Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (27 page)

It was only while in the shower getting ready to attend did I think to make a mental list of all the people I would need to thank in the unlikely event I was chosen. ’Cuz, like Sonny said, probably not a good idea to come out with just my dick in my hands. I didn’t want to leave out any names because, as I believed and said as much when I was amazingly called to the podium, this type of recognition and spotlight shines on a person only when a whole bunch of people around him or her do stellar work. In this most collective of endeavors it takes a village to shine. But once again, I get ahead of myself.

Before that day arrived, there was about a month of being an official nominee, which instantly bestows upon you an entirely new set of credentials. When I returned to the set of
Beast
the next day, of course, everyone was aware of my nomination. I always had to show up four hours earlier than most of the crew to get my makeup applied, but I soon sensed that a lot of things had changed, literally overnight.

For someone who had not only been overly concerned with what people thought of me but in fact felt downright measured by it, this was one of those moments that went a long, long way. This was the very first time I got real acknowledgment and encouragement not only from a major portion of the country but also, and even more intoxicating, my peers in the industry. There was a validation that gives way to many other things, but if one is not supercareful and does not fundamentally recognize that this winning/losing thing is pure fantasy, signifying absolutely nothing of real consequence, one could be walking into the trap of all traps. Was my opinion suddenly more weighty than before, or did I just think it was? Of this, though, I am certain: people were clearly acting differently toward me. Oh, not all
of them, but enough so as to make one raise one’s eyebrows. Because the people who truly wish you well are not as great in number as you might have assumed. Someone’s good fortune might simply be a reminder of what others haven’t yet achieved, that they were far more comfortable in the relationship when obscurity was a shared virtue.

However, I straightaway gained a new bunch of “friends,” all of whom wanted to grab onto the coattails of someone on the rise. Even though at the time I thought it was cool, those friendships turned out to be fleeting, and very few remained for long. Now don’t get me wrong, the nomination brought with it a new confidence that perhaps bordered on a self-assurance, which may have been taken as something more deleterious, maybe even a perception of arrogance, and that’s maybe why I lost friends. I doubt it, though. I hadn’t really changed. I had always held the character of Vincent in high regard, possessing an intensity as to how he should be played, but I always strove to leave that on the field and not carry it around with me.

In any event, it’s such a strange experience to be in that moment in time when others suddenly start treating you as if you’re a “somebody.” Reporters suddenly wanted to know who I thought would win an election, for example, or who was my favorite painter or songwriter. It’s easy to get swept into this weird vortex that very well might be over the minute the show gets canceled. Anyway, lemme finally get to the point regarding my night at the Globes.

In the front rows all of the biggest movie stars, directors, and powerful money men and their perfectly manicured wives or dates are placed. The staffs of such stars negotiate with the Award planners with threats of not attending if they’re not given the seating placement they deem they deserve. Nevertheless, the seating arrangements each year are actually a game of musical chairs of popularity, although it really boils down to a person’s earning potential or how much money they already made or have.

If there would’ve been a camera on my face when my name was called as the winner, it would’ve been a profile displaying one of pure and authentic shock. When my name was announced, I was so far in
the back of the ballroom that, even though I nearly sprinted to the stage, the applause had ended two minutes before I got to the podium. The woman who opened the envelope and gave the award was Valeria Golino, who played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in
Rain Man
. It looked like I was giving her a kiss, but I actually leaned in close and asked her to show me the envelope with my name on it because I seriously, even then, thought they’d make a mistake.

Immediately after making a brief speech, the winner is led from the stage, and someone guides them to a pressroom to have this mini-news conference. Flashbulbs are going off from all angles like a fireworks display, and, for me, still in shock, I had to look my best and come up with intelligent responses to reporters who were throwing the really tough questions at me, stuff like, “How do you feel, Ron?” And “Who are you wearing?”—ya know, real existential stuff! Then the winner eventually goes back to their table with the statue.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it, sitting there in all its beauty among napkins and lipstick-rimmed wineglasses. After the show and the Governor’s Ball, winners, losers, and most of the attendees go out partying somewhere. My manager wanted me, as a winner, to do a hopscotch of stops to different iconic after-parties. All the time I was carrying this heavy Golden Globe Award, with its marble pedestal and the gold world on top. The thing weighed eight and a half pounds.

I remember being asked, at one restaurant, by the hat-check girl, “Excuse me, sir, would you like to check that in?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “It took me two decades to get this. I ain’t letting nobody hold it.” She shook her head and laughed as if to say, “You can put a kid from the Heights in a tuxedo, but he’s still a hick.” The actual trophy is eventually returned to the Globe’s committee so they can engrave your name on it, a tradition that is shared with the Oscars and the Emmys. You hope they get your address right.

I falsely believed that with me on magazine covers and everything like this, it was a sure bet that this was what life would continue to look like. I was pretty sure that the money was for sure gonna keep
rollin’ in, so I started thinking about how I better start being smart with it, maybe hire one of them
financial advisers.
Ya know, ’cuz they care so much. This is something I never had to have a concern about, nor did anyone in the Perlman family for that matter, in all the generations leading up to mine. And then I started going around looking for a house. Because it seemed like a sure bet at the time that we were gonna be around for a while. But then, at the end of the second year, Linda got pregnant and told the producers she wanted be written out of the show by the end of that season. I don’t know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but the discussions culminated with them giving Linda her way. They said, “Okay, we don’t wanna keep anybody if they don’t wanna be here. You want off of the show bad enough, you got it.”

I really enjoyed working with Linda Hamilton, but with Linda back then, there was just a slight inconsistency. On the days when Linda was doing well, and I say this without trying to be hyperbolic, she was amazingly good. She was the sweetest, most charming, most generous woman I had ever met in my life. Then there were these other days when this kind of darkness overcame her, and I really wanted to keep my distance so as not to add to her uneasiness. It was clear that she was capable of saying things that were less than politic.

The unpredictability of those two different swings made people curious. Nothing more than that—nothing alarming, nothing serious, but just curious. And it turns out—and this was long after
Beauty and the Beast
, long after the second
Terminator
movie, when it made more sense—that after her marriage with Cameron ended I guess something about her own life patterns inspired her to go check herself out. After much consultation she got diagnosed as bipolar, and then shortly after that she decided to become a spokesperson for it, and I mean in a very big way. She went on
Oprah
; she went on
Larry King
. The way she described this and unflinchingly used herself as an example of the potential tragic effects this particular mental illness could have on a person’s life was, to me, among the greatest pieces of work she’d ever done. I will always remain a huge admirer of her as an actress. But
her willingness to sacrifice herself no matter what anyone was going to think or say about her—that was class. That was brave. That had character. And knowing her as I did, I wasn’t so much surprised, just real damn proud. She was saying things like, this is what I had, these are all the years I didn’t even know I had it, and this is how it fucked up my life, my career. And she went on to encourage anyone who felt a lack of control in their lives to not sweep it under the rug, to grab hold of it, because once you do, there are things you can do to help it. Linda—what a beauty!

She was magnificent to work with, even on her bad days. Even on her down days she always looked into my eyes and could see this undying admiration from me to her and know that she was safe, she was okay, and she didn’t need to feel threatened. So no matter what, she and I got along phenomenally well. With regard to wanting off the show, I decided that this was her business. I thought that for me to try to convince her of something that she was determined to do would have run counter to our friendship. So I stayed out of it. I never had a conversation with her about it. In retrospect Linda leaving didn’t directly cause the show to end; after all, there are plenty of shows that transitioned smooth enough when one of the main leads exited.

But anyway, six months later we closed on our house. And Opal was pregnant with our second kid. And the regime had just changed at CBS. And the first order of business for the new head of programming was to cancel
Beauty and the Beast
.

(CHAPTER 15)

How You Doin’?

Season two was essentially the set up for Beauty’s demise. She and Vincent consummate their love, and she gets pregnant. Meanwhile a mysterious, diabolical industrialist is watching us, and he becomes obsessed with owning the offspring of such a union. Beauty is kidnapped and held till she delivers the child, thus leaving Vincent on a frenzied search to rescue both mother and child. By the time he catches up with her, it is too late. The bad guy takes the newborn, leaving Beauty poisoned. He escapes in a helicopter one moment before Vincent arrives, leaving Beauty to die in the Beast’s arms. Fade out. End of season two. Nobody wants to write out the main character, but if you gotta go, surely this turn of events made the most of it.

Where to go from there was anybody’s guess, so the run-up to season three was a scramble, to say the least. One thing was certain: there was no
Beauty and the Beast
without a Beauty. So the search went on. We ended up with a sweet girl named Jo Anderson. She was to play a New York detective investigating the disappearance and eventual death of Beauty. Throughout the investigation, as she is gathering clues, Vincent is observing her from the shadows. He comes to feel there is something about this girl he can trust, so he reveals himself to her. That’s right, sports fans, for those of you who guessed, she was to be the
new
beauty . . . well, you actually don’t win anything,
but hey, good fucking guess! Anyway, we played out this little charade for another twelve episodes, with me telling the whole crew to take the money and stuff it in a mattress, ’cuz we didn’t have long for this fuckin’ ride.

Sure enough, the moment Jeff Saganski took the reins, before they even showed him to his fucking desk, his first official act as the president of CBS Television was to cancel
Beauty and the Beast
. He fuckin’ hated us—well, he hated how emblematic the show was of the guy he replaced, Kim Lemasters. Lemasters was personally involved in developing
Beauty and the Beast
when he was just an executive at the network, so when he became president our show was his pride and joy. As long as he was around, he was going to give the show every opportunity to thrive and flourish. Which he indeed did. In trying to keep it going during that third season, he really went out of his way to give us the benefit of the doubt when a lot of other guys would have seen the writing on the wall. But Saganski’s attitude was, “Nah, let’s not throw good money after bad.”

So just at the point at which Vincent finds the boy and is getting ready to become the kid’s father, they canceled us. And because we were in the middle of transitioning to a new storyline and had broke for Christmas holidays, when the edict came down, there was no real closure—no good-byes, no group hugs, and no time to mourn. Nobody was really prepared for it, but everybody was prepared for it. We just went home one day, and while we were chilling we got the call telling us there was no need to return. Everything changed again. I remember how the last day of shooting of the second season was so incredibly different, so joyous; it was almost too painful to recall, knowing that instead of having this state of grace to return to, the era had ended. But what memories! Milestones! New friends!

As I mentioned before, nothing to date had ever topped meeting Sammy Davis Jr. But if I wasn’t totally blown away by just the fact of that, what truly took me by surprise was the regularity with which I would hear from him. He would check in on me every couple of months either to arrange a dinner, a boy’s night out, or just to shoot
the shit. Hard to believe, but as I will get into later in more depth, I never took advantage of these gestures. I truly felt outclassed, not worthy, even. And it wasn’t because of Sammy—he couldn’t have been nicer, warmer, more welcoming. It was me. Because even though I was a grown man and had withstood some pretty tripped out episodes and begun to make a small splash, there were still personal ghosts lurking within me that hadn’t truly been addressed. But more of that anon . . .