Free Enterprise

These are the voyages ...
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
When William Shatner, in a velour sweatsuit and wearing a gold chain, performed a rap version of Julius Caesar, it was clear that this Star Trek takeoff would go where no such effort had gone before.

Free Enterprise, which arrives on DVD Tuesday, stars William Shatner, left, Rafer Weigel and Eric McCormack.
Anchor Bay Entertainment

Today, Free Enterprise, the little-seen 1998 movie about Star Trek-obsessed twentysomethings, gets a two-disc special edition DVD (Anchor Bay Entertainment, $20).

The movie was written by Mark A. Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett as they were starting their careers in Hollywood. Pal Kay Reindl, a TV writer on Millennium and The Twilight Zone, suggested that there might be a movie idea in their clique's obsession with all things Trek.

ABC
Shatner's most current incarnation is Denny Crane on Boston Legal.

William Shatner boldly will go beyond his starring role as rainmaker Denny Crane on ABC's Boston Legal this spring when he will appear as himself and as animated characters in TV specials and movies:

How William Shatner Changed the World (History Channel, premiering 8 p.m. ET Sunday). Shatner hosts the two-hour special on inventions inspired by Star Trek.

Living in TV Land: William Shatner (TV Land, March 22). This peek into Shatner's life includes a performance with Ben Folds, who produced Shatner's 2004 album Has Been. "The whole thing is musical and funny and touching," Shatner says.

The Wild, a Disney movie due in theaters April 14. A young lion (Kiefer Sutherland) is mistakenly shipped to Africa and meets a wildebeest named Kazar (Shatner) along the way.

Over the Hedge, a DreamWorks movie due May 19. A new green hedge brings change to the animal kingdom. Shatner is the voice of Ozzie, the histrionic Possum.

"One day Mark calls me up and reads me a scene where he got beat up wearing a Star Trek uniform to junior high school. This was the day Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened. 'Shatner appeared to me (as a vision) and told me to fight back,' " Burnett says. "He wrote the first script and then I rewrote it."

They created a script with a geekish Swingers feel in which Shatner served as an imaginary mentor, similar to Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam. But Shatner was not excited about the role.

"I had played my (Kirk) persona as far as I wanted to go and probably as far as anybody wants me to go," says Shatner, who last portrayed Capt. James T. Kirk in the 1994 movie Star Trek: Generations. "What they had written had me as a guru who dispensed advice, and I kept turning this down."

They retooled his character to be more like that of Peter O'Toole's in My Favorite Year. "We ended up using several anecdotes from Shatner's real life," Altman says. "Now it's really about Shatner using the guys as a sounding board to solve his problems in love and life."

Mark (a pre-Will & Grace Eric McCormack) and Robert (Rafer Weigel) find Shatner flipping through a porn magazine in a bookstore. He wants to do a musical about Caesar, drinks too much and strikes out with women.

Free Enterprise was released in only nine L.A. theaters in 1998, with little promotion. "Nobody went to see it. It was really disheartening," Burnett says.

Meanwhile, he and Mark continued their careers. Altman wrote and produced the movie House of the Dead2. Burnett co-produced Agent Cody Banks and a sequel, and started a production company that has worked on DVDs for The Usual Suspects, X-Men and X2.

Anchor Bay expressed interest in a special-edition DVD of Free Enterprise, based on its cult following.

Burnett and Altman supervised its re-editing and remastering and did a full-length commentary; Shatner did another. A music video of No Tears for Caesar, the Shakespeare-based rap song, is included.

"It could possibly be the most self-indulgent movie ever made," Burnett says. "I think that's what gives it a bit of its charm."

Shatner suggested an idea for a sequel, which is now in the works, Burnett says. "There are elements of Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and a great sort of road picture."

Burnett and Altman hope to start the film by Sept. 8, the 40th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode on NBC.