Coreyography: A Memoir (28 page)

I had actually been sort of excited about
Happy Campers.
It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but the director, Bob Logan, had just done the campy spoof
Repossessed
with Linda Blair and Leslie Nielsen; I thought we’d virtually be guaranteed a theatrical release. Now,
Meatballs 4
—a film I never would have agreed to make—was destined for a straight-to-video release. People sometimes have the misconception that actors have any real control over their destiny. In reality, the fate of your career is very often in the hands of those you sign on to work with.

In January, Vanessa and I traveled to Ixtapa, Mexico, for a charity golf tournament. It was our final attempt at saving the relationship, as well as our last public appearance together. By the time we got home—after nearly three years of ups and downs, of lying and cheating and suspicions and jealousy—we were over.

Despite all the drama, there’s one thing I can say I did for Vanessa Marcil: I got her a meeting with one of my agents. By the close of 1992, she had snagged the role of Brenda Barrett on
General Hospital,
a role she would play off and on for the next twenty years, and for which she would win a Daytime Emmy. She has also starred on
Beverly Hills, 90210,
and NBC’s
Las Vegas
. She was even named one of
People
magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People. She’s done well for herself, and I wish her the best.

*   *   *

Back in L.A.
and single, I plunged headfirst into sober life.

I had been thinking a lot about the way we teach drug awareness in this country—the message of programs like D.A.R.E. is fear-based; we use scare tactics to keep kids off drugs. We preach about the evils and dangers, wind them up until they think that recreational drug use or underage drinking will turn them all into homeless junkies. To me, this is the biggest mistake.

As anyone who’s ever experimented knows, your heart won’t explode after snorting a single line of cocaine. You won’t become a high school dropout just because you took one puff from a joint. So, when a kid who’s been taught to irrationally fear drugs sees his friend smoking pot—and quickly determines that his friend isn’t on a downward spiral; he’s actually turning out just fine—he starts to think, perhaps I’ve been lied to. He starts to wonder: hey, maybe drugs aren’t so bad after all.

The truth, of course, is that drugs won’t kill you on impact. In fact, recreational drug use can actually be a lot of fun—why else would so many people partake? But therein lies a bigger truth, as well as a bigger problem: addiction isn’t immediate, but addiction can ruin your life.

I wanted to change the public discussion. So, in addition to attending as well as hosting regular AA meetings, in addition to acting as a sponsor and being sponsored myself, I also started lecturing at universities about the dangers of drugs but, more important, about the misconceptions that exist around their consumption. I also wanted to use the negative experiences in my life and, by helping others, turn them into positives. It wasn’t a particularly profound or even an original goal, but it worked for me. At least for a while.

I also dove back into my music career. Whereas before I had been entirely focused on pop stardom, using movies to drive the success of my music, trying to get my singles inserted into my movies, now I just wanted to write songs for me. I hooked up with a drummer friend of mine, as well as Mark Karan, then an independent producer (now, he’s best known for his work with Bob Weir, formerly of the Grateful Dead). Song writing, particularly in the months following the split with Vanessa, became cathartic. And soon, I would have a new tragedy to work through: in April, I got the call that Sam Kinison was dead.

Just as Sam and I had once competed in coke-off challenges, wagering to see who could stay up the longest, in more recent years we’d begun competing to see who could keep themselves sober. He was battling his own demons, had been in and out of rehab like me, but he had been doing really well in previous months. Which made it all the more ironic that he was killed by a drunk driver.

Sam was a dear friend. We weren’t always the best influences on each other, but I loved him like a brother.

CHAPTER 19

One of the things I very quickly discovered is that going on auditions stone-cold sober is much harder than going in when you’re lit. I hadn’t successfully completed a sober read since childhood, when I’d fearlessly rambled on for Joe Dante or done shameless impressions of the Fonz for Richard Donner. So, when I scored an audition for a new film starring Al Pacino, I was nervous, to say the least.

Pacino, though it’s perhaps cliché to say so, was easily one of my favorite actors, and I was a huge fan of the Godfather films. (Another cliché—though I was perhaps lucky that
The Godfather III
hit theaters when I was in rehab.) I studied like mad, prepared for weeks, but by the time I walked in, I was a wreck. I was consumed with fears, and way too busy wondering what the people gathered in that room were thinking. Did they really believe I was sober now? Did they even think I could act?

Right in the middle of the read, I felt my left eye start to twitch. Then, my lip began to quiver. I lost complete control of my body. It was such an incredible opportunity—a brilliant script (written by Bo Goldman, two-time Academy Award winner for
Melvin and Howard
and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
), an accomplished director (Martin Brest)—and I watched it slip right through my fingers. The role of Charlie Simms in
Scent of a Woman
would go to a young Chris O’Donnell.

*   *   *

I continued auditioning,
but that big break just wasn’t coming. I had managed to pay off a large chunk of my debts, but I wasn’t yet out of the hole. And so, I made the mistake that so many young, impatient actors make: instead of trying to reinvent myself, I went back to doing what “worked.” Corey Haim signed with my agent, and we agreed to a three-picture deal.

The reunion, however, quickly became awkward, and not just because I had misgivings about a reteaming of the “Two Coreys.”

Nearly a year earlier, I had come home to find a man dressed as Donatello from the
Ninja Turtles
waiting for me on my doorstep. I’d never received a singing telegram before, and I just sort of stood there, dumbstruck, as the turtle danced and sang and then handed me a VHS tape. I went inside, inserted the tape in my VCR, and watched as the turtle removed the head of his costume. Inside the suit was Marty Weiss, wishing me a happy birthday. (Apparently, he was doing kids’ parties now.)

I thought the gesture was more than a little creepy, and when I told Haim about it, he insisted we beat Marty up. We made a plan to lure Marty to a nearby park and jump him.

This sounds much more sinister than it actually was—I don’t believe either of us actually hit him, we just sort of dragged him to the ground and swatted at him for a bit. But for Haim, it was a way of communicating just how much Marty had affected him. Several months later—around the time we signed our three-picture deal—I moved to Encino, and Tony became my roommate. Haim took this as a kind of betrayal. Looking back on it now, who can blame him?

Whether it was denial, or the fucked up way your brain works when you’ve been a victim yourself, I just didn’t think of Tony as a bad guy. I still thought, erroneously and ridiculously, that because Haim “wanted it,” the abuse had not been Tony’s fault. While Haim tolerated the arrangement and the two remained civil—Tony even scored a small role in one of our upcoming movies—it was clear to me that Haim could no longer stand him.

Despite the awkwardness, the first of the three new films Haim and I would make together seemed promising.
Blown Away
was an erotic thriller, kind of a
Basic Instinct
for a younger generation, costarring Nicole Eggert (who would later become Haim’s fiancé). Haim and I were both attracted to the script because it afforded us an opportunity to break sharply from the kid-friendly roles we were used to playing. The film sold to HBO as a first-run feature in April 1993, where it premiered to pretty great ratings.

The second film on our schedule, National Lampoon’s
Last Resort,
proved to be a little less promising. Haim and I were expecting to shoot a movie with a budget of between $4 and $5 million; we showed up on the set of what looked like a rinky-dink student film operation. The camera equipment was second-rate, the lighting packages were exceedingly cheap, and we were among a skeleton crew. We looked at each other that first day, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.

Working under the umbrella of National Lampoon, we
thought,
would guarantee a relatively high production value; unbeknownst to us, a low-rent company had recently merged with National Lampoon in order to cash in on the name. It was the second time I’d become a victim of a last-minute bait-and-switch. It was also around the time I noticed Haim was popping Valiums and Somas (a muscle relaxer) by the handful.

As production dragged on, we began shooting at Paradise Cove, the same beach where Haim and I had played football all those years ago, on the day that we first met, when a dust particle or a grain of sand flew into my eye. The pain and the throbbing soon became unbearable, and filming became impossible—I had a steady stream of tears rolling down my face. (How ironic, when I had been worried about crying on cue all those years before—now I couldn’t stop!) I found out that I had an infected tear duct, for which I would need surgery. After nearly two years clean and sober, I was faced with the prospect of taking prescription pain medicine.

I wasn’t keen on putting any foreign substance in my body, especially after catching a glimpse of what Haim was up to. And had the operation been my only health hurdle, I perhaps could have made it through without medication. But within a few months, I would have four impacted wisdom teeth removed, then a slipped disk in my back, and then came the first stages of what would become a two-year struggle with aching, unexplained stomach and groin pain. I was able to keep my prescription pill use under control; at first, I used them only as directed. That would become more and more difficult, however, as the months dragged on.

*   *   *

By the beginning
of 1995, things seemed to be looking up. The last of my three films with Haim—
Dream a Little Dream 2
—was in the can. It would be another straight-to-video release but, hey, I was working regularly and ready to move on to new things. I auditioned for a Warner Brothers television pilot—a mainstream project with quality people—and, incredibly, I got the job. We shot the pilot for
Dweebs,
a sitcom about brilliant but socially inept computer geeks (not unlike the premise of today’s smash hit
The Big Bang Theory
), and CBS picked it up. On the heels of that news, Richard Donner—who had become something of a guardian angel in my life—snagged me a role in his upcoming film.

I had already done an episode of his successful HBO series
Tales from the Crypt
(that was after he got me a very small cameo in the 1994 blockbuster
Maverick,
starring Mel Gibson). Now, he was gearing up to make the second
Tales from the Crypt
movie in what was intended to be a trilogy of films. Both the television series and the films were helmed by some real Hollywood heavyweights, including producers Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver.
Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood
would be a great opportunity to work with major players in the industry. I felt like I was finally back.

Dweebs
premiered in the fall to excellent reviews; the (now defunct) Viewers for Quality Television called us the “biggest surprise” of the season. But as is so often the case, we struggled to find a wide enough audience. This was, after all, a show about computer nerds; in 1995,
cell phones
were still something of a rarity, and Facebook wasn’t even a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. We were, perhaps, a little ahead of our time. As a result,
Dweebs
was cancelled after only six episodes. A few months later,
Bordello of Blood
tanked at the box office. (It probably didn’t help that the film’s star, comedian Dennis Miller, went on television and told audiences not to bother even seeing it.)

The sting of two failed projects was one thing. The unexplained pain, with which I was still struggling, was another. All those things combined, however, lead to a catastrophic moment of weakness, one I have never before admitted to publicly: by the end of 1995, I was gobbling twenty double-strength Vicodin a day. I was still going to meetings, still trying to live the sober life, but I was no longer really buying into it.

I had heard of using marijuana as a way to mitigate pain (again, this was 1995; “medical marijuana” hadn’t yet hit the mainstream), and I thought marijuana might be better than prescription pill abuse. So, I smoked a joint. The joint led to an eight-ball. And the eight-ball led to a full-fledged relapse.

I tumbled downhill faster than I ever had in my life. My car—a flashy Mercedes I had purchased with my network sitcom money—was repossessed. The beautiful home in Encino, right around the corner from the Jackson family estate, I could no longer afford. I moved to an apartment in Woodland Hills and, at first, both Tony and my cousin Michael came with me. But soon neither of them could stand watching me ruin my life. Again. Eventually, they both moved out.

I found myself wandering through Chatsworth Park one night, the same park where I had gone climbing with Tom, my mother’s old alcoholic, abusive boyfriend. I was terrified. I couldn’t believe—after all those months in rehab, and all the hard work in recovery—I had allowed myself to go careening off track. It ended up being one of those cry-your-eyes-out, howl-at-the-moon kind of nights, and I had a kind of spiritual awakening, a “moment of clarity,” as it’s often referred to in sobriety circles. I had to admit to myself that I was out of control, had to give it all up to God, so to speak.