Free Shatner Rules by William Shatner

thankful for a life well lived. But every year I raise a quiet toast of thanks to that mighty beast on San Clemente Island. He was a tough customer.
    Not as tough as Lee Van Cleef, though. That guy still spooks me.

CHAPTER 10
RULE: If Anyone Asks You to Star in a Movie Shot Entirely in Esperanto, Say “Kiam Kaj Kiel Multa?”
    T hat means “When, and how much?”
    Yes. I starred in a feature film shot entirely in Esperanto in 1965. It was called
Incubus,
and a rather enterprising man named Leslie Stevens directed it. And by “enterprising,” I mean he was a little
freneza
.
    That’s Esperantan for “crazy.”
    Esperanto was a language invented in the late 1880s by Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, a man who spoke Russian, Yiddish, Polish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and English, and had probably been called “smarty-pants” in each tongue. Not content with knowing every language under the sun, he invented Esperanto as a universal language to be spoken by all the world’s peoples, believing that a common vocabulary would bring all the citizens of Earth together.
    Well, Leslie Stevens wanted to bring all the Esperanto-speaking citizens of the world together to see a horror film shot entirely in the language, and asked me to star in it. And what’s the most important of all the Shatner Rules? Even in Esperanto?
    Diri jes!
    Stevens created the 1960s science fiction anthology TV series
The Outer Limits.
And since it was a 1960s science fiction anthology series, I acted in it. I starred in an episode called “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” in which I played an astronaut who returned from Venus with a malady that made him cold all the time. (Nowadays, that malady is traditionally called “Being a Senior Citizen.”)

    FUN FACTNER: In the 1964
Outer Limits
episode “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” William Shatner’s character was involved in a mission called Project Vulcan. Isn’t that weird? It totally foreshadowed his work in . . . a 1964
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
episode called “The Project Strigas Affair.” “Project”
and
“Project”? Crazy! Also, that same 1964
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
episode that William Shatner guest-starred in also featured Leonard Nimoy. Who would later, of course, star with William Shatner in . . . an episode of
T.J. Hooker.
Weird!
RULE: Not Everything Has to Be about
Star Trek
!
    Stevens started work on his script for
Incubus
after
The Outer Limits
had been canceled, and enlisted the help of cinematographer Conrad Hall, who would later win Oscars for
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
,
American Beauty
, and
Road to Perdition
.
Fine films all, hampered only by their use of a language people around the world understand.
    You know that language, right? English? I chose to write this book in it. Also, the copy of the
Incubus
script I got when I signed onto the project was also written in English. The contract I signed saying I would be in
Incubus
? English! The whole “shooting the film in Esperanto” thing was a secret that Leslie Stevens decided to keep to himself.
    But the story spoke to me—on that level that doesn’t really require a language. It was an allegorical tale in which I played a soldier arriving in a mysterious town to heal my battle wounds with the water from a miraculous spring. Demons lurked within the shadows of the village, preying on the souls of the narcissists who would exploit this fountain of youth. Kind of trippy. Watching
Incubus
might impair your ability to operate heavy machinery.
    Leslie felt that the only people who needed to know about his Esperantan epic were the world’s two million Esperanto speakers. Why? Because every last one of them would buy a ticket to see this film, virtually guaranteeing a big profit!
    Well, not necessarily, especially if you give the world’s Esperanto speakers the shaft. Word is, some Esperantists reached out to Stevens to help