Next Time, Send Ashton Kutcher

By Sora Song

Residents of Riverside, Iowa, hold an annual Trek Fest and call their town (pop. 928) the "future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk." So how's this for irony: it was WILLIAM SHATNER who made them look foolish. For a new reality show called Invasion Iowa, scheduled to air on Spike TV in February, executive producers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (the team responsible for Joe Schmo) asked Shatner to move into Riverside with a fake entourage and crew and pretend to shoot a sci-fi movie. Townsfolk were hired for the bogus production. Throughout the eight-day shoot, Shatner played an increasingly absurd, over-the-top version of himself. "The last thing we set out to do was make fun of small-town America," says Wernick. "The thing we actually set out to do was make fun of Hollywood." That would explain the kleptomaniac tendencies of one of Shatner's sham-movie co-stars. Says Wernick: "That was our little shout-out to Winona Ryder." We'd wager that she isn't laughing either.