NY Press
November 20, 2002
By MICHAEL DOJC

It was 9:30 a.m. when the phone rang and Leonard Nimoy introduced himself. He was just winding up a 16-city tour for his photo book, Shekhina. Shekhina is filled with eerily beautiful black-and-white photos of women in various states of undress, draped in tefillin and tallis–Jewish prayer accouterments normally worn by men. It’s quite a bold statement and has raised some controversy in more conservative Jewish communities.

I was to be interviewing Nimoy for a men’s magazine, Ramp, as well as a Canadian women’s magazine, Pursuit. The interview had been arranged with Nimoy’s book publicist and his personal assistant. His call came on cue.

After exchanging pleasantries, I asked the actor how he got into photography. Nimoy leisurely broke into a story about how he had started out more than 40 years ago, enjoying the mixing-chemicals element of developing film and taking portraits of his family. It must have been a question he had been asked ad nauseam, but he answered with the glee of a grandfather relating a story about a fishing trip he’s told every Thanksgiving since 1951.

Then I asked my second question: "Was part of your thinking at the time you took up photography that this might be a good way to pick up women?"

I was hoping for a laugh, or at least a witty, sharp-tongued response. What I got instead was a burst of anger.

"Are you kidding me?" he fired back. "What kind of magazine is this? Is this a nudie magazine?"

Startled, I could only murmur a no.

"Well, why are you asking me about picking up women?" he went on. "What kind of insulting question is that?"

Well, in fact it’s a stock men’s magazine question. I had asked the same or similar of cult celebrities, semi-celebrities and bona fide B-list stars on many occasions, and never met with such a negative response. I’ve had stonewalls, no comments and "Nope I was already married" shrugs, but never such outright contempt. I must have really touched a nerve. The controversy Shekhina had stirred up in some corners of the national Jewish community had clearly made Nimoy very touchy on this subject. Maybe I should have expected that, but I was shocked. I wondered what would have happened if I’d asked him about the alleged flatulence William Shatner experienced during a filmed conversation between the two cult icons a year ago. That was actually the last question on my list.

I never got the chance. "Okay, I think we’re finished with this conversation," was the last thing I heard from Leonard Nimoy.

Stunned, I e-mailed Nimoy’s publicist. "Nimoy hung up on me after my second question," I wrote in the subject line. Then I e-mailed my editors. My editor at Ramp responded first. "Glad to see you’re asking the right questions, and he can go fuck himself," he wrote. The response from Canada was equally positive, but the lingo was more polite. That’s Canadians for you. "Nimoy takes himself waaaay too seriously," my Pursuit editor wrote.

Nimoy’s publicist agreed at least that he does take himself seriously. "Leonard Nimoy is a serious artist, eager to discuss a project that means a great deal to him, and your question was trite and rude," she wrote me. "Had you done your research, you would have known that he was happily married."

That stung. She was taking a shot at my journalistic integrity. My father, a well-respected photographer, and also a happily married man, put out a book of black-and-white nudes and has been asked the pick-up-women question on many occasions. Passion for one’s work does not preclude being able to laugh at oneself.

The "trite and rude" bit was understandable. The cheeky tone of men’s magazines in the Maxim era is often construed as such. Had the publicist done her own research on Ramp or any men’s magazine published in the last five years, maybe she would have vetoed the interview in the first place and saved us both the grief.

I brooded about this fiasco for the rest of the day. That evening I figured out how to get it out of my head.

I bought a tree in Israel in Nimoy’s name. Not as a peace offering, but as a symbol of life. I sent Nimoy’s publicist the URL for the JNF tree certificate, which links to a picture of people of various colors holding hands and smiling.

"This is a really lovely gesture which I’m sure Mr. Nimoy will appreciate a great deal," she wrote a couple days later.

Let’s hope so.