50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
So this may be fun for some of you.
Last night, I was looking for a new sweater online, and this picture came up in the search results:
There is so much … wrongness … in this picture, I began to wonder: what’s they guy’s story?
Like, not the model who’s getting paid for the gig — good for him. I mean, the fictional guy who is wearing this … thing.
You get up to 150 words to tell his story, if you want to do that. Mine is on the other side of the thingy.
So two months after I decided to hit the reset button on my life, I found myself falling into some of the old patterns of behavior that weren’t working for me, the very patterns that I’d vowed to change. There are lots of reasons that I just don’t feel comfortable talking about to the entire world, but one of the things that kept coming back to me was unresolved issues related to being a child actor.
As it turns out, this subreddit I like to read (nb: yes, a lot of Reddit is a cesspool, but because we can choose which subs to read and who we interact with, I view it like a mall of ideas, and I’m not required to shop at every store) called RedditDayOf. Every day, there’s a different topic, and readers submit stuff related to that topic. So I was sitting at my desk with my coffee, waking up and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my day, when I saw that the topic was Child Stars. Before I knew what I was doing, I typed, “I was a child star in the 80s. AMA.” and ended up spending the day talking about my life in and out of the spotlight, as a child star, a former child star, a failed child star, and a successful adult actor and human.
I’ve collected and organized some of the things that came up in that thread, because they ended up representing some Frequently Asked Questions. If you’re interested, and want to get to know me a little better, read on.
As I write this, there is a goddamn motherfucking bulldozer in my backyard, breaking up my patio and part of my driveway. The house shudders and quakes beneath my feet, ripples vibrate in my coffee.
It reminds me of a time, years ago — 2007 or 2009, I think — when I had the swine flu, and there was a goddamn motherfucking bulldozer demolishing the house next door. The swine flu comes in many flavors, and while I was lucky to avoid the shitting puking version, I got the version where the slightest noise, the tiniest variation in air pressure, hurt like hell not just on the surface of my body, but all the way through it, into the center of my bones. It was just the worst, but I got a lot of comedy mileage out of it, and endured it with the best humor I could.
I wonder how many of my neighbors hate me today? I can’t say that I blame them. Jackhammering is really terrible. But when this is done, we’ll have a really pretty new area behind the house, with some slabs of concrete separated by fake grass, that’ll be a nice place to hang out. I’m grateful that we can afford to do this.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been in the archives of my blog, and I’ve pulled some older stories out to share again. I’m proud of that work, and sad that I have to go back really far to find the kind of narrative storytelling that I used to do on a daily basis. Having my own goddamn motherfucking bulldozer in the yard takes me back to days spent in front of this computer, at this desk, emotionally reconnecting to memories as recent as 24 hours and as long ago as my childhood, and doing my best to recreate those memories in your mind. I’ve been thinking about how much my life has changed, and how my writing (or lack of writing) reflects that. I used to spend every day looking for stories to recreate, digging through my memories for stories to share, and asking What if …? as I searched for fiction inspiration.
I feel like I’ve retreated into a shell, a little bit. I’ve been putting my artistic and creative energy into things like Tabletop and the work I’ve done as an actor on Powers and Dark Matter and Big Bang Theory, and it’s not so much that I haven’t had any extra to give to other work as much as I just haven’t wanted to. I’ve been lazy, I’ve been unmotivated, I’ve struggled a lot with Depression. It turns out that the complete and utter betrayal by a loved and trusted friend last year really fucked me up and broke a huge part of my psyche, and it’s been really hard to find the vulnerability that is necessary to be a good narrative non-fiction writer.
I’m working on it, though. I’m working on healing myself and getting to an emotional place where I feel like I can open myself back up and write like I used to. I’m taking baby steps, and not always forward, but it’s all I can do. It’s all any of us can do when we find ourselves in a position like this.
So here’s a memory. It’s short, it’s incomplete, but it’s a start.
I remember being at Universal Studios in the early 80s for an audition. It was one of those offices that had lots of dark wood everywhere, rough, overstuffed cushions on the couches and chairs, and indirect lighting from bulbs in silver sphere floor lamps.
I don’t remember what the audition was for, but I remember being really excited to be inside Universal Studios, the home of the Universal Studios Tour (this was decades before it became a proper theme park), even though I wasn’t going to get to go on the tour, just being in the same place made me feel like I was part of something special.
So I was learning my lines and waiting to go into the audition, when in walks Gary Coleman. I think he was 15 or 16 at the time, and I was 10 or 11, but holy mother of crap there was ARNOLD JACKSON IN THE SAME ROOM AS ME.
You could feel the whole room go silent, while everyone in it tried to be cool. Did this mean that I was going to get to work with Gary Coleman if I booked the job?!
It turns out that the answer was no. He was walking through the waiting area, on his way to another meeting or whatever. Maybe there was a guy in an office down the hall who knew, definitively, what Willis was talkin’ about.
When he got out of sight, the room sort of blew up, like all of us exhaled at the same time, and chattered on about how cool it was. Some of the parents there tried to focus their kids back on their lines, but it was a futile effort. One of the biggest stars in our world had just walked past us, and it was a tangible reminder that maybe — maybe — we would get to work with him.
The bulldozer has stopped. I think the workers are taking a lunch break. I think I’ll go eat lunch now, too.
Does anyone remember Ficlets? It was a really fun collaborative writing site that allowed us to write stories no longer than 1024 characters, and anyone could write prequels or sequels to it.
I loved Ficlets, and it played a significant part in my growth and development as a writer, because the limitations it imposed on us, as well as the short format, made it fairly risk-free for someone like me who was just figuring out what his writing voice sounded like (and how to use it).
Some of the Ficlets I wrote are pretty good, and others aren’t, but they’re all things I made where something wasn’t before. This one, which was inspired by listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars on repeat a lot, is one of the better ones I did:
A Godawful Small Affair
“I want to move to Mars, and open up a bar,” Gregor said.
Matti inhaled deeply, and let a cloud of pale blue smoke surround his head.
“What would you call it?” Matti said.
“Moonage Daydream.” Gregor said.
They sat together on a crumbling balcony, exposed rebar and radioactive dust, and waited for the rocket, three miles distant, to launch.
“What’s it mean?” Matti said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette over the edge, and watched it fall out of sight.
“It’s the title of an old song,” Gregor looked past the rocket, to a horizon he knew he’d never cross, “from about a hundred years ago.”
“Nobody’s going to get it. Why would you pick something that old?”
“Because back then,” Gregor said, “people had hope.”
The ground shook, and they watched the rocket climb into the sky.
If you follow that link, above, you can find some stories other folks wrote when they were inspired by this one as a starting point. Hell, if you want, you can write a prequel or sequel and post it in a comment here, just keep it to 1024 characters or less, because that’s the rule.
Anne and I took a long walk today, and while we were on our way back, I remembered writing this post for my blog, a million years ago. The game I’m talking about, Kangaroo, was the subject of a column I was writing for The AV Club at the time, called The Games of Our Lives:
Even though Kangaroo is sort of a forgettable game, it will always be special to me because, like Wizard of Wor, it reminds me of a specific time and place in my life: the set of my first feature film, The Buddy System. We shot that movie at 20th Century Fox during the summer of 1983, and the art department had both Kangaroo and Turbo set on free play, and because the sound was turned off, I got to play them whenever I wanted to. That movie was a lot of difficult work. Richard Dreyfuss hadn’t gotten sober yet, and many days he just didn’t show up for work, so I spent a lot of time playing gin rummy with my aunt, racing cars, and beating up the evil pink monkeys. The director didn’t know how to talk to kids, so he just gave me lots of line readings (which annoyed me, even as I neared my eleventh birthday) . . . but when I look back on that summer, what I really remember is the time I spent with Susan Sarandon, who played my mother in the film, and how much fun we had together. She took me under her wing, and treated me like I was her son, colleague, and friend. When the director was a dick, she made it okay. When Richard was looney on the cocaine, she made it okay. But more than anything else, she never talked down to me. She made me feel like I was part of the cast, and I deserved to be there, even though I was just a kid. The only other person to treat me that way when I was a child working in movies was Rob Reiner.
I remember one afternoon, while we were on a break between scenes, I walked through an empty set, and saw Susan listening to her Walkman (like an iPod, but it uses these things called “cassette tapes,” that you may have seen on “I Love The 80s.”) She pulled off her headphones, and said, “Do you want to hear some cool music?”
“Sure,” I said, and walked into the room, which was her character’s bedroom in the movie. They’d built an entire house on the stage, and even though I’d been on lots of sets before, it was still magical to me. There were lights and catwalks and cables and all the elements of movie magic just outside the camera’s view. Some lights, flags, and C-stands crowded the corners of the set, and our chairs were pushed up against one wall. The room was dimly lit by the reflected light from the shooting set, a few rooms down the hall.
I sat down next to her and heard music coming out of her headphones.
“How are you doing today?” She said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I saw Superman III last night.”
“Oh? How was it?” She said. She paused her Walkman, and the tinny sound of a guitar was replaced by the voices of the crew setting up the next shot.
“It was really stupid,” I said. “They tried too hard to be funny, so it wasn’t cool like the first two.”
“Do you know who Richard Pryor is?” She said.
I shook my head.
“He played Gus.”
“The guy who made the machine?” I said. “Oh god! I hated him.”
“He’s a famous comedian.” She said.
“Well, he’s not very funny,” I said. Compared to the antics of Jack Tripper, or Arnold Jackson’s Watchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? which was the height of comedy as far as I was concerned, Richard Pryor just didn’t rate.
“When you get older, you should listen to his comedy albums,” she said. “I think you’ll change your mind.”
She was right. When I was fifteen or sixteen, my friend Pat and I picked up Richard Pryor Live in Concert, and I laughed so hard I almost forgave him for Brewster’s Millions. He went on to be a comedic influence in my life, joining Bill Murray, Bill Hicks, Bill Cosby, and a few comedians who are not named Bill, including Chevy Chase and Steve Martin.
“If I do, I’ll call you,” I said. Unfortunately, by the time I did, we’d lost touch. That has always made me feel a little sad.
“We’re ready for first team!” The first assistant director called out.
She picked up her headphones and put them over my ears. “Quick! Before they find us!” She said. I giggled as she pushed play.
A man started to sing. His voice was deep and beautiful. The music was soft, and felt sort of sad. If I’d known what “haunting” was, that’s how I would have described it.
After a minute, she said, “Do you like it?”
I did. It was unlike any of the music my parents listened to, and was very different from the pop music I heard on the radio.
“Who is it?” I said.
“It’s my friend,” she said. “This song is about an astronaut who blasts off and never comes back.”
“It’s really cool,” I said, as an assistant director poked his head into the room.
“I have first team,” he said in to his walkie talkie. “We’re ready for you on set,” he said to us.
We got up and went to work before I could find out the title of the song. As the day went on, and the work took over, I never thought to ask, and by the end of the day, I’d forgotten about it entirely.
Later that year, I helped my dad repair a gate on the side of our house. We listened to KMET (the greatest rock-n-roll radio station in history, which was tragically replaced in 1987 by the worst light-jazz pile of shit in history) while we worked, and that song from Susan’s friend came out of the radio.
“Dad!” I said, “This is the song that Susan played for me when we filmed The Buddy System! This is her friend!”
My dad stopped hammering, and listened.
“Do you know who it is?” I said.
“Yeah,” my dad said. “This is David Bowie.” The song was Space Oddity.
To this day, whenever I hear it, I can see my eleven year-old self, sitting in that empty, dusty, dimly-lit set on stage 18 at Fox. I can feel the rough pads of Susan’s headphones on my ears, and remember how happy I felt to be part of a secret club.