Free Enterprise is a 1999 romantic comedy film starring Eric McCormack and Rafer Weigel, and featuring William Shatner, directed by Robert Meyer Burnett and written by Mark A. Altman and Burnett. Plot The film deals with the mid-life crises of its two main protagonists, Mark (Eric McCormack) and Robert (Rafer Weigel), fictionalized versions of the film's director and producer/writer. The two friends struggle with adult career and relationship problems, all the while defiantly clinging to the geeky science fiction popular culture of their youth and seeking advice from their greatest hero, William Shatner. Shatner plays a campy caricature of himself as he works on a one-man musical version of Julius Caesar in hopes of finally being taken seriously as a dramatist and musical performer. Hip-hop artist "The Rated R", joined by Shatner, provides the concluding musical number "No Tears for Caesar", a pastiche of famous lines from the play set to a rap rhythm. The film's score was produced by Scott Spock. Cast Eric McCormack as Mark Rafer Weigel as Robert Spencer Klein as young Robert Audie England as Claire William Shatner as Bill Phil LaMarr as Eric Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Marlena Thomas Hobson as Richard Jennifer Sommerfield as Tricia Jonathan Slavin as Dan Patrick Van Horn as Sean Lori Lively as Leila Holly Gagnier as Laura Hafermann Ellie Cornell as Suzanne Crawford Marilyn Kentz as Gail, Mark's mom Diana Cignoni as Illa Sharon Leibowitz as Sharon Daniel Schweiger as Schweiger Mickey Cassidy as Bully Production Kay Reindl, a friend of Mark A. Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett, and a television writer on Millennium and The Twilight Zone, felt that they could make a film out of their clique's obsession with Star Trek. Burnett remembered that one day Altman called him and read a scene where he was beaten up in junior high school for wearing a Trek uniform. William Shatner appeared to him as a vision and told him to fight back. Altman wrote the first draft and then Burnett rewrote it. When Altman and Burnett approached Shatner about being in Free Enterprise, he was not interested: "I had played my [Kirk] persona as far as I wanted to go and probably as far as anybody wants me to go." Undaunted, Altman and Burnett tweaked his character to be more like Peter O'Toole's in My Favorite Year. They also incorporated several anecdotes from Shatner's actual life. Release Free