Please allow me to refrain from any and all Star Trek cliches.

Let's face it: William Shatner is deserving of nearly every second of the mocking he's ever gotten. The hamfisted, stilted delivery of every word of Kirk dialogue ever spoken cemented his placement in the firmament of cheesy '70s actors long ago. And the Priceline ads. Oh, the Priceline ads. And, for that matter, oh, every other instance of tonal weirdness that he has contributed to his career. But the thing about Shatner is that one can never be perfectly certain as to when he figured out that the real value of his celebrity is that it's very difficult to tell if he's in on every joke made at his expense.

There are many remarkable aspects of William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet. Among them:

• The Kirk-inspired acid green and red costumes all the dancers wear
• That Nashville's own Purple Onion (a suggestively named porn shop I never visited in all the years I lived here-- pitty) is thanked in the credits. I just want to know... nevermind.
• That the ballet itself is actually good
  
• That it's really hard to decide whether Shatner's album Has Been sucks or is the very manna of genius
  
• That so many notable artistic talents have lent their efforts to both the album and the ballet
• Shatner's opening joke in response to Margo Sappington's request to use his album to make a ballet: "Well, I thought, I haven't danced in years!"
  

Has Been was originally a collaboratively conceived venture featuring the lyrical stylings of Shatner and the musical talents of Ben Folds. Somehow, these two managed to talk the likes of Aimee Mann and Henry Rollins into performing with Shatner on the album and the sum total is, well, campy as all get-out but also very winning in its (seemingly?) earnest commitment. And then Gonzo Ballet is the documentary that follows the conception and execution of Sappington's full-length ballet choreographed to the album, Common People.

Shatner's appearance at the film's showing last night has been the talk of NaFF for weeks now. While I was there during the actual red carpet walk, I was watching another movie (Sita Sings the Blues which was great, but about which I may not have time to post) and didn't see much of the Shatner hoopla. But I was able to sneak back this afternoon for the second showing and it was well worth the little murmur of buzz it's getting-- if for no other reason than it's just so darn good-hearted.

The production quality is low and it's really a rather superficial exploration, but Gonzo Ballet does manage to tweak a little nerve of artistic inquiry. In the watching, one never really is sure when the line between earnestness and irony dissolves. All the folks involved in this collection of projects, from the album itself, to the ballet to the documentary about the album and ballet are most certainly interested in creating valid art that won't make them laughing stocks. Except they're all, including Shatner himself, using Shatner as source material. And that Shatner is connotatively laden as a target of derision is unavoidable. So, the movie then becomes a document of how Shatner has reclaimed -- or maybe claimed for the first time -- his own artistic integrity.

See, now? God knows why anyone thought to make this documentary. But yet again, it is this license to weirdness that makes the breadth of NaFF showings so rewarding.

Oh, and P.S. Watch this short. It preceded Gonzo Ballet and is very ominous and very smartly executed. *Almost* the best part.