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Shatner, Spike Pull 'Schmo' Job on Entire Town
« on: Oct 1st, 2004, 7:36pm » |
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Shatner, Spike Pull 'Schmo' Job on Entire Town
(Wednesday, September 29 02:27 PM)
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) William Shatner was in Iowa this week, telling an entire town that he had just played an enormous prank on it, and the results would be airing on television early next year.
Shatner, who won an Emmy this month for his work on ABC's "The Practice" and stars in its spinoff, "Boston Legal," fronted the hoax for Spike TV and "Joe Schmo Show" creators Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The result, "Invasion Iowa," will debut on the cable channel in early 2005.
"Invasion Iowa" will tell the story of a fake film production in the town of Riverside, Iowa -- a town of 978 south of Iowa City that, in "Star Trek" lore, is the birthplace of Shatner's character, Capt./Adm. James T. Kirk. The production spent 10 days in town, hiring locals as actors and crew members, before revealing the prank.
"I fell in love with the people of Riverside," Shatner says. "And the hardest part of this whole experience was containing my empathy for the individuals who listened to and identified with the soap opera that we played out in front of them."
As with the two "Joe Schmos," the people playing Shatner's assistant, "spiritual adviser" and various other entourage and crew members are acting, and Shatner plays an exaggerated version of himself as the writer-director-producer-star of an independent sci-fi film.
"This is unlike anything that's ever been tried in the history of television," Reese says. "It was truly a breathtaking experience."
The goal, the producers say, was to poke fun at the excesses of Hollywood, using locals as both characters and audience. Shatner presented the town with a check for $100,000, to go toward city services, for its trouble.
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