Questions appropriated from an interview with William Shatner by Allen Asherman in 1986 from Asherman's book, "The Star Trek Interview Book." The book is no longer in print but was originally published by Pocket Books.

Star Trek fans say: "In this book, he's interviewed 38 people connected with STAR TREK. Excellent book!"

Answers - circa 2006.

ALLEN ASHERMAN --
He's an actor, he directs, he writes, breeds championship horses, keeps Doberman pinschers, has hunted big game with bow and arrow, and he flies. About the only thing he lacks is spare time. He can be deadly serious one moment, and laugh at himself or just about anything the next. He's William Shatner-to millions of people, also known as Captain James T. Kirk.

Actually, it's the other way around. Captain Kirk is William Shatner. They share the same degree of intensity and purpose, qualities that have pushed Shatner to the forefront of his profession, and made Captain Kirk a legend.

Shatner's presence and style are responsible for much of the dramatic intensity and delicate balance of seriousness and self-parody that is the core of STAR TREK.

I first interviewed William Shatner with my friends and fellow writers Steve and Envin Vertlieb during the summer of 1969, when he was directing and starring in There's a Girl in My Soup in Pennsylvania. At that time, when asked if he thought whether man was meant to fly, he responded, "If man was meant to fly he'd have wings..." His face had not the hint of a smile until almost 15 seconds later when the ends of his mouth curled upward, and he added, "...But we are flying aren't we?"

Shatner took time out from the development of STAR TREK V for the following interview.

--------------------

AA -- Before MGM signed you to a contract, you were previously offered one by another studio. Why did you turn it down?

SARAH -- Wait, can I just ask about the part about the shooting big game with a bow and arrow? Is that a regular thing?

AA -- Do you have any regrets concerning any decisions you made earlier in your career?

SARAH -- Guess not - OK, I'm sure William Shatner probably doesn't regret much about the Star Trek years. Or maybe he does. Maybe he wishes he stuck to movies like "Judgment at Nuremburg." I can imagine it would be a trying life having to deal with all those Star Trek fans everywhere you go. As for me, the only regret I have about my career is the inability to settle on one thing to have a career about. But then again, it makes for an interesting career.

AA -- What are some of your recollections about working with Spencer Tracy?

SARAH -- Oh, yeah, see? Maybe he did regret not sticking to Kramer films. Well, I never worked with Spencer Tracy but I worked for a man who had a similar name.

AA -- Do you prefer to take the parts of heroes or villains, and do you feel that you've been typecast as a result of STAR TREK?

SARAH -- I prefer the parts of heroes. They taste better. And, when I tell people I watch Star Trek, yes, I think people typecast me as the kind of person who watches Star Trek.Kind of nerdy, maybe.

AA -- How did you become involved with STAR TREK?

SARAH -- I used to come home during lunch and watch the re-runs. No, that's probably not true - I FIRST became involved with it because I'm pretty sure my dad watched it when I was a kid. Although, he seemed surprised I liked watching the original Star Trek when I told him - he watches the newer versions.

AA -- How much of Captain Kirk comes from your own personality?

SARAH -- That's an interesting question. Well, I'd say that all people want to be Kirk. He's straight out of a "Hero with a Thousand Faces"-type archetype. I've never read that book but I want to. If you consider my personality to have many crossovers with others' personalities, since, obviously, the character of Kirk has nothing to do with my specific personality (I think the series was over before I was born), then I'd say that, aside from some of the kitschy-ness of Kirk, the character comes directly from humanity's desire to be completely in control, completely trusted and completely calm enough to always come up with the solution to the problem at hand at the absolute key moment.

AA -- Kirk and Spock both have characteristics that children have. Spock sometimes suggests a lost little boy, and Kirk often reflects a childlike energy level, a mischievous quality. Do you recognize such qualities in yourself?

SARAH -- Why yes. Except it would be a lost little girl. But, yes, you're also touching upon the archetypal possibilities of fictional characters.

AA -- Were you happy with those portions of the STAR TREK television series that relied on your contributions?

SARAH -- NO, absolutely not. Do you mean that new channel G4 that bought all the old Star Treks? And they have the factoids, the
"Spock Market," the trivia and the chat room, which I guess expect everyone to contribute to. But I haven't done that. Even when my laptop happens to be sitting next to the couch and they ask you to "Log on!" I haven't fallen for it.

AA -- To what do you attribute your boundless energy and your continued ability to portray physically demanding roles, to retain your youth?

SARAH -- I'm kind of down today, actually. My stomach is killing me. I think I ate banana cream pie this week too many days in a row. So, maybe if I stayed off the dairy and sugar I'd have more energy. I also have to get up really early every day. I try to stay awake but at about 3PM, I get really tired. You know, I bet the secret of boundless energy and youth is a nap every day.

AA -- When was the first time you realized that STAR TREK had a very large fan following?

SARAH -- Hmmmm.... I think my mom was making fun of someone dressed up like Spock at a Fourth of July fireworks display.

AA -- When did you get your first personal taste of being a media celebrity? Was it at a convention?

SARAH -- Media celebrity? Nope, haven't gotten there yet. Media celebrity doesn't sound very enticing, anyway. I'd rather be a cultural icon.

AA -- It must be strange being recognized while you're out with your family going shopping or just out for a stroll. Has being such an easily recognized celebrity had an effect on you?

SARAH -- That would be weird. That would be distracting. I can only relate to it that when sometimes I go over to a friend's party and there's someone there who says, "Oh, hey Sarah! How's in going?" and I have no idea who they are.

AA -- And while your privacy has been so greatly reduced, you have to recall that this is basically the result of your practicing your craft so well.

SARAH -- No, not remembering who people are is sort of retarded.

AA -- How does it feel to be part of a myth, known throughout the world?

SARAH -- A myth? Can you call a contemporary situation a myth? Sometimes I do feel like I'm in a myth. But that's why they're myths, tales about immortals that relate to mortals on a daily basis. You can't say that what happens on Star Trek happens in real life but the situations emotionally resonate on a smaller scale.

AA -- Do you read science fiction? And considering your schedule, do you have any time now to read at all?

SARAH -- I used to. I read all the William Gibson stuff, some Orson Scott Card.I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep." Then I think I got stuck on a book called, "The Zap Gun" and stopped with the sci fi. Then I moved on to books written in the 20s by white male authors that usually revolved around a man who lives in an apartment and is always hiding from his landlady. And, yes,my schedule's not so busy. I read a lot.

AA -- Other than STAR TREK V, would you rather appear in and direct films that are not science fiction?

SARAH -- Yes.

AA -- Are you enthusiastic about directing STAR TREK V, or are you nervous about it?

SARAH -- I would be nervous as crap about it, if I were to be about to do such a thing.

AA -- STAR TREK IV featured a generous helping of humor, as did some of the best episodes of the STAR TREK television series. Do you plan to feature the element of humor in STAR TREK V?

SARAH -- I didn't see Star Trek V, I don't think. I'm not sure - I saw one of the movies I think. I think it was the one with Ricardo Montalban. Or maybe it was just on TV. Anyway, no comment.

AA -- What are your goals with STAR TREK V?

SARAH -- My goals are not to watch it.

AA -- Have you had any feedback regarding your appearance on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and your comedy routine regarding STAR TREK conventions and fans?

SARAH -- You know, Paul and I are actually watching a Roast of William Shatner on Comedy Central right now and they showed a clip from that. It looks like pretty much a no brainer. The nice thing about Trekkies is that no matter how many people tell them they're nerds, there's just no listenin'.

AA -- Do you think the television of today is better than it was in the 1960s, when STAR TREK was originally on the air?

SARAH -- If this roast is any example, then no. But actually, this is a little funnier than some of the network sitcoms I've flipped through. I just do not get this new trend of shaky cam, improvisational sitcom with their stupid cliches. Paul's laughing at this roast. I think I laughed once towards the beginning. There's probably something good like Star Trek on today, but I don't watch much scripted TV. So as far as I'm concerned, there's not. I've had little patience with network and standard DISH shows.

AA -- What do you think accounts for the popularity of STAR TREK?

SARAH -- As I sort of mentioned above, people relate emotionally to the heroism, the diversity, adventure, compassion and problem solving.

AA -- Is there anything you've ever wanted to say to the fans of STAR TREK, but have never gotten a chance to say?

SARAH -- The costumes are not necessary.

Questions Copyright ©1986 Allen Asherman.

Questions appropriated from an interview with Patrick McGoohan by writer/TV host Warner Troyer that was originally broadcast on TVOntario . The interview was conducted for the Ontario Educational Communications Authority with the participation of a studio audience in 1977.

Answers - circa 2006.

TROYER: I guess the first thing I should tell you is that your guest and mine is Patrick McGoohan. Mr. McGoohan, known familiarly to his friends as No. 6, was the creative force behind, the executive producer of, and in several cases the script writer of a series called "The Prisoner," which appeared on television a number of times, not least notably on this network. Mr. McGoohan has come here from Los Angeles to meet you and talk to you and to me. And to meet a group of Prisoner, ah, club groupies, some of them from Seneca College which has been operating a course based on the series, some of them from OECA, and some other people, and we're going to talk about "The Prisoner" and I suppose the obvious first question is: Where the hell did that idea come from? How'd you get started?

SARAH: Actually, I'm not really Patrick McGoohan. To tell you the truth, I watched a lot of "The Avengers," but not so much "The Prisoner." I'm familiar with it. I know it has a lot of fans, like the "groupies" of Seneca College. So did "The Avengers," I guess. Whenever I told people I watched "The Avengers" they'd ask if I also watched "The Prisoner"....

TROYER: Just that? With T.V.? With society, or you?

SARAH: Um, I watched it with a T.V....

TROYER: "Danger Man."

SARAH: No - it was called "The Avengers."

TROYER: Was that a personal thing in terms of your reaction to society or was it more of an observation? Do you feel you're being...

SARAH: Actually, I just stayed up late a lot in high school, and one night I saw on PBS that there was this cool old show in black and white at, like, midnight called "The Avengers." And after "The Avengers" was over, came "Star Hustler," with Jack Horkheimer, which was great! The theme song was that Debussy song. I always think of that when I hear that song. Then after that the station would go off the air for the night with the national anthem and the flag waving.

TROYER: You didn't initially want to do 17 films?

SARAH: 17 films? I guess I would watch 17 episodes - wait, are we talking about "The Avengers" or "The Prisoner"? Because I know there are 17 episodes of "The Prisoner."

TROYER: But you did ten in two days? Ten outlines?

SARAH: No, I would watch "The Avengers" once a week... on Sundays.

TROYER: How would you have described or explained the concept of the series to those writers, the first time you sat down with them, what did you tell them?

SARAH: You must be talking about "The Prisoner" now. I would say that it's about a guy who wakes up a prisoner on a desert island, with all his stuff. And every time he tries to escape, a big white ball chases him down.

TROYER: What about the philosophy, the rationale of the Village? What did you tell them about that? Its raison-d'etre, not its mechanics...

SARAH: It's funny, actually, when I graduated from high school I started working with a couple of screenwriters who were supposed to adapt "The Prisoner" for film, and I did a bunch of research to inspire what the Village was like. They wanted different prison households to be essentially stuck in time from the decade at which they were imprisoned.

TROYER: To what end was that process of breaking down the individual will?

SARAH: Oh, it wasn't so bad. The one screenwriter of the partnership that I mostly worked with was pretty nice. And I liked hanging out in the library. This was before the internet was so prevalent.

TROYER: For the Village, what was the purpose, the goal?

SARAH: Well.... It was a prison, right?

TROYER: Made you angry, too? (Chuckle.)

SARAH: No, not really. It's just a show.

TROYER: But can you, in everyday life, summon the will and the energy to rebel every time any indignity occurs?

SARAH: Um. Sure.

TROYER: How much psychic attrition is there, spiritual attrition in not rebelling? How much do you give away or lose? How high is the cost of not rebelling every time? Not complaining every time?

SARAH: Well, you could argue that when you feel like rebelling, perhaps the thing to do is really to just consider it sticking to your guns. Rebelling sounds so juvenile. When I feel indignified, I think the best thing is just to let that be known, and why, and to let the indignifier know that I don't deserve that kind of treatment.

TROYER: Do you have ulcers?

SARAH: No.

TROYER: Bad ones?

SARAH: No, not at all. I get stomach aches sometimes.

TROYER: How many scripts did you write? Your name was on two.

SARAH: I wrote three scripts.

TROYER: So how many all together?

SARAH: Three. Two in college and one after. Well, not including the short ones. I wrote about 4 or 5 shorts too.

TROYER: Which ones? The last one...

SARAH: The features were: "Ohio," "Dewlaps and Bag Balm" and an untitled one I worked on with those aforementioned writers.

TROYER: What's your response to what could really only be adequately described as a "cult" which has grown up around the series, a kind of mystique about it, here and in Europe?

SARAH: It's so mod and ahead of it's time. There's a very retro cool factor to the show.

TROYER: They were angry?

SARAH: Who?

TROYER: Why? Why were they angry?

SARAH: Who are you talking about?

TROYER: It was themselves.

SARAH: Oh.

TROYER: D'ya know what's really interesting, to me, is a number of my friends and colleagues who watched the entire series told me, after the last show, that they were angry because they hadn't found out who No. 1 was. That went by quickly and they refused to acknowledge it.

SARAH: I can imagine that would be frustrating. But isn't it a trick question?

TROYER: What is your response to all the analysis and all the philosophizing and criticism of the series? People have tried to make so much of it and to find so many levels of meaning, to parse it in so many directions.

SARAH: Yeah, that sort of comes with the territory of something becoming a cult fave.

TROYER: (Chuckling) Or more pompous?

SARAH: I guess it's the pompous part of something becoming a cult fave.

TROYER: Some questions...over here...

Girl: How did you feel about the response to "The Prisoner" when it was first shown in Britain?

SARAH: I wasn't actually born yet.

TROYER: Did you get any special kind of response from politicians, from bureaucrats, people in the kind of corporations we all know and hate?

SARAH: I don't know....

TROYER: Uh-huh. Was there any one that was more fun for you than the other? Was it fun playing a Western?...a western hero for a few...(SARAH: I, ah...) a few scenes?

SARAH: That sounds fun.

TROYER: It was harmless...

SARAH: I'm sure.

TROYER: Can you make a decent creative enterprise, build one, in any medium, without building it on several levels at once? However much of it is conscious or unconscious?

SARAH: That's a very complicated question... build a creative enterprise on many levels? I think I consciously build creative enterprises on many levels at once, but even more levels arise from my unconscious as I proceed.

TROYER: "Rover."

SARAH: What?

TROYER: Did you really?

SARAH: Did I?

TROYER: So you'd lose a lot of scenes, then, when you were shooting in a boat...

SARAH: Oh, I'm sure that was tough, yeah.

Boy: What interested me was the style in which it was done and the whimsy and the hundreds of little touches, but from what you've been saying so far, they all seem to have been accidents. You know, the white balloon was a accident and you happened upon the Village...

SARAH: You mean the big white ball that rolls out into the ocean?

Boy: And it's, you know, incredibly lucky.

SARAH: Incredibly.

Boy: No, but the little touches...

SARAH: I'm with you.

Boy: But I haven't seen them come very often in any other series.

SARAH: No? No, probably not.

Boy: And the style of the way...

SARAH: VERY stylish.

TROYER: Was it a series, do you think, which had an appeal, a kind of narrow-gauge appeal, chiefly to people in the upper twenty percent of the intelligence quotient bracket or whatever?

SARAH: Oh, uh, yes definitely. I mean, anything where the main characters' names are numbers.....

TROYER: Yeah, I meant that.

SARAH: Uh huh, exactly.

Second Boy: One analogy that comes up, from literature, is with epic poetry, or with an epic. And "The Prisoner" seems to have all the qualities that belong to an epic, including the kind of structure which you ended up with: the thing that began with seven parts and ended with seventeen.

SARAH: Well, when you've got a good thing going....

Second Boy: There have been a few peculiar epic works which have done that sort of thing or been on the way, Spencer's "Faerie Queene" for instance, or Tennyson's "Idylls of the Kings" ..."Idylls of the King" which became a twelve-part non-epic with all the properties and qualities of an epic. I have one question based on that perhaps peculiar observation, and that is: one of the figures in some of the epics, like the "Faerie Queene," is the dwarf who accompanies Una and is the Redcrosse Knight where the idea for Angelo Muscat come from?

SARAH: Oh, sure.

Second Boy: Is there a literary image...

SARAH: Oh. Yeah.

Second Boy: I was just curious, because there were so many images of all...of all the figures that are in the series that are...that have literary connections, whether of not they're deliberate...(SARAH: Yeah.)...deliberately connected or not doesn't really matter, does it? There might be an element...

SARAH: Totally. There's totally a LOT of literature in it.

Second Boy: No, doesn't matter at all.

SARAH: Oh. It does.

Third Boy: Mr. McGoohan, my question deals with religion.

SARAH: .... Yeah?

Third Boy: I understand, in reading a little about you, that you're a very religious man, and my question pertains to "Fall Out." I have interpreted a lot of the acts as being...having this content. I'm thinking specifically of the crucifixion of the two rebels, of when their arms are drawn apart, the temptation of No. 6 by the President of the Village, of the temptation of Christ...

SARAH: No, actually, I'm not very religious.

Third Boy: ...."Drybones," all of that. First of all, would you agree with my idea that that is intentional? That it is...

SARAH: "Drybones"?

Third Boy: When I speak of religion, I mean a moral attitude towards life.

SARAH: Oh, OK. Yes, I suppose there is some relevance there, definitely.

Third Boy: OK, then, is it fair to say that No. 6 draws upon that? Is that the source of his defense? Is that how he gets up in the morning and faces another day in the Village?

SARAH: No. He just gets up and goes about his business. If there are parallels to religion, that's because the stories of religion are archetypal - Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, Islamic, etc. Depends on the tone.

Third Boy: Would you say that there is a distinct lack in the rest of the villagers? Are they soulless beings?

SARAH: Oh. I forgot to mention Scientologists. There are soulless archetypes in religious as well. Not that that has anything to do with Scientologists.

TROYER: I used to think that television commercials were spiritually healthy because they made us skeptical and that that was probably a very good thing to learn very early on.

SARAH: That's very interesting. And that is an incredibly positive spin on a horrid necessity to keep the world of television alight. That's like saying getting a stomach flu for three days every week is necessary for us to enjoy life.

Fourth Boy: There's one sequence you do with Leo McKern where he says, "I'll kill you." You say, "I'll die," and he says, "You're dead." Is that a figure of speech or was there an underlying thing happening there?

SARAH: Who's Leo McKern? Um, that sounds pretty good. I'd like to see that episode.

Fourth Boy: Yeah, 'Once Upon a Time'.

SARAH: ... in the future.

TROYER: Much as he cracked in that final episode.

SARAH: Whattaya mean?

TROYER: I was wondering about how much intensity there was in that. I know that acting is always an enormously intense experience but in that head-on two hander where there was so much dynamic pressure. Obviously, it was real.

SARAH: I'm sure there was some acting going on.

TROYER: Were you a different person when you came out the other end of that series?

SARAH: I think I need to see all seventeen episodes to come out the other end.

TROYER: Beyond that?

SARAH: Well, maybe I'll have dinner or something.

TROYER: It wasn't purely psychoanalysis?

SARAH: A good show might be able to teach something about life to you, but it's all in one's own interpretation. Certain parts of any good story speak to different individuals in different ways. With these morsels of one sided communication, we grow.

TROYER: What about the notions that some actors, some people in other creative endeavors have, that we all have a finite bank of energy that each time one brings some of it up there's a little less left for next time, or for the other end of the road.

SARAH: No, no, no. That is not true at all. You're talking about selling out. Selling out is simply when one gets to a certain point in their life and everyone is blowing so much smoke up their rear it's hard to judge one's own work. It's not like you run out of ideas. If that were true we'd have used everything up years, millennia, ago. Staying fresh and innovative takes a special sort of strength to self-edit creatively.

TROYER: So the creative urge is a muscle, the more we flex it, the stronger it gets.

SARAH: Oh, that too. Yes, if you cave to those who just want to curry favor with praise, you are losing that muscle.

Fifth Boy: Mr. McGoohan, when you began "The Prisoner," you began it in a decade in which a lot of people were used to secret agents. You very neatly saw the next decade coming. I thing you saw Watergate; the enemy within as opposed to the enemy without. I don't know if you can answer this, but if you were going to do the series again and you had to look aged to the 80's and you were thinking in terms of what you see as being the real enemy, not the storybook enemy but the enemy that's really going to hassle us. If you were going to look into the 80's now, what would you look to?

SARAH: I see a lot of hairspray, leg warmers and fluorescent colors.

Fifth Boy: Do you think maybe there's going to be a strong popular reaction against "Progress" in the future?

SARAH: No way. Progress is unstoppable. I used to wonder that too. But then I had a conversation about it with my father and he said something that has always stuck with me. He said that progress is cornucopia-shaped, with more progress comes even more progress, expanding outward.

Sixth Boy: We tend to view the threat, the Village there, as sort of a thing as something external like Madison Avenue, the media. How responsible are we for accepting this? Where do we become involved in being "unfree"?

SARAH: By all means, please, do as much as you can to prevent being "unfree." If you feel unjustly "unfree" you should do something about it. Personally, I don't like the idea of mainstream advertising very much, but then sometimes it amuses me. I end up avoiding and ignoring it as much as possible unless it catches my fancy like a short film might. But I dream of a world where there is no mainstream advertising - where it is considered old fashioned and plain wrong to erect a billboard in front a perfectly good view. I have not, however, dreamt up the way to enact this dream yet.

Sixth Boy: Did you regard the Village as an external thing or as something that we carry around with us all the time?

SARAH: I think the fact that we find out that Number One is the main character in the end (oops, did I spoil it?) speaks to the latter.

TROYER: Do we?

SARAH: Some do. Sure.

TROYER: Well, I know who the idiot is in mine.

SARAH: In your... what?

Seventh Boy: Is No. 1 the evil side of man's nature?

SARAH: Oh, come on. You expect me to answer that? Try again....

TROYER: Did you know when you first outlined the series in your own mind, the concept that No. 1 was going to turn out to be you, to be No. 6?

SARAH: Well, I guess I'm not the only one spoiling the ending. Um, did I know? No, actually I, personally, was not born when these series were written.

TROYER: When did you find out?

SARAH: I think it was sometime after everyone kept asking me if I ever watched "The Prisoner," during that stretch where I was watching "The Avengers" all the time. I looked into it a bit and found out what the show was about.

So.

No more questions?

OK.

Good night.

Questions Copyright ©1977 Warner Troyer for the Ontario Educational Communications Authority.

Questions appropriated from a Playboy interview with Frank Sinatra by Joe Hyams in 1962.

Answers - circa 2006.

PLAYBOY: Frank, in the 20 years since you left the Tommy Dorsey band to make your name as a solo singer, you've deepened and diversified your talents with a variety of concurrent careers in related fields. But so far none of these aptitudes and activities has succeeded in eclipsing your gifts as a popular vocalist. So why don't we begin by examining Sinatra, the singer?

SARAH: My name's not Frank.

PLAYBOY: Many explanations have been offered for your unique ability -- apart from the subtleties of style and vocal equipment -- to communicate the mood of a song to an audience. How would you define it?

SARAH: I'd say my singing style could be defined as being akin to a passionate walrus in a fit of girlish enthusiasm.

PLAYBOY: Doesn't any good vocalist "feel" a song? Is there such a difference . . .

SARAH: Yes, a good vocalist "feels" a song...

PLAYBOY: Of the thousands of words which [sic] have been written about you on this subject, do you recall any which have accurately described this ability?

SARAH: I think these are the first words that have ever been written about me publicly. I can't remember. Not a thousand. Definitely. Maybe 10 or 20.

PLAYBOY: From what you've said, it seems that we'll have to learn something of what makes you tick as a man in order to understand what motivates you as an entertainer. Would it be all right with you if we attempt to do just that -- by exploring a few of the fundamental beliefs which [sic] move and shape your life?

SARAH: Sure, go ahead. I'll tick as a man. For your entertainment.

PLAYBOY: All right, let's start with the most basic question there is: Are you a religious man? Do you believe in God?

SARAH: I am not a religious man, or a religious woman, either.

PLAYBOY: You haven't found any answers for yourself in organized religion?

SARAH: Right. I have not found organized religion to be helpful. I see the use for organized religion for social and political reasons, but I find that use of religion, primarily for social and political reasons, to be antithetical to what religion should be about. I am religious to some extent, really, but on a personal level.

PLAYBOY: Hasn't religious faith just as often served as a civilizing influence?

SARAH: I think that's what I just said...

PLAYBOY: But aren't such spiritual hypocrites in a minority? Aren't most Americans fairly consistent in their conduct within the precepts of religious doctrine?

SARAH: No.

PLAYBOY: Are you saying that . . .

SARAH: Yes? Are you going to finish that sentence?

PLAYBOY: If you think you're stepping over the line, offending your public or perhaps risking economic suicide, shall we cut this off now, erase the tape and start over along more antiseptic lines?

SARAH: No, this is just my playing around with the words of an old Sinatra interview. It's not really real. I think we'll be OK.

PLAYBOY: All right, then, let's move on to another delicate subject: disarmament. How do you feel about the necessity and possibility of achieving it?

SARAH: Well, whom are you referring to?

PLAYBOY: Are you suggesting that disarmament might be detrimental to peace?

SARAH: It's a simple question...

PLAYBOY: You foresee no possibility of world war or of effective disarmament?

SARAH: Involving Iran? Or Korea? Or maybe China? No - I think we're stuck in these smaller but nasty wars with trumped up names like "Operation Desert Storm" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" for now.

PLAYBOY: You tell us.

SARAH: Excuse me?

PLAYBOY: Do you feel, then, that nuclear testing should be continued?

SARAH: No, I think we're Ok in that area.

PLAYBOY: You spoke a moment ago of the fear and suspicion that might nullify any plan for lasting and effective disarmament. Isn't continuing nuclear preparedness, with or without further testing, likely to engender these emotions on an even more dangerous scale?

SARAH: I'm sorry, did you say there were sandwiches over there?

PLAYBOY: On a practical level, how would you combat Communist expansion into areas such as Cuba, Laos and the emerging African nations?

SARAH: Next.

PLAYBOY: Do you share with the American Right Wing an equal concern about the susceptibility of our own country to Communist designs?

SARAH: Hmm. Well, no.

PLAYBOY: In combating Communist expansion into underdeveloped areas here and abroad, what can we do except to offer massive material aid and guidance of the kind we've been providing since the end of World War II?

SARAH: You mean, make the underdeveloped areas developed? I think the developed areas would have something to say about that, when you start taking their extra street lamps and garbage collection away from them to give a little more to skid row. But back to the communist thing, as that's not really a worry anymore, what is it that has replaced that paranoia? Not much, because in a P.C. culture such as our own, everyone is welcome, which is an asset to the oft negatively murmured acronym.

PLAYBOY: Is American support of the UN one of the ways in which we can uplift global economic conditions?

SARAH: Yes.

PLAYBOY: With or without main land China in the UN, what do you feel are the prospects for an eventual American rapprochement with Russia?

SARAH: rapproche-what?

PLAYBOY: We dig.

SARAH: Oh.

PLAYBOY: Frank, you've expressed some negative views on human nature in the course of this conversation. Yet one gets the impression that -- despite the bigotry, hypocrisy, stupidity, cruelty and fear you've talked about -- you feel there are still some grounds for hope about the destiny of homo sapiens. Is that right?

SARAH: You mean, "Sarah," not "Frank." If you asked me that 2 years ago I would have said that, no, I don't have a very positive outlook for the destiny of humans. I used to think we were just on our way out. I have been, for the past few weeks, a little obsessive about compiling an earthquake/bird flu closet of food, candles, band-aids, batteries and water. But I think that it's the sense of adventure in catastrophe that makes me do it. And the realization that that's what's going on in my compulsion has made me realize that sometimes, it's just that I want to escape from the everyday. I work a 9 to 5 job right now. A bird flu could keep me from going to work for weeks, and Paul and I could just hide out in the house a read every book I haven't read on my shelf. Or we could just dump all our supplies in the car and drive as far away from society as possible. Basically, I'm starting to realize that my hope for humanity starts right outside of my brain pan. If I see things going downhill, that's a sign that I should start working to make things that much better. I should make my situation more tolerable to me and thus participate in the world to my fullest.

Questions Copyright ©1994, PLAYBOY. Questions originally appeared in the February 1962 issue of Playboy. The interviewer was Joe Hyams.