"
And he said, "Yeah, me."

I said, "Sure. Come along.
Of course. By all means."
So we both left.

There we were
on the Paramount jet.

There was only one meal.

So, uh, I said,
"Come on. We'll split it."

We did have
a couple glasses of wine.

And in the 45, 50-minute flight
from Las Vegas to L.A.,

William Shatner
and Patrick Stewart
became friends.

You've been
fascinating.

And this whole Captain Kirk,
Captain Picard thing
is part of our history--

Yeah.

and just part of our lives.

And it's...

knit in there.

You know, um, um,
I spent a lot of time
in Brooklyn, in New York,

which I've come to love--
Brooklyn.

I worked there as an actor,
and now I got to know
the neighborhood.

And I get used to,
especially in New York,
building sites particularly--

- What do they say to you?
- "Hey, Captain! How ya doin'?"

Or they say,
"Make it so"?
Yeah. Or "Engage."

I was walking
down the street
where we live.

Couple of guys
are sitting on a stoop,

and as I walked past
this guy says,

[ New York Accent ]
"Hey, Mr. Stewart.

Welcome
to the neighborhood.
Enjoy!"

It was one of the--
Total acceptance.

Total acceptance.

"Welcome
to the neighborhood.
Enjoy."

Beautiful.

Bill, thank you.
Thanks for coming.

Thank you for having us,
Patrick, and thank you
for talking to us.

If I were to do this,
I was gonna have to
commit for six years.

And at that point I said,
"Out of the question.

I've got too much to do."

My agent was
the first person to tell me
not to worry...

'cause there wasn't
a hope in hell that this show...

would probably even make it
through the first season.

I knew a director,
I knew a couple
of screenwriters.

And so I called them
or I went to see them,

and they all said
exactly the same thing.

"Everybody knows it's not
going to work," they said.

"You cannot revive
an iconic series.

You cannot replace
those guys."

It's what William Goldman
said about Hollywood--

no one knows anything
about anything.

Closed-Captioned by
Captions, Inc., Burbank