Category: blog

The casting director looked over her sides at me, and waited. The casting assistant looked away from the camera’s built-in monitor, and tilted his head to one side, slightly, as he also looked at me.

What an odd detail to notice, I thought.

To the casting director’s left — my right — a handful of producers and executives sat in chairs, some with arms crossed, some with legs crossed, all looking at me, expectantly.

I tried to remember my lines, but I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t even know what project I was in this callback for. I could remember that I hadn’t adequately prepared, but I couldn’t remember why. This was an important audition, for a project that could change my life, and I hadn’t properly prepared. I felt cold, and my stomach felt weak.

I decided to improvise, to say the lines that made some sort of sense to me, based on what the casting director had said.

“I understand your concern,” I began, and there was a knock at the door.

Well, not a knock, exactly. It was more of a thump, followed by a scrape. I tried to ignore it and stick with my plan. “I understand your concern,” I began again, “but I th–” there was another thump and a scrape.

Why aren’t they stopping the audition? I thought. And that’s when I knew that they knew that I knew that I had no idea what I was doing, and they were enjoying my struggle. The problem was, I was in too deep now, and I had to stay committed. I would do such a good job with my improvisation, staying true to my interpretation of the character, that they’d have to give me a chance to go learn the lines, adequately prepare, and come back.

Thump. Scrape.

“Will you let the dogs outside?”

The cold I felt vanished, replaced by the warmth of my bed.

It was a dream. Another goddamn stress dream, but at least it was just a dream.

One of our dogs, probably Seamus, hit our bedroom door. Thump. Scrape.

“They’re fine,” I muttered. I rolled onto my side and tried to stay in sleep’s softening embrace.

Some time passed. Whether it was seconds or minutes, I couldn’t say.

Thump. Scrape.

“They need to go out,” Anne said.

Sleep released her comforting hold and I opened my eyes, expecting to see the cold grey light of dawn outside our windows. Instead, it was the deep dark of night, the blue-tinged glow of the moon barely touching the edges of our blinds.

Thump. Scrape.

I exhaled heavily, and sat up in bed. The covers fell away as I swung my feet to the floor. Seamus and Marlowe were both on the floor. Marlowe sat up, ears perked up atop her head. Seamus was near the door, settling into a Sphinx pose, his ears back. It was as if he wanted to say, “I’m sorry that I woke you up, but I gotta go.”

I got out of bed and walked toward our bedroom door. I took two steps before both dogs stood up, tails wagging. “Okay, you two. Let’s go outside.” I said, quietly.

I opened the patio door and they ran out into the yard. Air that was just above freezing rushed through me and into our house. I closed the door, leaving just enough space for me to peek through it, and watched them run up into the darkness. The sky was pitch black, a few bright stars shining with a brightness that only happens over Los Angeles in the cold, still air of our winter sky. The moon was about a quarter full, as bright as a headlight. I looked away from it, and it left an afterimage in my vision.

The dogs came back to the door, and pushed past me into the house. More frigid air spilled around me, and I imagined it like a wave, crashing through a crack in a seawall during a storm.

I locked the door, and shuffled back into my bedroom. Marlowe had already claimed a spot between Anne’s pillow and mine, curled into a tiny ball that shouldn’t be possible for a 53 pound dog. Seamus was on his side, and when I got back into bed, he leaned his head over to rest it on my hip. Marlowe nuzzled at the side of my face, and exhaled. I leaned my face against hers.

The cold I’d brought into the house was scrubbed away by the warmth of my bed, and I fell back into a dreamless sleep.

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.

(more…)

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.