In Spock’s Shadow
Adam Nimoy explores his father’s life and legacy
In another life, Adam Nimoy might have been a big Star Trek fan. As a child, he loved The Outer Limits and Lost in Space; later, he’d get into the classics, like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick. But in this timeline, things are different: As the son of Spock, Adam was quite literally born into the Star Trek family. And while that may be some Trekkies’ dream, for Leonard Nimoy’s son, it was complicated. So complicated that he and his father went years at a time without speaking. Now an entertainment lawyer, filmmaker, and father himself, Adam reconciled with his father a few years before the latter’s death in 2015.
As Adam and his sister Julie explain in Adam’s new documentary, For the Love of Spock — which hit theaters last Friday and chronicles the life and impact both of Leonard and the iconic Vulcan he portrayed for nearly 50 years — growing up in the shadows of one of the most recognizable and beloved figures in the science-fiction world wasn’t easy, but it was certainly special.
Most of this is discussed in the film, but I’d love to hear the story of how you decided to make a documentary about your dad from you.
It started with an idea I had, to make a Spock documentary. My dad and I had been so close the last several years of his life, that we had already made a documentary about his life [growing up] in Boston. It was just going to be an oral history for the family. We cut it together and it turned into a 30-minute film, so we thought, “Could it be aired?” And it did, on public television.
I had such a nice time relating to him about his early life in Boston and making that film that I thought we should do something else again, this time related to Star Trek. I was aware that they were coming up on 50 years of Star Trek, and so was he. He was very interested in working on this project together to celebrate a half-century of Spock, but he made it very clear that it should be Spock-centric, not a film about Leonard Nimoy, because he was going to be producing it, and maybe even narrating it. We were even thinking of doing an In Search Of-style format, where Dad would be on the bridge of the Enterprise talking about the evolution of Mr. Spock, all the way down to the J.J. Abrams reincarnation of Star Trek. [My father] was a man of great humility — he didn’t want it to be the Leonard Nimoy show.
That’s the way we started out. But then three months later, my dad was gone, and there was so much outpouring of emotion about the loss of Leonard Nimoy in the media, on social media. Everybody was contacting us in every mode of communication, including snail mail. It became clear we needed to expand the film to include Leonard Nimoy himself. That’s where we really started to shift focus, although it’s still primarily about Spock.
Once you decided it had to be more about him as a person, did the finished product end up looking like you expected it to?
It changed over time because things kept showing up. We have this Burning Man sequence in there [at the end, in which a Nimoy tribute burns as tinder beneath the larger bonfire installation] that was a last-minute thing. It just kind of appeared.
How did that happen?
My daughter went there last year. Her boyfriend drags her out to the Nevada desert every year. Last year she saw this collage of my dad — of her grandfather — including pictures of me, and it just blew her mind. It was the first thing she told me when she came back.
Did she shoot the footage we see in the film, of the collage burning?
No, we found that footage. We recreated some stuff in that sequence, as well. It changed the movie. For me, it’s the climax. It was very serendipitous.
Then the letter that I read aloud in the movie, which my dad wrote to me in 1973 — it’s a three-and-a-half-page, legal-size letter, that didn’t appear until just this last year. I didn’t know it existed — I didn’t remember it existed.
Hadn’t you read it in 1973?
I probably read it in ‘73, but I have no recollection. I was too high to remember, frankly. But last December I started going through a bunch of old boxes looking for correspondence from him, and this letter showed up. It’s now a big part of the film.
Did it give you a better understanding of your dad as a person? Or of what happened with your relationship over the years?
It gave his perspective on our relationship, which was really vital. It was in his voice: He’s commenting on the fact that there’s trouble between Leonard and Adam. That’s critical, because I don’t have him here to give his perspective on what happened between us. It was important to have that, to give some balance [to the story].
In For the Love of Spock, you visit your first-ever Star Trek convention, last year in Las Vegas. Why did it take you so long to get there?
I really didn’t want to be going as Leonard Nimoy’s son. It didn’t feel good to be following in his shadow as he walked around or appeared at a convention. I didn’t need to see thousands of people going berserk over him — I’d seen it all my life, and it’s like, enough is enough. I have my own identity to maintain. It’s not me, I didn’t do Star Trek. I was just along for the ride. When people are all so happy to meet me, it’s because really I’m Leonard’s son — but now it’s different, because I have something that I created.
You have your own agency in this world now, by making and offering up this project.
Exactly. I feel like I’ve earned my place at the Star Trek table — I hope. It still remains to be seen how the public receives the film, but the critics seem to think it’s a very strong piece of work. I’m really proud of it. It’s not my first rodeo — I’ve been in TV for 10 years, and I know something about filmmaking.
Has the way that Star Trek fans, or fans of your dad, engage with you changed over time? Or is it still pretty much the same, wherever you go?
I haven’t had that much contact with Star Trek fans, really. I was estranged from my dad and I didn’t live with him, so I wasn’t around him for many years, until I started going to the conventions. I have really not immersed myself in the community of Star Trek. I just didn’t need the interaction. It’s not something I was interested in.
But now you’re immersing yourself in it.
I want people to find out about my film. I want them to go see my film. I want the fans to know that we have this film. I don’t want it to die in obscurity. That’s my primary reason for being here. Other than that, I’m enjoying, again, being around the fans and just connecting with them.
It’s just a reminder to me of how phenomenally successful my father was. I’ve had many victories in my own career, but nothing that even compares [to his]. I just don’t need that comparison. Being at these conventions was just a reminder: “Oh, we love you, because we love Leonard, we love Leonard, we love Leonard.” It’s nice now, because I love Leonard. I just wrote him a love letter in the form of a movie called For the Love of Spock. Now I can say I did too, and now we can all enjoy that together.
For the Love of Spock is now playing, both in select theaters nationwide and on demand via Amazon, iTunes, and others.
Devon Maloney is a culture writer living in Los Angeles whose work has appeared in Wired, Vanity Fair, Grantland, Vulture and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
